Paige

Chapter One

I don’t know why I got that squirmy-stomach feeling when Scott knocked on the door. It was just Scott after all—the one person who couldn’t possibly surprise me any more than he already had. I took a few deep breaths to center myself, and, once I felt sufficiently calm, opened the door.

“Hi, Paige,” he said.

I stared at him. Since we’d divorced, Scott had apparently stumbled onto someone else’s fashion taste. Gone were the plain-front khakis, the slightly too-long floppy brown hair, the preppy tortoiseshell glasses, the quintessential boy-next-door whom most women—like me—don’t notice until they hit their late twenties and start looking around for husband-type material. Now his clothes looked expensively hip, and his hair was cropped short. The tortoiseshell glasses had been replaced with sleek silver metal frames. The once soft body was now lean and muscular. He looked amazing, far better than he ever had when we were together . . . but his new look was also unmistakably gay.

Okay, I was wrong. He was still capable of surprising me.

“Hey. Come on in,” I said, stepping out of his way.

I wasn’t sure what the greeting protocol was supposed to be, and I could tell by the way Scott was clasping his hands together that he didn’t know either. Were we supposed to hug? To exchange cheek kisses—mwah, mwah—like a pair of socialites? Maybe I should have written Miss Manners for the etiquette guidelines on greeting your gay ex-husband.

Dear Gentle Reader, I imagined she would reply. What a trying situation! But now, more than ever, Miss Manners would stress the importance of conducting yourself gracefully. To wit: it is always socially acceptable to clasp hands in a firm and congenial handshake. Do not feel it necessary to engage in gratuitous kissing and grappling.

I stuck my hand out awkwardly, and Scott stared at it just long enough to make me feel like an ass. But just as I was withdrawing my hand—stupid Miss Manners—Scott grabbed it and swung our arms between us.

Is there anything weirder than shaking hands with the man who once promised to love, honor, and cherish you for the rest of his life?

“Thanks for letting me visit our apartment,” Scott joked, pulling his hand back and pocketing it. “I suppose this counts as a supervised visit by the noncustodial parent?”

“You agreed to the settlement,” I reminded him.

“Hey, I was just kidding. And don’t worry, I’ve learned my lesson—never divorce a divorce attorney.”

Scott looked at the apartment, his expression wistful. We’d bought it together four years earlier, just after our wedding. It’s located in a converted downtown warehouse, and is roomy and airy and has a fabulous view of Town Lake out of the floor-to-ceiling windows on the far side of the living room. We’d snapped it up just before the real estate prices exploded in Austin, and there was no way either one of us would be able to afford it now. But Scott’s landscape architecture firm—which he’d started up after we got married, with a loan from me—had been successful. So as part of our divorce, I gave up my interest in his business, and he gave up his claim to our condo. Simple. Neat.

“You redecorated,” he said, taking in the new tufted white armless sofa and matching love seat, the glass-topped coffee table, and the groovy dining table and chairs I’d gotten from Crate & Barrel. I’d really thrown myself into decorating after Scott had moved out, probably—if I were interested in psychoanalyzing myself—in an effort to stamp out any lingering presence of him in the apartment. It was easier to get rid of the memories than learn to live with them.

“Mm-hmm. I did this ages ago. You haven’t been here in a while.” I smiled. “Do you still have that awful sofa?”

“Of course. Admit it—you miss that sofa.”

I’d hated his leather sofa. Hated it. It was an enormous brown monstrosity covered with nail-head trim, and it looked like it belonged in the office of an eccentric old man who spent his days pinning a bug collection into shadow boxes. I’d begged, pleaded, and cajoled with Scott to get rid of it when we’d moved in together, but he’d stubbornly insisted that he couldn’t live without it.

“I have two things in my life that I love more than anything else,” he’d dramatically declared when I’d delicately suggested it was the ugliest couch I’d ever seen and there was no way in hell I could possibly live with it. “You and this couch.”

Apparently his love for the couch was more enduring than whatever it was he’d felt for me.

“So, how’ve you been?” Scott now asked.

“Fine. Great. I made partner at my firm,” I said brightly.

“Really? Wow, that’s fantastic. Good for you, it’s what you always wanted,” Scott said. “And how’s everything else? Seeing anyone?”

“Um. No. I’m not. And I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Paige . . . maybe we should talk. We never really did. It might help both of us if we, you know, sat down and discussed what happened between us.”

“Nothing happened. You decided—sorry, discovered—you were gay, and so we got a divorce. I think it was pretty cut and dried.”

“There’s more to it than that.”

“And I don’t want to talk about it. Really, Scott, I’m fine. I’ve moved on, and my life is going great. I have no complaints.”

Scott looked at me, and I met his gaze straight on, keeping my face smoothed of emotion. After nine years of being a litigator, I’m well practiced at it.

“Okay,” he finally said. “But if you ever want to talk, I’d be happy to. Just say the word.”

“I appreciate that. But I’m fine.”

“Okay. Well. Do you have that stuff for me?”

I gestured toward the cardboard document box sitting by the door. It contained the last odds and ends he had left behind when he moved out. A few CDs, his Blade Runner video, the collection of ugly ties my mother had given him as Christmas presents over the years.

“It’s all there. I can’t believe you’ve gone two years without seeing Blade Runner.”

“I haven’t. My . . . friend has a copy of it.”

Friend.

Okay.

I had the distinct feeling that Scott wanted me to follow up and ask him about his new friend, but I just couldn’t do it. Instead I smiled pleasantly at him and silently willed him to leave.

“Well. Uh. I suppose I should get going,” Scott said.

“It was nice to see you,” I said.

“You, too. Bye, Paige.” Scott smiled, ducking his head the way he always did, and left.

Once the door latched behind him, I turned and stared out the window, trying to decide if the low, dark sky hanging over Town Lake meant it was about to storm. I decided I had time to get a run in before it rained. I went into my bedroom—I’d changed it, too, installing a Murano glass chandelier, a French armchair upholstered in gray-green silk, and the pure white bedding and walls I’d always wanted but Scott had detested, insisting that an all-white room made him feel like he was an inmate at an insane asylum—and stripped out of my suit. I pulled on a running bra, shorts, and a blue T-shirt with “University of Texas School of Law” emblazoned across the front.

I was all too aware of the potential psychological fallout of divorce—hell, it was my business—and I know for some people, women especially, it has the poisonous power to warp the rest of their lives. So when Scott and I split up, I’d been determined not to wallow. Instead I ran. It was cheaper than therapy, less numbing than medication, and had the added benefit of keeping my ass higher and firmer than that of your average thirty-four-year-old.

While I stretched my hamstrings, the phone rang. The Caller ID reported that it was my mother, and I considered not answering. But then I wondered if maybe, possibly, my mother had somehow intuited my run-in with my ex-husband and was calling to make sure that I was all right.

I decided to take my chances, and hit the talk button.

“I’m worried about Sophie. I think she’s losing it,” my mother said.

I thunked the heel of my hand against my forehead. I should have known—she was worried about my younger sister. As the oldest, I’m expected to be completely self-sufficient at all times. And Sophie, my middle sister—Mickey’s the youngest, the surprise baby who came along when I was twelve and Sophie was ten—was now pregnant, which made her ripe and round and bitchy as hell. The whole family was cosseting her like she was a powerful yet unstable queen who might start shrieking “Off with their heads!” at the slightest provocation.

“Hi, Mom, how are you? Me? I’m fine, thanks for asking.”

“Don’t be a smart-ass. I’m serious. I’m worried about your sister. I just called her, and she was sobbing hysterically. I finally got her to tell me what was wrong, and she was all upset over nothing.”

“What was it?”

“The grocery store has stopped carrying those chocolate croissants she’s been so obsessed with lately. She had a meltdown about it in the middle of the bakery. Don’t laugh, she scared me to death, I thought something was wrong with the baby.”

“Sophie’s fine, Mom. She’s just very pregnant, and very hormonal right now,” I said, smiling at the image of Sophie screaming at the bakery clerk, demanding pastry while banging her clenched fists on the glass counter.

“Will you go over and check on her after work tomorrow? I’d do it myself, but the garden club is coming over, and I still have to make brownies. Do you think brownies are enough, or should I make a sheet cake, too?”

“Mom . . .”

“Maybe I should make both. It’s just the last time I hosted, there was too much food left over,” she nattered on.

“Mom!”

“What?”

“I’m on my way out to go running. I don’t have time to talk about baked goods right now,” I said.

“Well, I didn’t mean to bother you.”

Sigh.

“Don’t be mad. It’s just . . . Scott just stopped by. For the last of his things,” I explained.

My mother went silent at the mention of my ex-husband.

“Hello? Are you still there?” I asked.

“I don’t know what to say. How did that go?”

“Quickly. I’d already put everything in a box, he just had to pick it up,” I said. “He seemed more upset about losing the apartment than anything else. But I guess that makes sense. He actually loved the apartment.”

“You know, I never liked Scott. I thought it was a mistake when you married him,” Mom announced for the eight hundredth time.

This was an outright lie. My mother loved Scott, and had been thrilled when we announced our engagement. Despite her own failed marriage, she’d been stereotypically desperate to see me wedded, to the extent that I sometimes felt like the older spinster sister in a Jane Austen novel. And I’m sure Scott had seemed like the perfect prospective son-in-law—he was kind, successful, ambitious, polished—and there was no reason to think that he was anything other than who he appeared to be.

“That’s not helpful,” I said.

“I don’t know what else to say. Whenever I do say anything about your divorce, or Scott, you get angry at me,” she said.

“I do not,” I said, and I could hear the tone of my voice rising in pitch. I took a deep breath, before continuing in a calmer tone of voice. “I just wish you’d be a little more supportive. Please?”

“I am supportive. And I think the best thing to do is to just put this entire mess behind you. You should start getting out, meeting men, dating. I’m sure it will just be a matter of time until you meet someone new, get married again, and you’ll forget this ever happened,” Mom said.

God, I can’t stand it when she gets like this. I love my mother, and at her best, she’s all the things I’m not—she’s vivacious, personable, a born hostess. And she has an innate ability to make everyone—well, everyone but me—feel better about themselves. But when it comes to relationship advice, she always sounds like she’s quoting from a 1950s dating manual for teens.

“I seriously doubt that I will ever forget that my husband left me because I have a vagina instead of a penis,” I said dryly.

“Paige!”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it? And I have no plans to start dating, so please don’t start trying to set me up with anyone,” I said.

“I wasn’t going to,” my mother said, in a tone of voice that made it clear that was exactly what she was planning to do. “But, when you’re ready, I do know a few nice available men—”

“No. I’m not interested,” I said, cutting her off.

“Well, maybe not now . . .”

“Not ever. I’m serious. I’m too damn old to go through this again. From now on, it’s just going to be me and my work, and that’s enough,” I said.

“You don’t really mean that. You’re just upset, and understandably so. Just give it some time, honey. You’ll meet the right man, and then you’ll start feeling better, you’ll see,” she said.

“Don’t you have it the wrong way? Aren’t I supposed to feel better first, before I get involved with someone else?” I asked, knowing that I was baiting her. I couldn’t help myself. I was so sick of everyone presuming that the two-by-two lifestyle was necessary for personal happiness. It certainly hadn’t made me or my mother or any of my countless clients happy.

“No,” Mom said firmly. “I don’t think that you’re going to get over this until you move on and meet someone new.”

“Well, that’s just not going to happen,” I said. “Besides, talk about the pot and the kettle. You never remarried, and I can’t remember the last time you went on a date.”

“I don’t tell you everything, you know. And for your information, I have been seeing someone,” Mom said.

“Really? Who? And since when?”

“Don’t cross-examine me. I’ll tell you when I’m ready. I have to run, I need to get the brownies started. So you’ll go by your sister’s tomorrow?”

I considered this. Sophie and her husband, Aidan, lived on the north side of town, so it was hardly on my way home from the office. I’d have to fight my way through grinding commuter traffic to get up there, which would take at least forty-five minutes, maybe longer. But I felt a little guilty for snapping at my mom, and I knew she wouldn’t let me off the phone until I agreed. And if I had to continue the conversation about my nonexistent love life or about her apparently thriving one, I’d lose my mind.

“Fine. I’ll go. Bye,” I said, and then hung up and went for a nice, long, anesthetizing run.

Chapter Two

“What are you doing here?” Sophie asked suspiciously.

Her very round pregnant shape was blocking the door to her mammoth white limestone house. It looked so much like every other mammoth white limestone house in the subdivision that I’d driven past it three times before remembering that Sophie’s had an heirloom-rose bush planted under the front bay window. When it was in bloom during the hot summer months, the almost too-sweet scent of the roses would envelop you as you entered the house.

“Doesn’t anyone in this family ever say ‘hello’ anymore?”

“Hello. What are you doing here?”

“Mom made me come by. She thinks you’re going nuts. Are you going to let me in?”

Sophie tottered backwards, then stood with her enormous stomach pushed out, both hands propped against her arched back. Under one of Aidan’s blue oxford shirts, Soph was wearing a white maternity tank top and a pair of black capri leggings. She’d caught her wild blonde curls into a low ponytail, and her toenails were painted dark purple.

“Mom is so fucking dramatic,” she said. “And I’m fine, you didn’t have to come all the way out here.”

“She said you had a meltdown over some pastry.”

Sophie rolled her eyes. “That’s such an exaggeration. I was slightly upset that the bakery has stopped carrying those croissants that I love, and yes, I might have gotten a little peeved at the manager of the store when he told me that they wouldn’t even let me special order them, but I didn’t have a meltdown. What’s in the box?”

I handed her the white bakery box I’d carried in with me. “Croissants. They carry the chocolate ones at a bakery near my office, so I stopped off on my way over and got you some.”

Sophie whooped with joy, and waddled toward her kitchen faster than I would have thought possible, clutching the box to her chest.

“You are the most wonderful, perfect, amazing sister in the world!” Sophie called out.

I started to follow her into the kitchen and then stopped at the door.

“Uh . . . what’s going on?” I asked.

The kitchen was a disaster. All of the cupboards had been torn down, the appliances were pushed together in the center of the room and draped with plastic sheeting, and what was left of the counter was covered with a light film of sawdust.

“Didn’t I tell you? I decided to have the kitchen remodeled,” Sophie said. She placed the pastry box on the island and began digging out a croissant for herself. “Want one?”

“No, thanks. When did you decide to do this?”

“Yesterday. I haven’t told Aidan yet. He’s in Houston for some stupid business thing, and I wanted to surprise him.”

My eyebrows shot up. “You haven’t told him that you’re tearing apart your kitchen? Isn’t he going to be mad?”

“No. I don’t think so. Why? Do you think he’ll be mad?” Sophie asked. Her voice was muffled by the piece of croissant she’d stuffed in her mouth.

I looked at the destruction before me and just shook my head. It wasn’t as though the kitchen hadn’t been gorgeous before. A month after two lines appeared on the home pregnancy test, Sophie and Aidan had sold their 1940s two-bedroom cottage in central Austin for this enormous house. I couldn’t decide if I loved it—it was very chichi, with ten-foot ceilings, a posh master-bed-and-bath suite, and gorgeous hardwood floors throughout—or hated it, for how conventional it was. Aidan was a project manager at Dell and had fallen in step with every other executive there by staking out a McMansion on the north side of town. And their cottage had been adorable. They’d moved into it right after their wedding and had spent every spare weekend fixing it up. It was like they’d traded in the beloved family mutt for an aloof pedigreed whippet.

“Maybe you should sit down and rest,” I said, in a tone so uncharacteristically gentle that Sophie shot me another suspicious look.

“I don’t need to rest. Stop talking to me like I’m an idiot child,” she said, her mouth twisting into the petulant pout she’d perfected at the age of two.

“Soph, you’re losing it. Did you really get up this morning and decide to knock down all of your kitchen cupboards, without so much as mentioning it to your husband first? Does that sound like rational behavior to you?”

“I didn’t decide on it this morning, and I didn’t do it myself. I made an appointment with a builder weeks ago, and he came over yesterday, showed me some pictures of how gorgeous he could make the kitchen, and I decided just to go ahead and have it done. I want it to look nice for when the baby arrives.”

“I don’t think the baby will notice the kitchen.”

“Well, I’ll notice,” Sophie insisted. Her voice was rising in pitch, and I sensed that one of my sister’s legendary hormone-induced temper tantrums was about to erupt. A few weeks earlier we’d gone to see the new Renée Zellweger movie, and I’d had to practically tackle Sophie to keep her from throwing her soda at the couple sitting behind us in the theater when they wouldn’t stop talking.

“Wait. You just hired the builder yesterday, and he was able to start work today? Most reputable builders have waiting lists. Remember how long it took me to get those bookshelves installed in my apartment? What kind of credentials does this guy have? Where did you find him? Is he bonded?” I asked.

Soph rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to go all lawyerlike on me.”

“I just think it’s odd that a carpenter would be available so quickly.”

“I had a last-minute cancellation,” a male voice said.

I turned around and saw a man standing there, his shaggy brown hair and faded blue T-shirt flecked with sawdust.

“Plus, Mrs. O’Neill insisted that I start immediately. She’s very persuasive,” he said, grinning at Sophie, who in turn blushed prettily.

“I told you, call me Sophie,” she said, giggling.

I stared at my sister. Sure, the guy was sort of cute, if you could get past the grubby clothes and the unshaven face that was reminiscent of a Miami Vice–era Don Johnson. Not my type, although he certainly wasn’t repulsive. But Sophie was happily married and extremely pregnant. I would have thought her coquette days were behind her.

“Right. Sophie,” he said.

“Zack, this is my older sister, Paige. Paige, this is Zack Duncan, who came highly recommended. He did Ashley and John’s den. Remember? I told you about it. They had a built-in entertainment center installed, and also put in wood floors,” Sophie said, ignoring the dirty look I shot her for the “older” crack.

Zack looked at me and smiled. His narrow lips curled up and engaged hazel brown eyes that drooped down at the outer edges. He reminded me of a grown-up version of the slick, good-looking, morally deficient guy who brags about his sexual exploits with his girlfriend and then ultimately loses her to the cute, sensitive, misunderstood guy in the PG-13 movies of my youth. The character James Spader was always cast to play.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, keeping my voice cool enough so that he’d know I wasn’t about to fall for his act. “Aren’t you working late?”

“I was just on my way out,” he said.

Zack stared at me for a few beats longer than I was comfortable with, but I’d be damned if I was going to look away first. I hadn’t succeeded as a litigator by allowing men to intimidate me, although enough of them had certainly tried. Some men were just threatened by strong women, and pulled all kinds of aggressive crap in order to dominate—they’d raise their voices, move toward you suddenly, try staring you down. I’d faced it all before in court. I raised my chin up a few millimeters and held his gaze.

Suddenly Zack grinned at me and winked, before turning his attention back to Sophie as she asked him about the placement of the island. I flushed and felt disproportionately pissed off. Maybe it’s that I’ve never been able to abide winkers (I always feel like they’re making fun of me), or maybe it was that I was suddenly extraneous, just standing there, overdressed and rigid, while Soph and Zack leaned over the counter to look at a sketch Zack had made on a scrap of a brown paper grocery bag. They looked like actors in a coffee commercial, all pink cheeks, gesturing arms, adorable pregnant belly.

“I’m going to go,” I said abruptly.

“What?” Sophie looked up from the plans. “You just got here, and besides, you have to stay for dinner. Aidan’s gone, and I hate eating alone.”

“It’s just . . . ,” I started, and then stopped when I saw that Zack was also looking at me. His smile was pleasant enough, but I got the distinct impression that he was amused by my discomfort. Irritation rubbed at me.

“Okay. Fine. I’ll stay. I need to borrow some sweats,” I said, and walked out of the demolished kitchen and across the living room to Soph’s bedroom before she could answer.

I rifled through her drawers and withdrew a black sweatshirt and matching cropped yoga pants. I stripped off my clothes—after first making sure that I’d shut the door firmly behind me—and pulled on the pants. The bedroom door swung open before I could shrug the top on, and I froze, clutching the sweatshirt to my chest.

“It’s just me. Why are you being such a freak?” Sophie asked.

“Close the door,” I hissed. With the door open there was a straight view into the bedroom from the kitchen.

“Why? Oh, Zack just left for the day, if that’s what you’re worried about. God, isn’t he gorgeous?” Sophie said dreamily as she heaved herself down on the bed. “He looks like he should be on one of those home decorating shows on HGTV, don’t you think? You know, the ones where they surprise people by redecorating their house? There’s always a hunky carpenter wandering around in a skintight T-shirt. Mmmm. God, these pregnancy hormones make me so horny.”

“Actually, I thought he was kind of a jerk. Very arrogant,” I said. I pulled on the black hoodie and zipped up the front, then examined myself in the mirror over the dresser. I looked tired. When I was younger and still had the energy to go out to clubs on the weekend, black had been the dominant color in my wardrobe. Now it just served to highlight the dark circles under my eyes.

“Really? I don’t think so at all. He seems like a really nice guy. In fact . . . I think he was interested in you,” she said.

“What? Why? What did he say?”

“So you do think he’s hot.”

“I do not!”

“Yes you do. Do you want me to set you up?” she asked mischievously.

“No! No, no, no,” I said.

“Why not? You’re not seeing anyone, and I know he’s not,” Sophie said.

Uh-oh, I thought. Sophie had been obsessed with Jane Austen’s Emma while we were growing up, but my sister was, without a doubt, the worst matchmaker in the history of the world. Soph never seemed to have any sense of compatibility, and always just assumed that two people she liked and found interesting just had to be perfect for each other. Even if one was a Deadhead and the other a chorus nerd. And her judgment on such matters hadn’t evolved much since high school.

I hated Emma. Jo from Little Women was much more my style.

“Don’t do that. Don’t try to set me up,” I said.

“Okay, fine, I won’t. But just so you know, I already gave him your number.”

“You what?”

“Why are you yelling at me? Your work number, I mean. He has a custody issue he’s dealing with, and he needs an attorney. I told him that you’re the Terminator of lawyers.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I thought you’d be happy about the referral,” Sophie said.

“Yeah, that’s just what I need. Another obnoxious client,” I said.

“Well then, if he calls you, tell him you’re not taking on any new clients. God, why are you acting so weird? You’re even twitchier and more argumentative than usual,” Sophie said.

Why did I allow my mother to manipulate me into coming over here? I wondered. I could be home right now, watching the Home Shopping Network—my secret guilty pleasure—and painting my toenails instead of putting up with this abuse. I was going to be so glad when Sophie’s hormones stabilized and she stopped being such a complete pain in the ass.

“Nothing. It’s just . . .” I paused. “Mom was on a tear yesterday about wanting me to start dating again, and I told her it’s not gonna happen. I thought maybe she was trying to enlist you in her campaign.”

“Oh, yeah, she told me about that. Something about how you’re planning on staying single forever.”

“Don’t roll your eyes, I’m serious. Ever since I made partner, I’ve been buried in work, so I don’t have time to date. Besides, why is it so wrong to want to focus on my career? Men do it all the time. Why can’t a woman do the same thing?” I asked.

“They can. Being a single woman in your thirties is very hot right now. It’s all about amazing shoes and cocktails and sex without consequences,” Sophie said.

“Yeah, right,” I snorted. Sophie and Aidan had met in college, so she had no idea what it was really like out there now. “Dating in your thirties is just as bad as dating in your twenties, only the men have a lot more baggage. Ex-wives, custody disputes, and impotence. Trust me, I know. A stream of newly single men file through my office every day. And I think Austin is worse than most other cities. If I see one more guy clinging to the revolting ‘I’m an evolved man’ uniform of little John Lennon glasses, a goatee, and Teva sandals, and referring to everyone as ‘dude,’ I’m going to lose it,” I continued.

“Your clients tell you they’re impotent?” Sophie asked.

“No. I’m just guessing about that part from all of the Viagra commercials I keep seeing on television. There seems to be an epidemic.” I smiled without humor, remembering Scott’s constant stream of excuses for not wanting to have sex. He kept claiming it was natural for a couple’s sex life to wane after being together for a few years. “I suggested to Scott that he try Viagra. I couldn’t figure out why an otherwise healthy thirty-eight-year-old man wasn’t able to maintain an erection.”

Sophie grimaced. “Not your fault, Paige. You know that, right?” she said.

“Well, I’m not stupid. I know I didn’t turn him off of women. But I’m tired of being told not to take it personally,” I said, shrugging.

“I think you should see someone. A therapist. Your divorce and your job are making you bitter,” Sophie said.

“I’m way past bitter,” I said. “Way, way past it. I’ve also zipped past disillusioned, cynical, and distrustful.”

“I’m serious. This whole thing about how you’re not going to date anymore—I’m sure that’s a very normal reaction after what you’ve gone through. And anger is healthy. But withdrawing from life is not, especially since it’s been two years since you split up.”

“I’m not withdrawing. I have my work and my family and friends. That’s enough. Not all people have to take the same path, you know. Not everyone is cut out for marriage. In fact, it’s offensive and sexist to assume that I have to be attached to a man in order to be a whole person,” I said.

“I’m not saying that! I just don’t think it’s healthy to embrace a monastic lifestyle just because you were married to a gay man. The relationship was doomed to fail from the start,” Sophie said.

I considered this. “Monastic” wasn’t a particularly appealing adjective to get slapped with.

“Maybe . . . ,” I said slowly.

Sophie brightened. “Really?” she said eagerly. She was so transparent, I could practically hear her mentally reviewing the list of guys she could set me up with.

“I’m through with serious relationships. But that doesn’t mean I should have to give up sex, right? Confirmed bachelors don’t. They have their swank apartments with mirrored ceilings and their little black books, and date all kinds of women without ever getting serious about anyone,” I said, my enthusiasm for the idea growing.

Sophie looked at me blankly. “Mirrored ceilings? You’re kidding, right?”

“Well, yeah, maybe about that part. But I think I’m onto something here. You were just saying that there’s a renaissance of the thirty-something single woman. I could be a part of that. Why not? I could get out there, meet some new men, have some completely anonymous sex—what did Erica Jong called it? The zipless fuck? It’s a fantastic idea. Maybe I’ll even start with your handyman,” I said, just to needle her.

“Zack? I thought you weren’t interested in him.”

“I’m not. That’s the point. At least, I’m not interested in his mind. His body’s a different story. . . .”

“Paige! You’re not serious, are you?”

“What? You were just telling me I need to get back out there. Do you think Zack would be up for a fling?”

“Not Zack. I know he’s a hottie, but he’s a really nice guy. Way too nice to be treated like he’s disposable,” Sophie protested.

“Hottie,” I repeated, and snorted. “Who says that? Are you auditioning for The Real World?”

“That’s an idea. Do you think they’d be interested in casting a thirty-two-year-old married pregnant woman? But really . . . you’re just joking about Zack, right? Right?”

She looked so anxious, I couldn’t bring myself to torture her any longer.

“Don’t worry, I won’t seduce your man candy. I meant what I said—I have no intention of ever dating again. Now, what’s for dinner?” I asked, deliberately changing the subject.

“Whatever you go pick up,” Sophie said, lolling back on her side, one hand resting on her huge belly. “I don’t have a kitchen, and I’m too tired to move.”

Chapter Three

I first met Owen Malloy in law school when he lived in the other half of a duplex I rented near campus. He was a pale-skinned, freckle-faced smart-ass with coppery red hair, which had thinned considerably in the nine years since we graduated. Owen was now an assistant district attorney for Travis County, and had worked his way up from prosecuting shoplifters to major felonies. He was also gay, and the only person outside of my family whom I’d told the real reason why Scott and I had divorced.

“I heard some gossip about your ex-husband,” Owen said, looking keenly at me.

We’d met for lunch at P.F. Chang’s, a Chinese restaurant near my office. I was having the Szechuan Beef, and Owen was scarfing down the Orange Peel Shrimp.

“Let me have a bite,” I said, my fork hovering near his plate.

“No, go away. You know I hate sharing,” Owen said. “So, you don’t want to know my Scott gossip?”

I shrugged. I did, of course, but I also didn’t want to seem too eager.

“Don’t tell me . . . he’s changed his mind and decided he’s straight again,” I said.

“No, it doesn’t work that way. Once we turn them over to our side, they never go back,” Owen said, rubbing his hands together with Machiavellian glee.

“So, tell me your gossip.”

“Yeah, I knew you were just pretending you weren’t interested,” Owen said. His appealing grin appeared, and I thought, as I often had in the past, that while Owen was not a handsome man, his face possessed a homely elegance. “Anton saw Scott out at Club DeVille the other night. He was with Kevin Stern—the pastry chef at that new restaurant, Versa. It’s very hot right now, and Kevin is considered to be quite the catch. I know four different guys who’ve been trying to hook up with him.”

I digested this. While my love life had been labeled “monastic,” my ex-husband was now sleeping with someone who could whip up a postcoital Baked Alaska. And who was considered a catch by most of the Austin gay community. I wondered if I’d ever been considered a catch, and thought probably not. I know that on days when I make an effort with my hair, makeup, and clothes, I’d be considered pretty, but my angular face and prickly nature would forever keep me out of the beautiful range.

“A catch,” I repeated. I pushed my Szechuan Beef to the side, and Owen—who had no problem sharing other people’s food—dug in. “And what’s Kevin like? Gay all along, or did he suddenly decide to switch sides, too?”

“I don’t think straight people just decide to be gay,” Owen said.

“I know. That was my lame attempt at a joke, to show that I don’t care anymore.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“When did you first know? We’ve never talked about it,” I said.

Owen shrugged. “As far back as I can remember. It never occurred to me to pretend to be something I’m not. But I know that’s not true for everyone. There are men who stay in the closet until they’re in their forties or fifties or forever. Just be glad that Scott didn’t wait that long.”

I tried to decide whether or not I was glad. I’d gotten past grieving for my marriage—and it obviously wasn’t something Scott was dwelling on—and anyway, now that I knew he preferred men, it wasn’t like that cat could ever be stuffed back into the bag. If I was still upset about anything, it was that I hadn’t figured it out before he told me, before we made the enormous mistake of getting married. Because, really, how could I not have known Scott was gay? I was his wife, his partner, his lover. How blind could I have been?

And short of leaving around stacks of gay porn, there had been plenty of signs that later, once I knew the truth, seemed obvious in retrospect. Scott had been depressed for months, had started to shy away from any physical contact with me. And then there was the big clue, the one that should have hit me over the head like a cartoon frying pan: he’d admitted to me that he’d been with a man before, back when he was in college. Scott had laughed it off when he told me about it early on in our relationship, before we married, while we were lying in bed together and playing the dangerous game of confessing past exploits. He said it was a one-time thing, it had happened when he was drunk, and it embarrassed him to talk about it now. The way he explained it, it had sounded natural, normal even—the result of overactive hormones, too much to drink, and the hard-partying college lifestyle.

I had felt squeamish when he told me. I’ve always abhorred homophobia in any form, and I never thought I would be bothered by the story of a homosexual encounter. But when one of those two men was my boyfriend and later husband . . . well, it had bothered me, even if I hadn’t wanted to admit it to Scott or even to myself.

I broke open my fortune cookie and read the message out loud: “ ‘The greatest danger could be your stupidity.’ Very nice,” I muttered, crumpling it up in my hand. “Just what I was hoping for today, a hostile fortune.”

“Maybe you were meant to have mine: ‘All is not yet lost,’ ” Owen read.

“Ha-ha.”

“Seriously, Paige, you need to cheer up. I haven’t seen you crack a smile in months. And are you ever going to start dating again?” Owen asked.

“That’s all anyone seems capable of talking about lately. My mother, Sophie, now you,” I said irritably.

“There’s a reason why. It’s time. You can’t spend the rest of your life moping around over Scott,” he said.

“No, it’s not that. It isn’t about him.”

“Then what is it?”

I shrugged. It was my new favorite gesture and pretty much summed up how I felt about every aspect of my life.

“Ah, our little Paige seems to be suffering from ennui. And for that, there’s only one cure,” Owen said.

“Oh yeah, what’s that?”

“You have to get laid. You have to fuck Scott and the entire sordid mess that was your marriage out of your memory,” Owen pronounced.

“Nice mouth,” I commented.

Owen snorted. “This coming from the woman who could curse a sailor under the table. But all kidding aside, it’ll really work. Trust me, I’m a gay man, I know these things.”

“What things?”

“Sex things.”

“No, you know gay sex things, but you don’t know anything about straight sex things.”

“That’s not true. I went through a phase in middle school where I read through all of my mother’s bodice-ripper romance novels. And let me tell you, if I wasn’t already gay, those things would have scared me off of women for good. All of those petticoats they had to wade through just to get to third base,” Owen said, shaking his head in disbelief that any man—swashbuckling pirate or other—would want to attempt such a thing.

I stared at him. “Is there a point anywhere in there?”

“Yes. The point is, you need to reconnect with your sensual side. So go forth and find a hot guy, preferably a dumb one so you won’t have to make conversation with him, and lure him into your bed. It’s a surefire cure for your ennui.”

“Sophie and I were just talking about this the other day. I told her I was going to have a one-night stand, but I was just trying to shock her,” I said.

“See, great minds think alike.”

I had to admit the idea was tempting. I did miss sex more than I thought I would, and I’d already run through all of the new releases at Blockbuster.

“Where am I supposed to find this hot-yet-dumb guy? I’m too old for the bar scene,” I said.

“Just ask, and the universe will provide,” Owen said.

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I thought so, too, at first, but Anton has been on a real kick about the power of positive thinking and it’s rubbing off on me.”

Anton was Owen’s boyfriend. He spent a lot of time meditating, and had a kooky New Age theory for just about everything. His life philosophy was that you should never work even a single day in a job you don’t love, so he was chronically unemployed and had been mooching off Owen for years. I’d always thought that Owen could do better, but since there wasn’t a tactful way for me to express this opinion, I kept my mouth shut.

“What if the universe just sends me another closeted gay man?” I asked.

“That’s where it comes in handy to have a gay friend. We come equipped with Gaydar. Just point me at your man, and I’ll let you know his orientation,” Owen promised.

“I could have used your Gaydar with Scott,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah. I think it was on the blink. But I really only met him briefly, once at your wedding and once when I ran into you at the Arboretum, and both times he shied away from me,” Owen said.

“I can’t imagine why,” I said dryly. During the course of my marriage, I’d attempted to set up a few dinners with Owen and Anton, but Scott had always had an excuse for not wanting to socialize with them. Since I preferred to see Owen without Anton anyway, I never pushed it, but I’d wondered at the time if Scott’s reluctance to get together with them might stem from some latent homophobia. Now I knew it was just another sign that I should have clued into.

One of the soft cruelties of divorce is that you’re forever digging up memories and reexamining them in the light of the split.

“Thanks for the Gaydar offer, but I don’t think I’ll need it. I’ll admit, the idea of a fling does sound tempting, but I can’t think of anything less appealing than going on yet another first date with some pompous asshole who will undoubtedly spend the entire night talking about himself, and then afterwards try to paw at my breasts in the front seat of his car,” I continued.

“Well then, stay away from the pompous assholes. Find someone who’s totally not your type, and keep it as anonymous and uncomplicated as you can,” Owen said. “But I’m telling you, you need to get laid, kiddo. You need it bad.”

Chapter Four

“I’m willing to chip in some for the kids, but I don’t see why she should get anything. I’ve supported her for twelve friggin’ years, while she sat at home on her ass. Mrs. Hector is . . . what do you call it? Underemployed? She’s under-employed. It’s time that bitch got a job and supported herself,” John Hector announced, thumping his hand on the walnut conference table for emphasis.

I took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. If it wasn’t bad enough that my asshole client kept referring to his wife as “that bitch” or the slightly less hostile “Mrs. Hector,” or that he was trying to wriggle out of paying child support for his own kids, it was his fault that the Hectors were getting divorced in the first place. Alicia Hector had tossed her husband out when she discovered he was cheating on her. With the twenty-year-old babysitter. While Alicia Hector was five months pregnant. Which was actually rather a fascinating phenomenon, because her husband was a short, fat, hairy little pimple of a man, and it was stunning to think that a young girl would find him even remotely attractive.

I dearly wished that Alicia had been the one to hire me, instead of John, because I would have so enjoyed ripping him into shreds during his deposition. But such was the lot of the divorce attorney—if you only agreed to represent clients who were gracious and kind and all-around nice people, you’d quickly starve.

“Mr. Hector. I think that we should be realistic. You don’t have a choice about the child support. Under Texas law, you’re required to pay an amount set by statute each month. The house would fall under community property, so if we can’t offset the value, we’ll argue that the house should be sold and the proceeds divided between you and Mrs. Hector. However, I should let you know that she would like to retain possession of the house until your youngest child leaves for college,” I began.

“What? No friggin’ way! That would be eighteen years! If anyone should get the friggin’ house, it should be me. And I don’t see why I should have to split anything with that bitch,” Mr. Hector fumed.

I indulged in a brief fantasy of leaping across the table and stabbing Mr. Hector in the eye with my silver Tiffany pen. But since I wasn’t quite yet ready to be carted off to jail, I instead snapped the cap onto my pen, closed my leather folio, and abruptly stood up.

“What, are we done already?” he asked.

“Yes, I have another client waiting for me. But I’ll talk to Mrs. Hector’s attorney tomorrow, and get back to you next week on how the negotiations are going. Wait here, and I’ll have my assistant bring you those documents after she photocopies them,” I said, and then smoothly exited the room before Mr. Hector could launch into another tirade about how he shouldn’t have to pay for his children’s health insurance or make yet another disgusting innuendo about how much of a ladies’ man he was.

I couldn’t bear spending one more minute with him. Hector—and every other divorced man out there like him—was just one more reason why I was never going to get emotionally involved with a man ever again. Just thinking about it made my stomach churn with anger, and my skin felt hot and stretched too tightly over my face.

Men, I thought. Cheating, lying, shitty, asshole men. Every last one of them.

I closed the door of the conference room tightly and then paused, trying to collect myself. There was no reason to let John Hector get to me. Yes, he was a repulsive individual, but I’d dealt with clients just like him—worse even—for years, and I’d never let any of them get to me before. The only way to make it in this business was to keep a clearly defined distance from the work. You don’t befriend your clients, and you also don’t waste energy fantasizing about attacking them Ninja-style.

“Will you please bring Mr. Hector his papers and then see him out, Sue?” I asked, pausing by the desk of my wonderfully efficient assistant to pick up my messages.

“Sure will. And Mr. Duncan is waiting for you in your office,” Sue said perkily.

Sue sported a year-round tan and wore her spiky hair short and burgundy red. She was the peppiest person I’d ever known—everything was always great, wonderful, chirp, chirp, chirp.

“Duncan? Who’s that?”

“He’s a new client, something to do with a custody issue. He said he was referred by Sophie,” Sue said, reading from the notes she’d recorded on the computerized calendar.

“Sophie . . . ,” I repeated, and then glanced through the window of the door to my office. It was Sophie’s carpenter, Zack. He was sitting at an angle, his back to the door, so I could only see a profile of his face, highlighted by the afternoon sun that streamed in.

The annoying winker, I thought, my heart sinking. Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any worse.

Zack turned suddenly and looked over his shoulder.

“Oh no. Oh God,” I said, and jumped back.

“What’s wrong?” Sue asked, staring at me.

“It’s just . . . do you have a mirror?”

Sue rummaged through her purse. “Yes, here. And you’d better take this lipstick, too. He’s really cute.”

“You think?” I asked, and flipped open the compact. I stared at my face, wondering if I really looked that sallow, or if it was just the effect of the fluorescent lighting, the arch-enemy of aging female skin. I dabbed on some of Sue’s red lip-gloss, and that seemed to help. But there was nothing I could do about the dark circles under my eyes or the streaks of gray I hadn’t gotten around to rinsing out of my hair.

“How do I look?” I asked Sue, who was now staring at me as though I had just sprouted an extra head. “What?”

“Nothing. You look great. It’s just . . . I’ve never seen you like this,” Sue said.

“Like what?”

“Nervous.”

“I’m not! He’s just a client, I barely know him. And what I do know of him, I don’t like.”

“Whatever you say,” Sue said, and nodded toward my office. “Go get him, tiger.”

I smoothed my hands over the jacket of my charcoal gray pantsuit and fretted that it was too masculine looking. And maybe I shouldn’t have let my stylist talk me into cutting my dark, straight, shoulder-length hair into such severe bangs. Sure, it looked great on all of the movie starlets, but what if it made me look like a dominatrix? Or a witch? I self-consciously tucked my hair behind my ears and then changed my mind and untucked it.

I gave myself a mental shake. What was the hell was I doing? It was ridiculous worrying about what Zack thought of me. He was a potential client, nothing more, and I didn’t even like him. And I’d certainly dealt with good-looking men before, without getting all fluttery and girly. In fact, I wasn’t even attracted to pretty men. Not that Zack was pretty, at least not in a toothpaste commercial kind of way. But Sophie was right, he looked just like one of those quirky carpenters who provide the eye candy on home improvement shows.

I took a deep, calming breath, sucked in my stomach, and pushed the door open to my office. Zack looked up at me as I entered, and he stood, smiling.

“Hi there,” Zack said.

Gone were the Miami Vice face stubble and soiled work clothes. Today he was clean-shaven and dressed neatly in khakis and a button-down white shirt.

“Hello,” I said, and smiled coolly at him as I walked around my desk and sat down. “How can I help you, Mr. Duncan?”

“Please call me Zack.”

“All right. Zack.” I nodded at him, encouraging him to continue. The sooner he told me what he was doing there, the sooner I could send him on his way.

“It’s about my stepdaughter, Grace,” Zack began, and then he stopped. “Or, ex-stepdaughter, I guess, since her mom and I are divorced.”

“And your ex-wife is . . . ,” I asked, my voice trailing off in a question, as I began to take neatly printed notes on a yellow legal pad: Zack Duncan. Divorced. Stepdaughter: Grace.

“Molly. Molly Fogel. We were married for a year, and Grace is her daughter from a previous relationship,” Zack said.

“Was Ms. Fogel married to Grace’s father?”

“No. And he’s not in the picture.”

“And is your divorce final?”

“Yes. It’s been over a year. And Molly was letting me see Grace a few times a week up until about a month ago. Now she’s getting married again, and she’s decided she doesn’t want me to have any more contact with Grace. She thinks it will complicate things if I stay in her life. That’s why I’m here—I was hoping there was some way I could get a court order to see Grace. I know we’re not biologically related, but I’m the only father she’s known.”

Zack leaned forward as he spoke, repeatedly clasping and unclasping his hands in front of him.

He’s nervous. Nervous and obviously upset, I thought. My animosity toward him deflated. Who was this guy? Macho man candy, or dedicated family guy? Could he be both? Certainly not in my experience.

“How old is Grace?” I asked.

“She’s four,” Zack said, and he pulled out his wallet, flipped through it, and pulled out a small color photo of a smiling chubby-cheeked girl with a head full of brunette curls. The picture looked like it had been taken at one of those inexpensive mall studios, and Grace had been put in a forced pose—her head tipped to one side, resting on her hands, an ugly basket of plastic tulips in front of her.

“She’s precious. Look . . . Zack . . . the custody laws in Texas, in most states, have a very strong presumption in favor of the biological parents. And since you didn’t legally adopt Grace during your marriage to her mother, you just don’t have any standing to seek visitation. Perhaps if your ex-wife wasn’t a fit mother . . .”

“No, no. Molly’s great with Grace,” Zack said quickly.

“I’m sorry, I don’t think there’s anything I can do to help you,” I said. I laid my pen down on top of the yellow pad.

“I just thought . . . it doesn’t seem right that Molly could cut me out of Grace’s life like that. We’d talked about my adopting Grace, but then . . .” Zack hesitated, and seemed to be weighing whether he should continue. He sighed and suddenly looked tired. “Well, there’s no point in getting into it, I guess. It looks like I don’t have a choice.”

“I really am sorry. For what it’s worth, I think it’s wonderful that you want to stay involved,” I said impulsively. “Too many of the divorcing parents I deal with don’t seem to care about their own kids, much less try to seek visitation for their stepchildren.”

I normally try to avoid making personal comments about a client’s life—it was a rookie mistake I hadn’t made since I first started practicing law. One sympathetic comment, and suddenly my clients would think I was their best friend/shrink/mom, rather than a disinterested professional, and take to calling me constantly, asking for advice, divulging far more of their personal business than I’m comfortable hearing. It was much easier to keep everything on an entirely professional level, for everyone involved. But I felt unusually sympathetic to Zack’s plight, perhaps because I was starting to wonder if I’d misjudged him at our first meeting.

Zack just shrugged in response, and then looked out my window at the view of downtown Austin and the tree-dotted grounds of the state capitol building. He was silent for a few beats and then glanced back over at me and said, “Would you like to have dinner with me?”

“Dinner?” I repeated. “Why?”

Zack smiled, and I flushed, realizing how ridiculous I must sound.

“It’s just that we don’t really know one another,” I said.

“Sophie said you weren’t seeing anyone, and I thought . . . well, she seemed to think you’d be open to the idea of going out with me,” Zack said.

I should have known. Sophie was up to her old tricks, even after I’d explicitly told her to butt out. I opened my mouth to say No, thank you, I’m not interested. But something stopped me. After all, wasn’t Zack exactly the kind of man Owen had urged me to have a fling with?

The thought made me swallow hard. The whole idea had just been a lark, something to laugh about with Owen . . . hadn’t it? One-night stands were not—and had never been—my thing. Life was easiest when you stayed on a routine—eating the same things, working the same hours, watching the same kinds of shows on television. There was an ordered calmness to it all, and it was a sort of happiness to always know what was just around the corner. Love affairs, even if only physical, can wreak havoc on all that.

But then, wasn’t that supposed to be the whole point of the no-strings fling? You get to indulge in the physical pleasure without the baggage. And if I didn’t take the plunge now, when would I? Would the weak-chinned, beady-eyed tax lawyer who’d asked me to lunch last week, for whom I felt nothing but a mild revulsion, really be a better candidate?

“Sure. Dinner sounds . . . okay, why not,” I said, and tried to shrug off the alarm bells that were going off inside my head.

It’s just dinner, I lectured myself. If I can’t go through with the strings-free sex, I just won’t. I don’t have to decide that now.

“Enthusiasm. I like that,” Zack said, and when I opened up my mouth, gaping like a fish, he said, “Kidding. I was just kidding.”

“Oh,” I said, and felt absurdly stupid. This was why I hate being teased, I always end up feeling like everyone’s laughing at me. Why was I letting myself be put in this position?

“Maybe this isn’t . . . ,” I started to say, but Zack just shook his head.

“No backing out now. A deal’s a deal. Is five o’clock too early to pick you up? We’re going to need a little extra time to get to where we’re going,” Zack said.

I stared at him, fairly sure that I’d just been outmaneuvered. It didn’t happen often.

Chapter Five

“This should be an interesting evening,” I muttered to myself, as I rushed into my apartment at 4:50 p.m.

I’d been planning to leave work even earlier—which was something I never did, and felt like a juvenile delinquent as I slipped out the back door of our office, looking over my shoulder guiltily while I waited for the elevator—but I hadn’t been able to get off the phone with a teary client who was convinced that her estranged husband was going to get his hands on her doll collection. Now I had to hurry to change, swapping out the gray suit for a pair of boot-cut khakis and a sleek black boat-neck top.

The phone rang, and I clicked the on button, then tucked it between my ear and shoulder so I could keep my hands free for applying eyeliner and mascara.

“Hello,” I said, leaning toward the mirror as I carefully smudged a black charcoal pencil along my upper lash line.

“Hey, it’s me. Have you talked to Mom recently?” my sister Mickey asked.

“Where are you?”

“Where do you think? I’m at school,” Mickey said. She was in her senior year at Princeton and had already been accepted into Brown Medical School. Mickey was nauseatingly successful at everything, balancing her schoolwork and a nonstop social schedule with an effortless, offbeat charm. She was the person I wanted to be when I grew up.

“Can I call you back? I’m going out,” I said.

“Ooh, hot date?”

“No. Not really. I wouldn’t call it a date.”

“I thought you swore off dating.”

“Who told you that?”

“Mom. And Sophie. So, tell, tell. Who’s your new guy?”

“No one. Really.”

“So I know him?”

“No! And he’s not my guy. He’s just a guy. And it’s not really a date, because I don’t plan on ever seeing him again after tonight,” I said.

“Then why won’t you tell me who he is?”

“Okay, I’ll tell you, but you have to promise you won’t tell Sophie,” I said.

“Why?”

“Promise.”

“I promise. Soph is kind of scary these days, anyway. I called her a few days ago—Nick and I were going to see the new John Cusack movie, and I knew she’d just seen it, so I wanted to hear a review—and she yelled at me and told me to never, ever interrupt her when she’s watching Survivor. So who is he?” Mickey asked.

“You don’t know him. He’s Sophie’s contractor,” I said.

“The hot one?”

“She told you about him?”

“Yeah! His name’s Zack, right? He’s pretty much all she would talk about, once she stopped freaking out that I was bothering her during her precious show. I think she has a crush on him. Is that why you’re not telling her that you’re going out with him?” Mickey asked.

I put down the mascara wand and swished a MAC brush into a container of blush and then swept it onto my cheekbones.

“Of course not. And Sophie doesn’t really have a crush on Zack, she’s just a little hormonal right now.”

“Then why don’t you want her to know you’re dating him?”

“First of all, I’m not dating him. We’re just going out this one time, and it’s not even technically a date. And second, I am going to tell Sophie, I’m just going to wait until after our . . . non-date thing. Anyway, I have to go, I’m running late. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Wait! The reason why I called: Have you talked to Mom lately?”

I frowned. “Mmm, I can’t remember. I think we talked a few days ago. Why?”

“Because I’m getting a weird vibe from her. And when I called her yesterday, Dad was over at her house,” Mickey said.

I dropped my MAC brush.

“What?” I asked. “But she and Dad hate each other.”

Our parents’ divorce had not been amicable. They’d never gotten along, bickering constantly while we were growing up, and then one day, my mother had announced that if she had to cook my father one more dinner or iron one more of his shirts, she’d—and this is a direct quote—“lose her fucking mind,” and then had gone on a strike. She spent her days sitting on the couch reading astrological charts while the laundry piled up, the refrigerator overflowed with containers of stale take-out, and an aggressive mold took over the grout on the tub. A month later my father moved out, hired a cleaning lady for his new apartment, and immediately started dating one of his graduate students. This shot across my mother’s bow marked the official commencement of hostilities. She turned around and sold off my father’s golf clubs, his beloved collection of toy trains, and all of the clothes he left behind in an impromptu garage sale. My father retaliated by closing their joint credit card accounts. My mother changed the locks on the house. My father refused to pay for the garbage pickup. And on and on it went.

Soph and I were already out of the house by that point—I was in law school, Soph was in college—so we were spared the worst of it. But Mickey was only twelve when they separated, and so she became yet one more thing that they argued endlessly about, first directly and then through their lawyers. It was truly a miracle that Mickey was now as happy and well adjusted as she was, and I always felt a tug of guilt that I hadn’t been around more to help protect her from the chaos.

“I don’t think they do anymore. I know they’ve been talking for the past few months. Mom tried to hide it from me, but she kept slipping and mentioning things that Dad had told her,” Mickey said.

“That’s just so weird. Maybe it was a business thing? Something to do with the house?”

“I don’t think so. Mom said she was going out to dinner, and although she didn’t say who she was going with, I could hear Dad talking in the background. You don’t think it was a date, do you?”

The very thought gave me shivers. After everything they’d put all of us through with the Divorce from Hell, if they even considered getting back together, I’d have to kill them both.

“Not possible,” I said.

“I swear, I heard him. He was telling her to hurry up because he wanted to beat the crowds,” Mickey said.

This did sound suspiciously like Dad. “Beating the crowds” had been a recurring theme of our childhood. He’d prefer eating dinner out at five in the evening at one of the least popular restaurants in town rather than risk having to wait ten minutes for a table.

“What did she say when you asked her?”

“I didn’t have a chance. She just said she’d talk to me later and hung up,” Mickey said. I could hear the sharp edges of panic in her voice, and it worried me.

“Try not to think about it, Mick. I’m sure it’s nothing—this is them we’re talking about—and you’ve got enough to deal with up there. I’ll talk to Sophie and see if she’s heard anything,” I said. “Besides, Mom already told me that she’s seeing someone else.”

“That’s a relief. Who is he?”

“Actually . . . I’m not sure. She wouldn’t say,” I said, remembering how mysterious Mom had been about her new boyfriend.

“It’s Dad!” Mickey wailed.

“No, I’m sure it’s not Dad. Really, Mick, you know how they feel about each other,” I said.

“What should I say when Mom calls me tomorrow?”

“How do you know she will?”

“She calls me every day.”

“She does? Since when?”

“Since forever.”

I closed my eyes and shook my head. Typical. Mickey, my parents’ surprise baby—they’d gone on a second honeymoon to Hawaii, and nine months later Mickey had arrived—had always been Mom’s favorite. I fought off the jealousy by reminding myself just how insane it would make me if Mom were calling me every day.

My door buzzer sounded. “Crap. He’s here, and I’m not ready. Mick, honey, I’ve got to run. I’ll call you later.”

Chapter Six

Zack held out his hand to help me jump down out of his bright red 1955 Chevrolet pickup truck (I knew the year only because Zack had told me, his face beaming with unmistakable pride). The truck was pretty cool in a retro kind of a way, which was a very popular aesthetic in Austin, along with vintage clothing, VW vans, and record stores that still sold vinyl LPs.

We’d taken Route 2222, a lovely drive that winds through the limestone cliffs and densely wooded areas west of Austin, toward Lake Travis, and had pulled into the parking lot for the Travis County Marina. I wasn’t familiar with the area, but it didn’t look like there was a restaurant anywhere in the vicinity.

“What are we doing here?” I asked.

“Having dinner, like I promised,” Zack said, and when he smiled at me, I briefly considered ripping off my bra and throwing it at him.

Somehow, over the course of the scenic drive, I’d fallen seriously in lust with this guy. Maybe it was because I’d already halfway made the decision to sleep with him, or maybe it was because Sophie was right—Zack was a “hottie.” He was just so solidly masculine. Zack had a thick chest, sexy hips, and long, muscular legs. And he had the nicest hands—they were large and square, and when he held out his hand to help me out of the truck, I noticed they felt soft, which struck me as odd for a carpenter. I’d have expected them to be rough and calloused.

“But where?”

“That’s the surprise. I brought dinner with us,” Zack said, and pulled a blue cooler from the bed of the pickup.

I looked around. “Are there tables out here? Overlooking the lake?”

I had to give him points for originality. And it was a gorgeous October evening, the perfect weather for a picnic. It was warm enough that I was comfortable in elbow-length sleeves, and yet the heavy damp humidity that marked the long, uncomfortable summer had mercifully chosen not to linger.

“I thought we could eat out on the lake. On my boat,” Zack suggested.

“You have a boat?”

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

I followed him as the pavement of the parking lot gave way to a dirt and gravel path. We wound around the main building, a rustic, two-story structure with a screened-in porch that faced the glassy blue lake, down a steep incline, and then finally onto the long, sun-bleached dock where boats were lined up smartly in their individual slips. The majority were motorboats, some tall and opulent, others squat and utilitarian. I figured Zack’s would probably be one of the latter, but he surprised me by stopping at a white sailboat, small in size and impeccably maintained. The mast was up, although the sails were down, piling up on either side like a deflated parachute.

Zack hopped nimbly onto the boat and reached for my hand. The water gently lapped against the hull as the boat shifted under his weight. I hesitated, my feet firmly planted to the creaking dock.

“I have to tell you—I’m not really a boat person. I went on a cruise once, and I spent the entire time being sick to my stomach. All of the rocking and the swaying and the rocking and the swaying,” I said.

Zack laughed. “It looks pretty calm out there today. Why don’t you give it a try, and if you start to feel seasick, we’ll come right back?”

I noticed that there was a small gap in his front teeth. And the hair poking through the open neck of his polo shirt was a reddish blond.

Yes, I thought. I was definitely up for a fling. What the hell. After everything I’d gone through over the past few years, I deserved it, didn’t I?

I took his hand and step-hopped into the boat. The sailboat dipped and swayed under my weight, and I faltered for a minute—the last thing I wanted to do was fall in the lake—but Zack held on to me until I was safely sitting on the hard plastic bench built into the side of the boat. He handed me an orange pillow to cushion the seat—“It doubles as a life preserver, not that you’ll need it”—while he hustled around the deck, raising the sails, releasing the rudder, and finally untying the boat. He stretched out a leg and used it to push the boat back from the deck, before nimbly moving to the stern and taking hold of the tiller. He brought the sailboat about, and we began to slowly leave the deck, helped along by the light breeze blowing from the south.

I lazed back, one hand dipped in the water, and could feel the tension leaving my body. Huh. Who would have thought I’d find boating to be relaxing?

“Are you from here?” Zack asked, keeping his eyes ahead and on the edge of the lake as the boat skimmed slowly across the water.

“From Austin? No, I grew up in Seattle. My parents moved here when I was fifteen, when my dad got a job at UT. He is—was, I should say, since he retired a few months ago—a professor at the engineering school,” I said. “How about you? Are you originally from Austin?”

“Born and raised.”

“You don’t have a Texas accent,” I remarked.

“No, my mom was an English teacher, and she drummed it out of me at an early age,” Zack said, and this time he turned to look at me. As our eyes met, I felt a well-placed kick to my nearly forgotten libido, which had been numb since Scott had come bursting out of his closet.

“I’ve traveled around quite a bit, as an adult, but I kept on ending up back here, so I decided to stop fighting it,” Zack continued.

“Where have you traveled to?”

“I spent a year backpacking around Europe and went just about anywhere my Europass took me. After college, I joined a group that sent English teachers to foreign countries, and through that I spent one year in South America and another in Japan. I still try to travel when I can, although now that my business is picking up, it’s hard to get the time off,” Zack said.

As he spoke I became increasingly uncomfortable with how far Zack was veering from my original impression of him. College? English teacher? Well traveled? Successful business? I’d thought he was just another typical Austin guy who had not yet evolved past his undergrad years. They were everywhere, and were pretty easy to pick out, what with their almost universal enthusiasm for live music, cycling, and “Keep Austin Weird” bumper stickers. I’d thought the retro pickup truck was a dead giveaway.

“Wow. How did you get from teaching to carpentry?”

“Now, that is a story that is very long, and not at all interesting,” Zack said.

I raised an eyebrow. “Now I’m intrigued,” I said.

“You really shouldn’t be. Okay, I’ll give you the abbreviated version. I signed up for the teaching program after my college girlfriend and I broke up, and I just wanted to get the hell out of Austin. I ended up in a town called Cochabamba.”

“Where’s that?”

“In Bolivia. It was an incredible experience, but also really hard. I was pretty homesick and had a hard time adjusting. So after the year was up, I came home, moved in with my parents, and started working on a master’s in history at UT. I quickly realized that there weren’t a whole lot of jobs out there for historians, and my parents were driving me crazy, so when the program asked if I’d be willing to take another foreign placement, I jumped at it. But while I was home, I met someone . . .”

“Ah. I should have known . . . cherchez la femme,” I said, and then immediately felt stupid. Who talks like that, peppering their conversation with stupid French clichés? I sounded like a complete poser.

“Yeah, well, what can I say? She and I stayed in contact while I was in Japan, and moved in together when I got back. I needed a way to pay rent, so I signed on with a local builder. I’d taken up carpentry as a hobby when I was a teenager, and I enjoyed working with my hands, and it was a natural fit. I always thought that sitting behind a desk all day sounded like a prison sentence. No offense,” Zack quickly added.

I shrugged. “It’s okay. I love my job. Well . . . I love practicing law. I am getting a little sick of dealing with feuding spouses. So, carry on. You moved in with your girlfriend, began working for a builder . . .”

“This is much more detail than you need. I was supposed to be doing the abbreviated version,” Zack joked. “Basically, the girlfriend and I broke up. I met Molly, who worked for the same builder that I worked for—she was one of the salespeople who offices out of the model and tries to pawn off the houses on unsuspecting suburbanites—we got married, and she had an affair with our boss. So I was left with no wife, no house, no job, and ended up moving back with my parents for a few months, which gave me all the motivation I needed to start up my own business. I do a lot of carpentry, and I’m just starting to pick up some contracting work. And that’s all the information I’m giving out. Now it’s your turn.”

“Compared to you, I’m pretty boring. I went to Georgetown for undergrad, UT for law school, clerked for a year at the Texas Supreme Court, and then joined the firm that I’m with now. I made partner six months ago, and that’s pretty much it,” I said, realizing that this wasn’t even the abbreviated version. My life was actually so boring that if I took out the gay husband, I could sum it up in two sentences.

“Have you ever been married?” Zack asked.

“Yes, for a few years. We had an amicable breakup,” I lied, and then regretted the forced, overly casual tone. But the last thing I wanted to talk about was my marriage. I know that’s what people do when they first meet—they share this type of basic background information—and it was just one more reason I hadn’t wanted to start dating again.

“Come on, I told you my life story. You have to give me more than that. What about your family? Do you have any other brothers and sisters? Dark secrets? Family curses? Watch your head, we’re going to come about,” Zack said, and pushed the tiller away from him. The boat made a swift, nimble turn, and while I ducked my head, Zack released the sail and tied it to the opposite side of the boat. The sailboat hesitated for a moment before smoothly gliding off in a new direction.

I mentally tallied another point for Zack for letting me slide on the divorce talk.

“One other sister, Mickey, who’s younger than Sophie and me. No dark secrets or curses that I know of. Just the usual dysfunctional fun that every family goes through.”

“Yeah, I know how that goes,” Zack said. “Are you hungry?” With one hand still on the rudder, he grabbed the cooler and started to rummage around inside it with the other.

“Here, I’ll do that,” I said, and took the cooler from him. I popped off the plastic lid and began to pull out the goodies within. A bottle of pinot noir. A turkey sandwich on cranberry-walnut bread. Pâté and cheddar on focaccia. A plastic container of pasta salad. A bunch of grapes. Marinated green bean salad. Chocolate chip cookies.

I rummaged around, found the corkscrew, and opened the wine. I waited for a minute while the boat lapped over a wake caused by a passing motorboat, and once the water was smooth again, poured the wine into two plastic cocktail cups and handed one to Zack.

“Which sandwich do you want?” I asked.

“Whichever. Do you have a preference?”

“I’ll take the turkey,” I said, and handed Zack the pâté and cheddar.

We ate in a companionable silence, putting the open containers of pasta salad and green beans between us and picking at them with plastic forks. The sun had been low in the sky when we started out, and now it began to sink down into the horizon, leaving behind a gorgeous sunset of pinks, aubergines, and hazy grays. The colors reflected on the glassy surface of the water. The lights of the fine houses facing the lake were glowing, illuminating the perimeter of the lake as the sky darkened.

“It’s so beautiful out here. I had no idea. I would have gotten into a boat earlier if I knew,” I breathed, soaking it all in. The colors, the view, the pleasant bite to the breeze as the night cooled.

“I know. That’s why I decided to build out here,” Zack said.

I turned to him, surprised. “I thought you were living with your parents,” I said.

“God, no. I did for a few months, but I could only take so much of listening to them having the same argument every single morning about who reads which section of the paper first. Now I’m renting a house over near Ramsey Park and trying to find the time on weekends to finish my house. I thought I was going to have a chance last week to work on it, when the job I had scheduled fell through, but your sister talked me into doing her kitchen. She can be pretty persuasive,” he said.

“That’s a nice way of saying that she’s a spoiled brat,” I commented.

Zack laughed. “No, not at all. It just seemed really, really important to her to get it done. I’m glad I could help.”

“How does it look? I haven’t been over there since last week. Have you finished?”

“I’m just about done with the cabinets and countertops. I’m going over tomorrow to install the backsplash,” Zack said. He squinted at the sunset, and glanced over his shoulder to see how far we’d wandered from the dock. “I think that we’d probably better turn back before it gets too dark.”

         

I considered it to be a good sign when Zack parked his car outside my building and walked me in.

This is it, I thought, my pulse picking up. I normally hate this part, the first time with a new lover. There’s so much pressure. Not just performance anxiety, but having to worry about how to play it: Is it too soon? Too late? Does he think I’m easy? Neurotic? Cold? I think that our mother’s generation had it easy in comparison—nice girls waited, fast girls put out. So all you had to do was figure out which category you were in and proceed accordingly.

But with Zack, I already knew that we weren’t going anywhere, so there was no pressure. I could be as brazen as I liked and not worry about the repercussions. I felt a surge of energy flood through me, a loosening of limbs, an openness in my lungs.

“Do you like living here?” Zack asked me as we walked through the navy blue carpeted lobby of my building and stood by the elevator bank. We looked at our distorted reflections in the brass elevator doors while we waited for the elevator to arrive. Zack hadn’t put his arm around me or even taken my hand, which seemed a little odd. Most men aren’t exactly subtle at this stage.

“Yeah, I do. It really suits my needs. There’s a gym in the basement and a pool in the back, and I don’t ever have to worry about mowing the lawn.”

The elevator doors opened with a bing, and we stepped inside.

“The thing I never liked about apartment living was always being able to hear my neighbors walking around or fighting or having sex. When I first moved back to Austin, my girlfriend and I had an apartment near campus, and we used to call the guy who lived above us the Sixty-Second Man. It was hard to look him or his wife in the eye,” Zack said.

“Ah,” I said, not sure where to go with that one. Maybe this was his way of being subtle, of introducing the topic of sex in a roundabout way.

The elevator stopped at my floor, and we walked to my apartment. I pulled out my keys, unlatched the lock, and opened the door.

“Well, I had a great time,” Zack said, hanging back, while I went inside and dropped my purse and keys on my front hall console table. I turned around and looked at him, surprised that he hadn’t followed me.

“Aren’t you coming in?” I asked.

“No. I should get back. It’s getting late. But thanks for coming sailing with me,” Zack said.

He hadn’t even stepped across the threshold. I stared at him. Was he rejecting me? Why? What was wrong with me?

“You don’t want to come in for a . . . ,” I trailed off. I was going to say “nightcap,” but it sounded too affected, like something out of a Doris Day movie or an episode of The Love Boat. And “cup of coffee” was synonymous with sex ever since the Seinfeld episode where George’s date invited him up for a cup of coffee, and he hadn’t caught on that she was inviting him to bed. Although since that’s exactly why I was inviting Zack in, maybe that wasn’t a bad way to go.

“Coffee?” I finished.

Zack smiled. “Rain check,” he said.

“Oh. Sure,” I said, crestfallen.

And then Zack did step into my apartment, until he was so close, I could see the faint white line of a scar acquired long ago under his left eye. He rested one hand on my waist, and kissed me. His lips lingered on mine, and I leaned toward him, wrapping my arms around his neck, savoring the warm bulk of him against me. But just at the point when I thought he’d step even closer and maybe reach up to cup my breasts or slide his hands down over my bottom, Zack pulled back, breaking off the kiss. My arms fell limply away from him and hung uselessly at my side.

“Do you have any plans on Saturday?” he asked.

I shook my head. Somewhere inside of me I remembered I wasn’t planning to see him again, that the entire point of going out with him this one time had been so that I could indulge in some commitment-free sex. But mostly all I could think about was how I just wanted to kiss him again.

“Would you like to have dinner? We could go out for some barbecue or something,” Zack suggested.

“That sounds like fun,” I said faintly. Barbecue wasn’t normally my thing, but hell, I’d go to dinner at the Cracker Barrel if it ended in another one of those kisses. And maybe next time I could talk him into coming in for that cup of coffee and get this guy out of my head once and for all.

Chapter Seven

“What’s a three-letter word for ‘rug in Helsinki,’ ending with A?” my mother asked, scrutinizing the New York Times crossword puzzle through a pair of purple bifocals perched on her nose. Another pair of glasses was sitting on top of her head. Mom had been known to search the house frantically for her glasses while three pairs were stacked on top of her ash-blonde bob.

“IKEA,” Sophie guessed.

“That’s four letters,” I said. “Are we going to get this over with?”

It was Saturday morning, and Sophie and I were both camped out at my mom’s house. We were supposed to be shopping for a crib, but Soph was grouchy and intent on eating her way through the entire bag of sesame seed bagels I’d picked up at Central Market on my way over.

“You don’t have to come with us, you know,” Sophie said, blinking back tears.

I would’ve felt worse about making her cry if she hadn’t been breaking down over just about everything lately, including most McDonald’s commercials, the breakup of a couple on the soap opera she watched, and the closing of a sporting goods store near her house where she once purchased a meaningful pair of five-pound dumbbells.

“I wish Mickey were here. She’s the only one of you who’ll work on crosswords with me,” my mother complained.

“Mom, try ‘rya.’ R-Y-A. I don’t do the crosswords with you because you cheat. What’s the point of working on them if you just look up every answer? Sophie, I do want to go shopping with you, but so far all you’ve wanted to do today is elevate your feet and snog bagels. I’d just like to get going, I have some things to do today,” I said. I was thinking about buying a new outfit for my date with Zack that evening, and wanted to stop by Saks. But if I couldn’t levitate Soph out of the green plaid chair and ottoman she’d ensconced herself in since arriving an hour earlier, I wasn’t going to have time.

“What things?” Sophie asked.

“Rya. That fits. Good, Paige,” my mom said approvingly.

“I have a . . . thing tonight, and I wanted to pick up something to wear,” I said.

“A ‘thing’? What’s that supposed to mean?” Sophie said, looking up from her bagel.

“A dinner thing,” I hedged.

“Is the word you’re looking for a ‘date’?” Sophie asked. The whiff of gossip had the miraculous effect of causing her to forget about her bagel, and she was now alert and upright, staring at me brightly.

“Hmm. If ‘rya’ is correct, then what’s a five-letter word for ‘lack of experience,’ starting with a Y?” my mother asked.

“No, I wouldn’t call it a date. It’s just a . . . get-together. A dinner. Nothing serious,” I said.

“So, who is it? If you’re buying new clothes for your non-date date, you must be somewhat interested,” Sophie persisted.

I hesitated. Since I hadn’t confided in Sophie when Zack first asked me out, I felt awkward doing so now. Why, I don’t know. It wasn’t like we were in competition for him. But she’d been so touchy lately, and the smallest things set her off.

“Actually, it’s Zack. He came to see me about a custody issue, which I couldn’t help him with, and he asked me out then. We went out the other night, too,” I said.

“Zack? Zack who? Wait . . . do you mean my Zack?”

“I mean your carpenter, Zack. I don’t really think of him as yours, though,” I said dryly.

Sophie looked confused for a moment, and when that passed, she just looked pissed off. Which was really sort of scary, considering she’d been ready to attack the checkout clerk for not properly bagging her groceries. God only knew what she’d do to someone who was seducing her imaginary lover away from her.

“You knew I was interested in him. I can’t believe that you’d go behind my back that way,” she said. Color rose in her face, and she glared at me.

“You’re not serious? Jesus, Sophie, you’re the one who suggested that I go out with him in the first place. Did you forget you’re married? Don’t tell me that amnesia is another fun pregnancy symptom we get to cope with?” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Ah! It’s ‘youth’! That fits,” my mother crowed, and then looked up from the crossword dictionary she’d been rummaging through. She peered at my sister over the rims of her glasses. “What’s wrong, Sophie? Are you feeling okay? You look a little flushed. Maybe you should go lie down.”

“She’s angry at me because she thinks I stole her boyfriend,” I said sarcastically.

I knew Soph was hormonal, but the absurdity of the situation was just a little much. Sophie was both very married and very pregnant, so she wasn’t exactly in the situation to be calling dibs on available guys.

“I don’t feel like going shopping anymore. I’m going to go home and take a nap,” Sophie said, her voice quavering.

“Don’t be like that,” I sighed.

“Why don’t you lie down here? I don’t think you should drive if you aren’t feeling well,” my mother suggested, getting up and following Sophie to the door.

“I just want to be alone,” Sophie sniffed. She shot me another dirty look and then waddled out the door.

My mother came back into the living room and looked at me reproachfully. I knew that look. It was her signature strike-guilt-in-the-hearts-of-daughters-everywhere look, perfected after thirty-four years of parenting. I liked to think I was impervious to it, but it immediately made me feel like I was about twelve years old and in trouble for mouthing off.

“What? I didn’t do anything.”

“You shouldn’t be upsetting your sister. You know how emotional she is right now,” Mom said. “This pregnancy has been very difficult on her.”

“It’s been difficult on all of us,” I pointed out.

“I know she’s been a little hard to deal with. But that’s normal. You’ll be the same way when you have a baby,” my mother said, returning to her usual spot on the end of the striped sofa. She sat down, tucking one foot beneath her, and took a sip of coffee.

“This coffee’s cold,” she added. “If I make another pot, will you have some?”

I shook my head, and concentrated on pushing back the tears that had started burning in my eyes at my mom’s “when you have a baby” comment. I hadn’t told my family about my miscarriage. It had happened just a few months before Scott made his big announcement. At first I was hopeful that I’d get pregnant again quickly, since although the pregnancy hadn’t been planned, losing the baby was devastating. But then Scott had moved out, and it seemed strange to tell them then after having waited for so long.

“Paige? What’s wrong? You look like you’re about to cry,” Mom said, her voice sharp with worry.

I shook my head again and took a few deep breaths. This wasn’t like me at all. I’ve never been a crier. And I thought I’d put the miscarriage behind me, so to feel the loss and pain bubble back up after all this time was disconcerting. When I was sure I could speak safely, without melting down, I said, “I’m fine, just a little PMS-y.”

“God help me, I’m surrounded by hormonal daughters,” my mother muttered as she picked the crossword back up.

My father wandered into the living room. He was wearing a bleach-stained green polo shirt, khaki shorts that were grubby with potting soil, and garden clogs, and as he walked across the taupe Berber carpet, he left behind a trail of dirty footprints.

“For heaven’s sake, Stephen, look at what you’re doing. You’re tracking mud everywhere,” my mother said, laughing.

I just stared, first at my mother, who was giggling like a teenage girl (in complete contrast to how she surely would have responded to my father’s soiling the carpet when my parents were married, which would have been to point and screech, like Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers), and then at my father, who was standing in the living room of my childhood home as though he belonged there, as though he and my mother hadn’t bloodied the entire family with their messy divorce a decade earlier.

I wondered if I were going crazy, but then remembered the advice of my old therapist, Elise, who said that if you think you’re having a breakdown, you’re probably not. Her reasoning was that if you were alert and rational enough to question your own sanity, then chances were you were fine. Of course, this logic would also suggest that then when you feel perfectly fine, you might actually be falling apart without being aware of it, but I didn’t like to dwell on that possibility.

“Hi, sweetie,” he said to me. “How’s work going?”

“Um, fine. You know, the usual. So why are you here, Dad?” I asked.

“I’ve been helping your mother out with the garden. I just cleared the summer annuals out of the window boxes and replaced them with pansies. I told her she has to fire the lawn care company she uses, because they’re ripping her off. How hard is it for them to remember to water the flowers once a week? Forget about it,” he said, as if this were a reasonable explanation for his presence.

“You’re helping Mom,” I repeated.

He nodded, and my mother beamed at him. “Can I get you some coffee, Stephen?” she asked him.

“Are you having some? Then, yes, please,” he said.

My head swiveled back and forth, as though I were watching a tennis match. Would you like some coffee? Yes, please? What did they do with my real parents?

“Excuse me,” I finally said. “Are we in some kind of a time warp? You two are still divorced, aren’t you?”

“Paige,” my mom said reproachfully.

“What? This is weird,” I said, and suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to ask Sophie if she’d heard anything about Mom and Dad spending time together. Now I guess I didn’t have to.

“No, it’s not. Your mother and I can be friends. And especially now with Sophie’s baby coming, we thought we should make an effort to get along a little better. That’s all,” Dad said. “Speaking of whom, I thought Sophie was here. Didn’t I see her car in the driveway? She’s still driving that gas-guzzling SUV, right? I’ve told her a thousand times she needs to trade that thing in for something more energy efficient, but you know how stubborn your sister is.”

“Yes, I certainly do. Anyway, her head started to spin around Exorcist-style, so she went home to rest,” I said.

“Oh,” my father said. My mother shot me another look.

“She’s just a little tired. It’s hard carrying around all of that extra weight,” my mother said.

“Yeah, that must be it,” I said, heavy on the sarcasm. “Well, since we’re not going to go baby shopping, I think I’m going to run over to Saks.”

And then I hightailed it out of there, because frankly, the two of them were starting to creep me out, what with all of the smiling and agreeing and niceness. Could it really be true that my mother and father were becoming friends?

No. No fucking way.

Chapter Eight

“Are you starving? Because I thought we could take a drive out to my house—I just put the windows in—but if you’re too hungry, we could do it some other time,” Zack said as he pulled out of the visitor’s parking lot for my building and turned right on Congress.

“No, I’d love to see it,” I said. I’d been curious about his new house ever since he’d mentioned it the day we went sailing. Before then I’d have guessed that he lived in a typical Peter Pan bachelor pad, complete with an ugly yet comfortable secondhand couch, bed linens that hadn’t been changed in two months, and a light-up neon beer sign that had been filched from a bar on a drunken bet.

We took the same twisting, scenic route that leads to Lake Travis, but turned off the main road before we got to the marina, and then turned again so that we were climbing a steep and somewhat remote road, before turning yet again up a short driveway. In front of us was an extremely cool, modern two-story house, sitting on what I could only imagine was an incredibly expensive hillside lot. Dense trees surrounded the house on three sides, while I could just make out a glimpse of the blue waters of the lake behind it.

“Oh my God . . . I can’t believe your location. The view from inside must be incredible,” I breathed.

Zack grinned and looked up at the house proudly. It was still unfinished, but it was obvious that the house was well on its way to becoming a showplace. It had modern lines, a boxy shape, and huge windows all over to take advantage of the view.

“You want to see inside?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” I said.

Inside, it was still very rough. The bones of the walls were there, but Zack hadn’t put up the Sheetrock yet, and the kitchen was nothing but a shell. But the layout was open, and flowed well, and it was easy to see how gorgeous it was going to be.

“I’m doing a lot of it on my own, when I have the free time, so it’s not much to look at now,” Zack apologized.

I looked at him. “Are you serious? I love it. I went house hunting with Soph when she and Aidan were looking, and all of the builder houses looked so much alike, it was hard to tell one from another. And I hated how homogenous the neighborhoods are. This is so private and airy and pretty.”

Zack looked pleased. “I know what you mean. I used to work for one of those builders, and I got sick of repeating the same type of design over and over. I wanted to do something different here.”

“Well, you certainly succeeded,” I said.

“Do you want to see the upstairs?” Zack asked, holding out a hand to me. I hesitated for a moment and then took it.

The second floor was even more incredible than the first. Zack had roughed out three bedrooms and two bathrooms, including a generous-sized master bath, but it was the view from the master bedroom that was really spectacular.

“Wow. Oh wow,” I exclaimed, moving to the wall of windows that covered the back side of the room. “Your view of the lake is phenomenal! I know what this house reminds me of . . . it’s a tree house. A grown-up tree house.”

“That’s exactly the feel I was going for. I’m going to put a patio out here, right off the bedroom, so that I can sit out here in the evenings.”

“I don’t blame you. I’d have a hard time leaving this view, too,” I said.

         

We went to dinner at Fonda San Miguel, home of the city’s best Mexican food. When Zack had suggested it as we clambered back into his vintage pickup, I must have looked surprised.

“Did you think I was serious about getting barbecue?” Zack asked, grinning at me.

“No, I . . . well, sort of,” I admitted, and found myself grinning back at him.

“I was just teasing you. You don’t strike me as the barbecue type.”

I raised my eyebrows. “No? What type am I?”

“You know, I’m not sure if I know yet. I keep thinking I’ll figure you out, but I haven’t,” Zack said.

“I could say the same about you,” I replied.

“Yeah, well, I’m an enigma wrapped in a riddle,” he joked. “But really, I didn’t think you even liked me when we first met.”

“You winked at me,” I said. “And I’ve never liked winkers.”

“No way. I never wink at people,” Zack said.

“Be that as it may, you winked at me,” I said.

“No I didn’t. I’m sure I didn’t.”

“You did,” I insisted.

“Is that why you gave me such a dirty look? I thought that maybe you were worried that I was trying to hook up with your sister.”

“Actually, I was more worried that she was trying to seduce you,” I said.

The restaurant was located in central Austin, just off of Forty-fifth Street near North Loop. It was an elegant place decorated like a hacienda, with lovely pierced-metal chandeliers and dark rose colored walls. The food was special, too. This wasn’t the place to come for greasy nachos or other deep-fried, cheese-laden junk food that was the standard fare at most Tex-Mex joints.

“I haven’t been here in ages,” I remarked, after we sat down and were looking over the menus.

“I try to get here once a month or so. I’m addicted to their enchiladas,” Zack said.

“Mmmm, that sounds good,” I said, and my stomach growled at the thought. I thought back and realized I hadn’t eaten very much after having bagels at my mom’s house. I’d been so busy shopping for the short-sleeved camel cashmere sweater and black wool trousers that I’d bought for our date that I hadn’t remembered to consume anything other than a Diet Coke.

The waiter arrived. “I’ll have the crab enchiladas and a glass of the chardonnay,” I decided, and handed the menu to the waiter.

“Good choice. I think I’ll go for the Cochinita Pibil. And a Dos Equis,” Zack said.

The waiter returned with our drinks. Zack raised his glass, holding it toward me. I clinked my wineglass against it.

“To the future,” Zack said.

“To tonight,” I replied lightly. Zack looked at me quizzically, and I held his gaze, enjoying how everything around us seemed to fade away while the sexual tension leapt and flickered like a lit candle. And I knew—tonight was going to be The Night. He would be the wild fling I’d been craving, the relationship equivalent to attending Mardi Gras in New Orleans. I imagined how it would feel to have his hands running over my body, and felt a shock of excitement.

“Are you excited about the baby?” Zack asked.

“Baby?”

I’d been lost in my embarrassingly vivid fantasy, and so this question seemed to come from nowhere.

“Your sister. Sophie. She is having a baby, isn’t she? Because if not, I really put my foot in it when I congratulated her,” Zack said.

I laughed. “Oh yeah. And I’ll be even more excited when Sophie becomes a normal person again and recovers from the estrogen-induced psychosis she’s been in for the past few months,” I joked.

“How about you? Would you like to have children?” Zack asked.

I blinked. The question took me off guard, as did the sudden lurch in my stomach, and suddenly I was remembering everything. The baby. Scott. Having to clench my teeth and force a smile when Soph had announced her pregnancy this summer.

I’m over this, damn it, I reminded myself.

“I . . . uh . . . why do you want to know?”

Zack shrugged. “Isn’t that a normal, getting-to-know-you, second-date kind of a question?”

“It’s just a little personal.”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing here? Getting personal?” Zack asked. He reached over and grasped my hand. “Did I say something to upset you?”

“Look, can we just talk about something else?” I asked. Anything else.

“Sure. What do you want to talk about?”

“Your house. I love your house. Did you design it yourself?”

“No. My college roommate is an architect here in town, and he helped me out. I made some sketches on a napkin, and he turned them into blueprints for me. Which is good, because in my enthusiasm, I’d left out stairs,” Zack said, and I laughed, and we were past the awkward moment. For now.

         

Norah Jones was playing on the radio as we pulled into the parking lot at my building. I was a little tired—wine always made me sleepy—but in a comfortable way, heightened by the pleasant conversation. Zack was an easy person to be with, and in his presence I was relaxing in a way I hadn’t in a long time. So much so that I was surprised when Zack reached over and took my hand in his, and a jolt of excitement shot through my body. And then I remembered: this was it.

“I had a great time tonight,” Zack said.

“I did, too. Do you want to come upstairs?”

“Yeah, I thought I’d walk you in.”

“Actually, what I meant was . . .” I hesitated and then took in a deep breath. I’d learned that the only way to get what you want in life is to go after it, but I certainly didn’t relish rejection. And while I could tell Zack was interested in me—his thumb was erotically stroking the back of my hand, and he was looking at me with obvious interest—there was always the chance that I was miscalculating things, like I had after our last date. “Would you like to come in for a while? We could have a glass of wine, or watch a video, or . . .”

Before I could complete my sentence, Zack had leaned over and caught my lips against his. His tongue flickered against mine, and I went warm and woozy. He pulled back and smiled.

“Or this?”

I nodded, my eyes large and my appetite whetted. “This would be good, too,” I said. Very, very good.

Chapter Nine

The sex was like digging into an incredibly rich, gooey brownie topped with Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream and smothered in hot fudge after six months on the Atkins diet. Zack was athletic and commanding, and for once I actually got carried away with things, rather than just waiting for him to finish while I stressed over whether my secretary had filed all of the requisite papers for a case I was working on. Which pretty much summed up my married sex life, surprise, surprise.

“Are you going to fall asleep?” Zack asked after.

I was lying on my side, resting my head on his shoulder, my hand on his stomach. In a way, this cuddling felt even more intimate than the sex, and I worried that I was over-indulging myself. I’d heard that the trick to a successful fling was no kissing on the mouth. Wait, no . . . that was Julia Roberts’s advice on being a prostitute in Pretty Woman. Still, I wondered if it was applicable to the present situation.

Zack nudged me. I looked up.

“You’re not asleep, are you?” he asked.

“How could I be? I’m looking right at you,” I said.

“Maybe you’re one of those freaky people who sleep with their eyes open. Although if you are, then I think we should just end things right now, because that would really creep me out,” he said, and then he leaned down and very sweetly kissed me.

I had been planning to clarify our relationship, specifically that there was no relationship, and that this was a one-off kind of a thing, but the kiss distracted me.

“Do you have Scrabble?” Zack asked.

“What?”

“Scrabble. The board game,” Zack said.

“Why?” I asked.

“I feel like playing. Are you up for a game?” he asked.

“Okay . . . sure. Although I should warn you, I’m the all-time, undefeated Scrabble champion,” I said.

“In the world?”

“No.” I laughed. “In my family.”

“As am I. So this should be quite the match-up,” Zack said.

I hopped out of bed, shrugged on my red silk kimono, and went to fetch the board game from the front hall closet. When I returned, Zack had pulled on his boxer shorts and was standing in front of my open closet, hands resting on his hips. He had a nice back, broad and smooth skinned, and there was a small mole on his left shoulder. I felt an urge to walk up behind him, wrap my arms around his waist, and press my cheek against the ridge of his shoulder blade. I took a step toward him before stopping myself. The movement caused Zack to glance back at me.

“What are all these boxes for?” he asked.

Uh-oh.

“Nothing,” I said, and hurried to the closet, stepping in front of Zack and closing the sliding door.

“What are you hiding?” Zack asked. He laughed and pulled me toward him, his hands strong on my waist.

“Nothing. Really. It’s private,” I said, trying to back up against the door, but Zack playfully swung me to the side and pulled the door back open. He reached up and pulled down one of the white shipping boxes.

“Home Shopping Network,” he read, peering at the label printed in green on the face of the box. He grabbed another box. “This one, too. And this one. Are these all from the Home Shopping Network?”

I covered my face with my hands and sat down on the edge of the bed.

“This is embarrassing,” I groaned.

“Why, what are these?” Zack asked as he sat down next to me.

I looked up, sliding my hands down until they were covering my mouth.

“Likshophesan,” I mumbled.

“I can’t hear you,” Zack said. He pulled my hands down and held them in his.

“I like watching the Home Shopping Network.”

“Just watching?”

“And sometimes . . . occasionally . . . I like to order things,” I admitted. “Please let’s not talk about it anymore.”

“But these don’t look like they’ve been opened.”

“I never open them.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, I guess I just like the ordering part. When the stuff gets here, I’m too embarrassed to open it.”

“May I?” Zack asked.

I rolled my eyes and gave him a half-nod. He pulled back a corner of the white box and shook out a small, clear plastic bag.

“It’s a bracelet,” Zach said, pulling the sparkly object out of the bag. He tipped his head and shrugged. “It’s pretty. It’s . . .”

“Diamondique,” I said. “It’s Diamondique.”

“Cute name,” Zack said.

“It’s awful. It’s truly awful,” I said, palming the bracelet and staring at it with distaste. It was gaudy and chintzy and not anything I would ever wear. “Why would I buy this?”

“It’s not that bad,” Zack said. He plucked it out of my hand and fastened it onto my wrist, where it twinkled bawdily.

“I’m going to return it,” I announced. “I’m going to return all of them.”

Zack smiled. “Later. Now, I beat you in Scrabble,” he said, rubbing his hands together.

We smoothed the duvet out, and then I set up the game right on the bed.”I can’t believe this. I got four Os. Are there even four Os in the game?” Zack complained after we’d chosen our tiles.

I consulted the list of letters. “Yes, there are eight Os in total. You can re-pick if you want,” I said charitably. Normally, I’m a shark when it comes to board games, and especially Scrabble—my family’s vicious games of Sorry are legendary—but in my postcoital bliss, I was feeling magnanimous.

“Cheat? No, I’m not going to cheat, thank you very much. I plan on trouncing you, even with my four Os.”

I started first, and put down “viper.” “Ha-ha, look at that! That’s fifteen . . . wait, no, sixteen points, and it’s doubled for thirty-two. Thirty-two points!” I crowed, marking it down on the score sheet.

“Hey, let me see that. You got ‘viper’ and I got four Os? Is this game rigged? And how do I know you’re trustworthy enough to keep score?” Zack asked suspiciously.

“House rules,” I said. “Come on, your time has already started to run, you’d better hurry up.”

“Time? We’re playing with time limits? Is that another house rule?”

“Of course! You have one minute to put down your word.” I consulted my watch. “But since you didn’t know, I’ll let you start now.”

Zack added a D and four Os to the V and spelled “voodoo.” “Look at that! Did you see how I’m working those Os? What’s that . . . ten points? Almost as good as yours, oh but crap, I don’t get to double it,” he said. “You don’t have to look quite so gleeful about that.”

“Sorry,” I said cheerfully. I love winning.

An hour later, we were nearly out of tiles, and Zack was beating me by twenty-seven points.

“Grrr. We’re going to have to play again,” I said.

“Don’t worry, I won’t gloat about my victory,” Zack said modestly.

“Just because you got that lucky break with the triple ‘xylem.’ Otherwise, I would have won,” I said.

“You shouldn’t have challenged me. I told you it was a real word.”

“I’ve never heard of it before, I was sure you made it up. Okay, you win, I give up,” I said. I’d been scouring the board, trying to figure out where I could plug in the R and the W I was still holding on to, but Zack had blocked me from the one open A.

Zack grinned and leaned back against the pillows, his hands behind his head, his elbows splayed out to either side. “So, since I’m the winner, you have to be my slave for the rest of the night, right?”

I stretched out next to him, lying on my stomach, resting my head on folded arms. “I don’t remember agreeing to that,” I said.

“Oh no? I could have sworn those were the house rules,” he said. He rolled toward me and poked me in the side, catching me right on my secret tickle spot.

“Ack!” I squealed, and started to roll away. Zack caught me in his arms, preventing my escape.

“What was that?” he laughed.

“Nothing!”

“Hmmm, if it’s nothing, then you won’t mind if I do it again,” he said, one finger poised mercilessly above my tickle spot.

“No, no, don’t, please!” I begged. “Okay, so I have one very small, not-worth-mentioning tickle spot.”

“Ah, so now I have power over you,” Zack teased me.

I smiled back at him and relaxed in his arms.

“Just don’t tell anyone,” I said.

“You are so beautiful,” Zack said, and all traces of laughter vanished from his face. And then he leaned over and kissed me.

A few minutes later, the Scrabble game fell to the floor, scattering its tiles across the pristine, deep-pile white carpeting and under my bed. But at that moment, neither one of us even noticed.

Chapter Ten

The next morning, we went to a little dive café on Red River, where the plastic menus were sticky with pancake syrup and you had to throw yourself in front of one of the harried, tattooed waitresses if you wanted to place your order.

“A tall stack of blueberry pancakes, two eggs scrambled, bacon, coffee, and orange juice,” Zack said definitively.

“That sounds amazing. I’ll have exactly the same,” I said, surprising myself

Normally, I’m pretty incorruptible when it comes to breakfast—it has to be high fiber and low fat. I really did have to get this guy out of my system, I thought. If nothing else, whenever I was with him, my appetite spiked.

“I haven’t been here in a while. I know it’s not much to look at, but the pancakes are worth it,” Zack commented, looking around. His eyes caught on something behind me, and his entire face changed. The light blew out of his eyes, and his mouth tightened. I turned and saw a family sitting in the booth behind us. The parents, decked out in sweats, were entertaining a little girl. She had blonde hair caught up in a ponytail and was wearing a purple sweatshirt and pink pajama bottoms, and she was crooning to an Elmo doll clutched in her chubby arms.

I looked back at Zack. He seemed pensive and distant, and I assumed he was thinking about his stepdaughter. I didn’t know what to say. I’ve never been good at those Hallmark Card, heart-to-heart moments, and this problem seemed particularly complex. I tried to think of something appropriate to say, but then our pancakes arrived, and after accepting the waitress’s offer of additional coffee, we began to eat in silence.

“These aren’t as good as I remember them being,” Zack said, pushing a piece of pancake around with his fork.

“Yeah, they’re a little heavy,” I said, already regretting the syrup-laden pancake I’d consumed. Two more sat on my plate untouched, turning into maple-flavored mush. I’d also lost my appetite for the eggs and too-fatty bacon.

“Sorry, this was a bad call,” Zack said, and he smiled briefly and then reached forward to take my hand. “What are you going to do today?”

“Work. I have a trial starting tomorrow, and I have to prep for it,” I said, catching the waitress’s eye so that she’d bring us the bill.

“Trial? I thought you were a divorce attorney. Divorces don’t go to trial anymore, do they?”

“Sometimes. We’ll probably end up settling, but it can take the threat of court to force both sides into negotiations,” I said.

“How do you do it? Deal with divorces all day long, I mean. Doesn’t it depress you?”

This was something I heard all the time. Why aren’t dentists asked this about their job, or doctors, or garbage men? And what about teachers? I’d rather deal with divorcing spouses than take on a class of oversexed ninth graders any day. Every job has its downsides, and you tend to get used to them. No, I didn’t love bearing witness to the ruin of marriages, and yes, the irony that my own marriage had gone down in flames didn’t escape me. But having to defend my choice of careers wasn’t exactly how I wanted to spend my Sunday morning.

“No, it doesn’t anymore. Friday afternoons are never fun, but I’ve gotten used to dealing with the clients, and it’s better than doing, oh, criminal law, for example. At least I don’t have to go down to the county jail,” I said.

“What’s wrong with Friday afternoons?”

“That’s the day that custody changes hands. Moms are angry when they drop off the kids and discover that Dad’s girlfriend is over. Dads get angry when they go to pick up the kids and they aren’t there. Then they call me, as though I’m going to mobilize the Divorce Police to enforce the custody agreement,” I said.

“So what do you do?” Zack asked.

“I instruct my secretary to tell anyone who calls that I’m out for the weekend. If there were a serious problem, something we’d need to bring to the attention of the court, the earliest I could file anything would be Monday morning. And in most cases it’s forgotten by then. Or, at least, it’s no longer so important the client is willing to pay two hundred dollars per hour for me to deal with it,” I replied. “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“You just seem so tough when you talk about work. You’re . . . formidable,” he said.

“I try to be—I owe that to my clients. Why, you don’t approve of tough women?” I asked.

Zack shrugged. “No, it’s not that. I just wouldn’t want to have such a contentious job.”

“Well then, I guess it’s a good thing that you’re not a lawyer,” I said tartly.

“Don’t get angry, I’m just trying to understand you,” Zack said, and he jostled my hand gently, as though that would shake out my grumpiness.

“I’m not mad. I just get this a lot. It gets old having to defend what I do.”

“Okay, sorry. Answer one question, and I’ll drop the issue entirely.”

“One question,” I agreed.

“Is this the kind of law you planned to practice when you went to law school?” Zack asked.

I thought for a minute and took a sip of my coffee. It tasted awful, like liquid bad breath. I put the mug back down and pushed it away.

“No. I did want to go into family law, but I initially planned to be a children’s advocate. In fact, my parents were going through their own bitter divorce while I was in school, so the idea that I’d spend my life dealing with people acting like my parents would have devastated me if I knew that’s where I was headed,” I said.

“How did you end up here?”

“There isn’t exactly much money in children’s advocacy. Most of the work is pro bono. But now that I’m a partner, I probably could start picking up some casework,” I said thoughtfully, wondering how that would go over with the rest of the partnership. No, forget them. If I wanted to do it, I’d just do it. They’d probably criticize me privately and then brag about it in the firm literature. “You know, that’s not a bad idea. Maybe while I’m down at the courthouse tomorrow, I’ll have the clerk add my name to the appointment roster. Thanks,” I said, looking up at Zack.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said.

“Yes you did,” I replied, and without thinking, I reached over and squeezed his hand.

He held on to my hand before I could pull it away, and for a moment we sat there, looking at one another. Zack had such an open face—he would have made a terrible litigator—and I saw an affectionate curiosity reflected there. I was more practiced at masking my emotions; in fact, hiding them now came easier to me than sharing. But if Zack could peer into my thoughts—a frightening prospect—he’d see the growing interest, a hazy desire to pick up where we’d left off the night before, and a growing concern that I wasn’t going to be able to extricate myself from this situation as smoothly as I’d initially hoped. I felt like I should say something to clarify what I wanted—or, to be more precise, what I did not want.

“Zack,” I began, but then the waitress appeared with the bill, and Zack let go of my hand so that he could grab it from her. I beat him to it.

“No, the bad pancakes were my idea, I’m not going to let you pay for them,” Zack said.

“No way. You got dinner last night, so this is my treat,” I said smoothly, and pulled out a twenty, which I left on top of the check.

“Thanks,” Zack said. He smiled at me. It was the same smile that had gotten me into trouble the night before.

         

When we got back to my building, Zack started to park his truck, ready to walk me up, but I shook my head.

“You’d better not. I have to work, and you’ll just distract me,” I said.

“That’s what I was hoping,” Zack said. “But you’re the boss. I’ll call you tonight, and maybe we can get together tomorrow, or Tuesday.”

“Tomorrow?” I repeated. My stomach pinched as I remembered what I was doing here. One night. No emotional attachments.

“Yeah, unless you’re busy.”

“I just think . . . Look. Zack. I’m really not looking for something serious,” I said. The words made me wince. I looked sideways at him under lowered lashes and saw his naked discomfort.

“Well. I guess . . . I guess I misread things,” he said.

It was painfully awkward. I had to clench my hands into fists so that I wouldn’t reach over and touch his face, as I was sorely tempted to do.

“I had a good time last night, I did,” I said. “My life is just really . . . crowded right now.”

I braced myself, and leaned over to kiss Zack on the rough of his unshaven face. He stayed perfectly still, not turning his face so that his lips would meet mine, which I should have been glad for. Instead, stabs of disappointment pricked at me.

“Crowded,” he repeated, but he didn’t look at me. He was staring through the windshield, off into the distance. You could just barely make out Town Lake from the parking lot.

I hesitated, my hand on the door handle, trying to think of what to say, overcome with an urge to take it all back, to smooth his hurt feelings, to grab back what I’d felt the night before. It had been the first pure joy I’d experienced since my miscarriage two years earlier.

I opened my mouth, but before I could speak, Zack turned to me with a small, tight-lipped smile. “Bye, Paige,” he said.

The words that would make everything okay stuck in my throat.

“Bye,” I said.

I got out of the car and walked into my building without looking back.

Chapter Eleven

Two weeks passed by. I tried not to think about Zack as I went about my business of ending marriages. I tried not to think about him while I took long, steady runs along Town Lake, enjoying the coolness of the late autumn air against my face. I tried not to think about him while I was sorting my laundry and found a few Scrabble blocks that had mysteriously ended up in the hamper. And I tried not to think about him as I gathered up all of the Home Shopping Network boxes, scrawled “Return to Sender” across each one with a Sharpie marker, and dropped them off at the post office after business hours. The only item I kept was the Diamondique bracelet Zack had fastened to my wrist, which I now squirreled away in the drawer of my bedside table.

Zack called me a few times, and left messages on my answering machine. I hesitated before erasing each one, not accustomed to the pang of regret I felt when hearing his voice.

Clearly, I’d made a huge mistake. The idea of a strings-free relationship sounded good in theory, but it had been a misstep to attempt it with someone I actually enjoyed spending time with. I should have found some easily forgettable guy, one with an irritating laugh or criminally low self-esteem or serious mother issues—basically any guy I ever went out with before my marriage. Had I chosen my fling more wisely, I wouldn’t be having the disconcerting sensation of missing someone whom I hadn’t known for very long.

And then Soph’s baby shower rolled around. Worse still, I was hosting it. I spent an entire Saturday morning hustling around my house, vacuuming the carpets, scrubbing the kitchen, cleaning the bathroom. And then, since Sophie’s my sister and I love her, I put up all of the tacky-to-the-point-of-kitsch baby shower decorations—a paper banner that spelled out “Congratulations,” balloons in the shape of storks, little plastic rattles scattered around all of the tables. I’d picked up trays of finger sandwiches, crudités, and cookies earlier in the day, and I put them out, before mixing up a punch of cranberry juice, sparkling wine, and lemon-lime soda.

My mom and Mickey, home from school for the weekend, arrived at one o’clock.

“Here, I brought some cheese and crackers, and some brownies and lemon bars that I made last night. Michaela, let’s put out the flowers that we brought. Paige dear, where are your vases? Are these the only ones you have?” Mom said, looking doubtfully at the modern vase collection I’d ordered from West Elm.

“That’s it,” I said. I relieved Mickey of the flowers, handing them off to my mother, who began arranging them around the living room, and then gave my little sister a quick hug. “Hey, kiddo, it’s good to see you.”

“Mom’s driving me crazy. Have you found anything out about her and Dad?” Mickey whispered in my ear.

“No, she refuses to talk about it. Every time I bring it up, she says something vague about how they’re ‘just good friends,’ and changes the subject. But I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. They’ve probably called a truce because they’re about to become grandparents,” I whispered back.

“Well, I guess it would be nice if they could be in the same room without killing each other. But it’s just so weird, I can’t get used to the idea,” Mickey said.

“Have a glass of punch. I spiked it with white wine,” I told her, and laughed when she said “Ooo, yum” and hustled off toward the punch bowl.

Mickey was such a goofy sweetheart of a kid. And now, looking at her, tall and slim and looking just a little awkward in her skirt and heels, envy squeezed at me. She had her whole life spreading out in front of her. All of the major decisions were still ahead: what kind of medicine she’d practice, whether she’d marry, and if so, who, where she’d live, and what kind of a life she’d lead. And even when she screwed up, it would be fine, because the mistakes you make in your twenties are always the ones that you learn from. You’re still young and pliable and capable of change.

Mom fussed over the flowers—sweetheart roses and baby’s breath, not my favorite, but I suppose she was going for a theme—while I put the food she brought on a plate and added it to the buffet. I swiped a brownie and absentmindedly nibbled on it while I worked.

“Since when did you start eating desserts?” Mickey asked, watching me critically.

“I don’t know, I’m not really,” I hedged, and then turned my back on both of them and started pulling glasses out of the cupboards. I could feel them exchange a look behind my back, and felt a surge of irritation. The truth was, I’d been eating nonstop since my night with Zack. The memory of his morning beard scratching against my face, or the way his fingers had strummed over my skin, had a way of propelling me right to the refrigerator.

There was another knock at the door, and my mom went to let Sophie in. She toddled in, out of breath and her face red.

“Hey, you! What’s wrong? Did you take the stairs?” Mickey asked her, hugging her in greeting.

“Have you talked to the doctor about your blood pressure?” Mom fretted. She took Sophie’s arm and guided her to the sofa, where she plopped down with a sigh of relief.

“No . . . the elevator . . . I get so winded lately. Thanks,” Sophie wheezed as she accepted the glass of water I handed her. She smiled at me and almost looked like her old, affable self. “Thanks for the shower.”

“No problem,” I said, and tugged the end of her hair.

We hadn’t seen each other since the day of my date with Zack, and had only talked briefly on the phone about shower-related things. But I could tell that the whole thing had blown over. Such was the way with sisters. Or at least the way it was with my sisters.

“So what have you been up to, Paige?” Sophie asked casually.

“Yeah, how’s your love life?” Mickey asked, flopping down on my pristine white love seat, tucking one foot underneath her.

“Mick, get your feet off my couch. Nothing’s up,” I said, and swiftly followed Mom back to the kitchen to escape the interrogation. Unfortunately, the condo had an open floor plan, so I couldn’t completely get away from my inquisitors.

“How’s it going with Zack?” Sophie called out.

“It’s not. We went out a few times, and that was it. No big deal,” I replied. I dug out an ice bucket—one of the few wedding presents I’d forgotten to purge—and handed it to my mother.

“Oh yeah? That’s not what he said,” Sophie teased me.

“What did he say?” Mickey asked.

“Who’s Zack?” Mom asked. She pulled the ice tray out of the freezer and dumped it into the bucket.

“Zack’s my carpenter, the gorgeous one who redid my kitchen,” Sophie said.

“How’s the redecorating coming along anyway? What did Aidan say about it?” I asked, walking back into the living room with a tray of glasses. I set them out around the punch bowl.

“Don’t change the subject. What did the carpenter hottie say about Paige?” Mickey insisted. She leaned forward, her brown eyes shining brightly, her long dark hair falling down over her shoulders. Mickey looks so much like me, although her face is softer, like Sophie’s. She doesn’t have any of the sharp angles that make me look like Snow White’s evil stepmother when I’m angry.

I was saved by a knock at the door that signaled the arrival of our guests. A flood of blonde, perky, giggling women—it seemed all of Sophie’s friends were blonde, perky, and giggling—began to pour into the apartment, each carrying a gift wrapped in pastel paper. Sophie’s mother-in-law—a short, thin, manic woman with hair that had been frosted platinum blonde—and her two anorexic sisters-in-law also arrived, and my mom rallied to entertain them among the sea of strangers.

Thankfully, Sophie insisted on skipping the typical dumb shower games, and so after everyone had arrived and caught up on gossip, we filled our plates with food and settled in to watch Soph unwrap her presents. She sat on the sofa, her legs propped up on an ottoman and a few pillows (my mother, still worrying about Sophie’s blood pressure, insisted that Soph keep her feet elevated), and Mickey sat cross-legged on the floor next to her, taking notes on who gave what to make the task of thank-you notes easier.

I hovered near the kitchen, filling the sandwich trays as they emptied, putting out more punch, and generally doing anything I could to avoid the tedium of watching Sophie unwrap yet another cute, unisex outfit from Baby Gap. I reached out and grabbed a mini–roast beef sandwich with cheddar cheese and horseradish mayonnaise off the tray and popped it in my mouth.

“How long do showers normally last?” I asked my mother when she breezed by me with a tray of empty punch glasses and discarded paper plates.

Mom shrugged. “A few hours. I think it’s going well, though, don’t you? Everyone seems to be having a good time.”

I nodded, my eyes on Sophie. She was laughing, her head thrown back and her blonde curls bouncing around her face. She looked so happy, so complete. I’d thought she’d made a huge mistake getting married right out of college and an even bigger mistake when she gave up her dream of being an art photographer. I’d done everything right—I went to law school, waited until my career was established before I married. But there she was, full of light and life and surrounded by friends, her hand affectionately grazing over her enormous bump.

And here I was. Divorced, alone, and secretly stuffing finger sandwiches into my mouth.

         

After the horde of chattering women left, I assessed the damage done to my apartment. Mom was washing out the punch bowl, and Mickey was carefully covering the picked-over sandwich platters with plastic wrap. Sophie was still parked on the sofa, looking like she was about to fall asleep, surrounded by a sea of crumpled light pink and baby blue wrapping paper, enormous bows, and boxes upon boxes of adorably impractical baby clothes, such as a faux fur pink baby coat spilling out of a gift bag. I plucked the coat up and held it up for Sophie to see.

“What are you supposed to do with this if you have a boy?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. The same thing I’ll do with this necklace, I guess,” Sophie said, showing me a tiny gold chain with a locket on it.

“Necklace? Do babies wear necklaces?” Mickey asked. She looked at my mom, who shrugged.

“You girls didn’t. I would have worried about it getting tangled up and choking you,” Mom said as she waded through the wrappings and sat down on the love seat. Mickey and I followed her, me collapsing on the other end of the sofa that Sophie was occupying, and Mickey returned to her spot on the floor. Sophie stuck her feet on my lap.

“Will you rub my feet?” she asked.

“Ugh, gross, get them off of me,” I said, pushing her away.

Sophie pouted. “But they’re sore. I’ve been wearing heels all afternoon, and my ankles are so swollen, they look like an elephant’s.”

“And they smell about as bad. Stop waving them at me,” Mickey said, inching away from Sophie.

“Paige. Do you think that maybe you should see a counselor?” Mom said abruptly.

“What? Why would you ask me that?” I asked, prickling.

I was tired of family members suggesting I seek out therapy. It was starting to get a little insulting.

“Well, don’t get upset. But I think it would help if you talked to someone about Scott. Ever since he, um, told you about, well . . .”

“The word you’re looking for is ‘gay,’ Mother,” Sophie said without opening her eyes.

“You haven’t been the same,” Mom continued as if Sophie hadn’t spoken. “And you’ve gotten so rigid about exercising, and for a while you weren’t eating anything, and now you’re at the other extreme, eating constantly. Do you think maybe you have an eating disorder?”

“No!” I said, dropping the cheese and cracker I’d just been about to scarf down. “Trust me, I don’t have an eating disorder.”

“There’s a girl who lived in my dorm freshman year who was bulimic. She threw up so much they had to ask her to leave, because she was upsetting all of the other chicks with eating disorders,” Mickey said, reaching for yet another brownie. She looked at me. “Do you have any peanut butter?”

“Yes, in the cupboard. Why?”

“I want to spread some on this brownie. ‘Two great tastes that taste great together,’ ” she said, springing to her feet and heading into the kitchen.

“That’s disgusting. I don’t know how you can eat like that and stay so thin,” Sophie said, wrinkling her nose. She looked over at me. “What’s wrong with you?”

The sandwiches and cookies and brownies and chips and dip I’d been downing all day were starting to catch up with me. My stomach had started to heave, and I sat still, breathing deeply, hoping it would pass.

“Look how pale she is. Paige, I think you must be coming down with something,” Mom said.

“Either that or she’s pregnant. That’s how I spent the first fourteen weeks of my pregnancy,” Sophie said, resting her hands contentedly on her massive abdomen.

Mickey, who had returned from the kitchen with a jar of peanut butter and a knife, giggled. “Well, we know she’s not pregnant. Right, Paige?”

My mom laughed, too. “That’s just what I need right now.”

I frowned. “So, Sophie gets pregnant, and we all have to suffer through yet another party thrown in her honor, but if I do, I’m just a burden to the family?” I asked.

“That’s not what I meant. And you’re not pregnant . . . are you?” my mother asked.

“Don’t you have to have sex in order to get pregnant?” Mickey asked.

“Why do you find it so unbelievable that I’d have sex?” I asked, rolling my eyes.

“I don’t know, I just can’t picture it,” Mickey said.

“God, Mick, I don’t think you’re supposed to picture your sisters having sex,” Sophie said.

“Well, I can totally imagine you and Aidan doing it,” Mickey said.

“Really?” Sophie asked, looking so pleased by this that I just rolled my eyes again.

“Will all of you please shut up!” my mother yelled.

We all turned to stare at her. My mother is not prone to screaming “Shut up.” This was the woman who advised me when I was a child that it was much more polite to say “I don’t appreciate the exuberance of your verbosity” than the easier “Shut up” or more satisfying “Shut your face.” I had to look up “exuberance” and “verbosity” in my children’s dictionary to understand what the hell she’d been talking about.

“Thank you. Now, Paige. Let me get this straight. Are you pregnant?”

“No,” I admitted. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“Good,” my mother said, looking relieved. In fact, insultingly so.

“Why would it be such a bad thing if I were pregnant?” I asked her.

“I just don’t think that would be the best thing for you right now. Do you?” she asked. “You’re not married or even in a relationship, you work long hours, you’ve gone through a difficult last couple of years.”

“Yes, but . . . ,” I started, and then I frowned, biting my lip. “Maybe that’s what I need. Marriage didn’t work out for me, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I can’t have a baby. I could always go to a sperm bank.”

“Good Lord,” my mother said weakly. She picked up her glass of wine and downed it in one long gulp.

“But you don’t like babies,” Sophie said, eyeing me critically.

“Of course I do! Why would you think that?” I asked.

“You just never seemed to have any interest in kids. Even when you were married, I just assumed that you’d be too caught up in your career to have a family,” Sophie said.

“Plenty of women balance a career and kids,” I said.

Sophie shrugged. “I know, it’s just a big sacrifice.” She looked around my apartment at the white sofas, and the glass coffee table with the hard sharp corners, and the bar against the wall that had wineglasses hanging from the underside of the cabinet, and I knew what she was thinking: this wasn’t a kid-friendly place.

“It’s not like I’m going to have a baby right this second,” I said irritably.

“Thank God for small favors,” my mother said. “Mickey, would you pour me another glass of wine?”

“Even if I did get pregnant right away, there would be nine months to get ready. I could sell this place and buy a house. And maybe I could cut my hours back at work, or work out of the house part of the time,” I mused.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Sophie said, rolling her eyes. She struggled to get up off the couch. “Just a few weeks ago you were saying that you were never going to date again. And now you’re all of a sudden going to have a baby? On a whim? Having a baby isn’t something that you just casually decide to do, and it isn’t something that’s going to be a Band-Aid for everything else that’s going wrong in your life.”

“It’s not just a whim,” I said, choking on my anger. How dare Sophie, she who had everything—the doting husband, the baby on the way, the knack of being the center of attention at every single social gathering she’d ever been to—tell me that I can’t have a child? “As a matter of fact, I was pregnant once already. And then I miscarried, and then my marriage turned to shit, but before that, before I knew about Scott, all I wanted was to get pregnant. In fact, sometimes I wonder if I had . . .”

My voice trailed off, and I clapped my hand over my mouth. Salty tears stung at my eyes and spilled over onto my cheeks. Sophie, Mickey, and Mom were all staring at me.

“Oh, Paige,” Mom said, and she leaned over and put her hand on my leg. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. Why didn’t you tell us before?”

“If you had, maybe Scott wouldn’t have left you?” Sophie asked, finishing the thought that I hadn’t been able to bring myself to complete.

“No. I mean, yes, I wonder what would have happened. I’m not saying I think a baby would have saved our marriage. There was that one rather large problem that he wasn’t attracted to me, or anyone of my gender,” I said. “But I wish I’d been able to have that baby or that I’d gotten pregnant again. I want a family.”

“But you’ve said you don’t want to get married, or even date again,” Sophie said carefully. We’d suddenly swapped roles: I was emoting, she was analyzing.

“I don’t know what I want,” I said miserably.

Chapter Twelve

“What do you think you should do?” Elise asked.

“Don’t do that. Don’t get all shrinky on me,” I groaned.

God, I hated therapy. It always seemed so self-indulgent to me, wasted money and wasted time. I’d first seen Elise several years ago, when Scott and I had been married for about six months and I’d been struggling with a low-grade depression that I couldn’t seem to shake. One year and a grossly large amount of money later, we’d discussed everything from the competitive nature of my relationship with Sophie to the many issues stemming from my parents’ acrimonious divorce to the distance I sometimes felt from my new husband, and I was no closer to uncovering what had been bothering me. So I stopped going.

But now that I was wading through this postdivorce swamp, I for once decided to take my mother’s advice and called Elise for an appointment. I figured that now more than ever I probably needed a neutral opinion on how to proceed. Should I call Zack? I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him, but the idea of getting further involved with him terrified me. What if he, too, was gay, and I was somehow doomed to a life of dating and marrying closeted men? And was it really so crazy to consider having a baby on my own? Or were my baby pangs the result of loneliness and grief?

“Okay, here’s my non-shrinky answer for you: you’re really screwed up,” Elise said, peering at me through her thick, tortoiseshell-framed glasses.

“What? You’re not supposed to say that,” I protested. “You’re supposed to be supportive and kind.”

“Whenever I try to be supportive and kind, you accuse me of being shrinky,” Elise pointed out. Accurately.

“True, but I don’t think you should go around telling your clients that they’re screwed up. At least give me some hope.”

Elise looked at me thoughtfully. But then, Elise did everything thoughtfully. She probably peed thoughtfully and went through thoughtful labor with her children. She even looked like a therapist, with her tasteful brown pageboy haircut and her gently rounded face.

“I didn’t say you’re irredeemably screwed up. If you wanted to, you could overcome it,” she offered.

“With another year of therapy spent discussing why my mother always felt she had to befriend my friends?” I asked, and crossed my arms.

“No, that’s not what I was going to say. But I’m not going to tell you if you’re just going to sit there and be sarcastic,” she said.

“You can’t do that! I’m paying you for this!”

“Paige, you are not the craziest client I’ve ever had, but I think you might be the most stubborn. Which is not necessarily better,” Elise sighed.

I bit my lip. I was a little intrigued. “Okay, I won’t be sarcastic. Tell me how I can unscrew myself, ha-ha.”

Elise shook her head, obviously not appreciating my shrink humor. “Okay, here it is: stop being so fucking closed off.”

Fucking? I’d never heard Elise swear before. It was like hearing your parents curse for the first time—it was both titillating and disillusioning, and not at all what you expect to come out of the mouth of someone wearing a long flowered skirt and matching pink sweater set.

“Fucking?” I repeated.

“Yes. Fucking. I’m not denying that you’ve had a tough time, and I can understand how having to cope with the loss of your pregnancy, the loss of your marriage, and finding out that your partner was not the man you thought he was would be overwhelming. And it does take time to get over those kinds of traumatic events, absolutely. But you’re not trying to heal. You’re just closing yourself off and making stupid declarations about how you’re never going to risk getting involved in another relationship again,” she said.

“Are you just going to mock me, or is there some advice coming my way?” I asked.

“Here’s the advice: trust yourself. Yes, Scott deceived you, and yes, I can see how it would make you question yourself. But as a closeted gay man, Scott had a lot of practice getting by with his sexuality undetected. And maybe he didn’t even consciously know that he was gay. I wouldn’t be surprised if he thought his attraction to other men was just an impulse he could control, and that living life as a straight man was just a matter of discipline. But in the end, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that you get to the point where you can accept that there is nothing flawed or wrong with you because you didn’t know the truth,” she said.

“You make it sound so easy. But you can’t guarantee that the next guy won’t be seriously screwed up in some way, or the one after him, or the one after him. What am I supposed to do, just leave myself open to getting kicked in the teeth over and over again?” I asked.

“No, I’m definitely not saying it’s easy. You trusted someone you loved, and he deceived you, and it’s only natural that it’s going to be harder for you the next time around. But you’re taking it to an extreme. You’re not just saying, ‘I want to take some time off of dating so that I can heal, but I fully plan to get out there again.’ Instead, you’re deciding that you don’t want to get close to anyone ever again, because you don’t want to add any complications to your life. And I think that’s why you’re suddenly so eager to have a baby on your own. You’re craving the intimacy of a loving relationship, but you’re too frightened to put your heart on the line, and a baby will love you unconditionally. And to answer your earlier question, no, I don’t think that right now is the best time to make that decision. I’m not saying that you should never consider it, or even that doing it on your own is an objectively bad idea. And I’m certainly not saying that being single is a bad thing. But you shouldn’t make those kinds of decisions because you’re afraid of the alternative, afraid of opening yourself up to the possibility that there is someone out there for you.”

“Like Zack, you mean.”

“I don’t know,” Elise said, and she shrugged again.

Considering I had gone to her for some solid, orderly advice, all of this shrugging was not comforting.

“He could be the right one for you, or maybe he’s not. You hardly know him, other than to discover that your first impression of him wasn’t accurate and that he might have more to offer than you first thought,” Elise continued.

“So . . . you think I should call him,” I surmised.

“It’s up to you whether or not you choose to see him again,” she said. “I can’t decide that for you. Whatever you decide to do, though, just make sure you’re not letting your fear control you.”

“Huh,” I said. “I guess I can see that.”

Elise’s eyebrows arched.

“What? I’m open to personal growth. I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Always an important first step,” Elise said.

“That’s right. And as long as I’m here, I do have one other tiny issue I wanted to talk about,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“The Home Shopping Network. Is it a bad sign if someone—not necessarily me—shops there? A lot?”

Chapter Thirteen

“Hello.” “Hi. Zack. It’s Paige,” I said. I turned my chair around and stared out my office window at the back of the capitol building. It was a grand building that mimicked the architecture and style of the United States Capitol. I’d always thought it looked out of place in Austin, like the poser girl everyone knows in college—usually a drama major—who shows up at keg parties in her prom dress.

“Hi,” Zack said in what might have been a cool tone of voice. I couldn’t be sure—I’d called him on his cell phone, and the line had that tinny quality that took all the nuance out of a person’s voice.

“We went out last month,” I clarified.

“I know who you are,” Zack said. This time I knew I wasn’t imagining the curt tone—he was miffed.

“I’m sorry I didn’t return your call before this,” I began.

“Calls,” Zack said.

“What?”

“Calls. I called you more than once. I left several messages for you, both at your office and at home,” Zack said.

“Right. Calls. It’s just . . . well, things were kind of hectic here at work, and then I had Soph’s baby shower, and I, well, just sort of lost track of time,” I finished lamely.

Zack didn’t say anything.

This wasn’t going as well as I’d hoped it might.

“So I was wondering . . . uh . . . would you like to have dinner with me? Maybe tonight, or if you already have plans, later in the week?” I said. I rested the palm of my hand against my forehead and waited.

Zack still didn’t say anything.

“Hello?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” Zack said.

“You don’t think you can tonight?” I asked.

“I don’t think dinner would be a good idea,” Zack said firmly.

“But I thought . . . when you called me so many times, I just assumed . . . I thought that you wanted to get together again,” I said, stumbling over the words.

I’d been so focused on trying to overcome my fear of getting involved with Zack, I hadn’t considered the possibility that he no longer wanted to see me.

“I did . . . but not anymore. I don’t like the way you treated me,” he said.

I was so completely and totally mortified by this succinct rejection that it took me a few beats to get to the point where I could respond.

“I, um . . . don’t know what to say . . . I didn’t mean to be unkind. I’m sorry if I was.”

“Thank you.”

“So . . . do you think we could try again?”

Zack paused again, and my heart stalled.

“No,” Zack said. “I don’t think so. Bye, Paige.”

And then he hung up on me.

“Un-fucking-believable,” I said, and slammed my phone down.

I’d done exactly what Elise had advised me to do—I’d taken a chance on a relationship, put myself out there, and look what happened: complete and total rejection. And humiliation. Okay, maybe it was a little shitty of me not to return his phone calls. Maybe a lot shitty. But how could he not give me a second chance?

“Asshole. Jerk. Creep,” I muttered as I slammed client files around on my desk, for no other reason than that it made me feel better.

“Um, Paige? Is everything okay?” Sue asked.

I looked up and saw my assistant hovering by the door, looking a little nervous. I paused, holding a file in midair, and suddenly realized that I was turning into a scary, crazy woman. Sort of what Soph had been like for the past seven months, but I didn’t have the excuse of being pregnant.

I very calmly set the file down on my desk and smiled at Sue.

“Why are you smiling like that?” Sue asked suspiciously.

“What do you mean? How am I smiling?” I replied.

“Like you’re planning to kill me. What did I do wrong?”

Argh. I tried to focus on remaining calm and exuding a Zen-like patience.

“Nothing, of course not. Did you need something?” I asked sweetly.

“Yes, here you have to sign these.” Sue darted into my office, dropped a stack of letters on my desk, and then backed away slowly. “And your sister’s on line two.” Sue scampered out of the office as though she were afraid that I might swarm and attack.

I rolled my eyes and punched the line-two button on my phone.

“Hi,” Sophie said. Her voice was thick and heavy.

“Hey. Is everything okay? You sound like you just woke up,” I said.

“Yeah, I was taking a nap. I went to the doctor today, and he said my blood pressure was too high. He’s putting me on bed rest,” Sophie said, and then yawned loudly. “Mom said she’d stay here for a while, since I can only get up for ten minutes every two hours—can you freaking believe that? I have a baby sitting on my bladder. I have to pee every ten minutes. What am I supposed to do?”

“Ugh, I don’t know. Maybe use a bedpan?” I suggested.

“Yuck.”

I placed a hand on my flat, as-yet-unfertile belly and realized that if I did decide to go ahead and get pregnant, this was the direction I was heading in. Uncontrollable urination and possible bed rest. And then, after the baby came, there’d be the late-night feedings, the stitches on the most delicate area of my body, the sore nipples, the general fatigue that every new parent is cloaked in. Sophie had Aidan, and apparently Mom was ready to sign on as a nanny. What would I do if I needed help? Sure, my family would probably help out, but most women who go through this have a partner. And, unlike Sophie, I’d have to juggle motherhood with my career.

“I don’t think I can cope with Mom being here full-time. I wanted a bowl of ice cream earlier, and do you know what she did? She brought me some fucking frozen yogurt,” Sophie said. Her voice was shrill with outrage. “She actually suggested that I’m putting on too much weight. Can you believe that? I’m growing a child inside my body, what does she think, that I’m going to look like a stick-thin model?”

“I’m sure she doesn’t—” I began.

“And then she confiscated my secret stash of peanut M&M’s. I don’t know how the hell she found them, because I hid them in the freaking garage, but she did, and she actually threw them away. I swear, if I could get up, I’d kill her,” Sophie raged on.

“Is she there now?” I asked.

“No. Dad came over and the two of them went off somewhere and left me here alone until Aidan gets home,” she said.

“Don’t you think it’s a little strange that the two of them have been spending so much time together?”

“Tell me about it. Have you talked to Mom lately? She’s all ‘Your father said this’ and ‘Your father thinks that.’ They used to hate each other, it was the natural order of things. Wait!” Sophie gasped.

I nearly had a heart attack. “What? Are you going into labor?”

“Do you think Dad had Mom turned into a Stepford wife?”

“Jesus, Sophie, don’t gasp like that again unless the baby is actually in the birth canal, sticking his or her hand out and waving at you. You scared me to death,” I said.

“Well, what do you think?”

“Do I think Dad had Mom killed and replaced with a robot? No, that’s highly unlikely.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Sophie said. She sounded unconvinced.

“I am,” I said. “So, to change the subject . . . I called Zack today.”

“Really? What did he say?” Sophie suddenly sounded wide-awake.

“That he didn’t want to talk to me, and that he doesn’t want to see me ever again. So much for hanging it all out there and taking a risk on romance.”

Sophie gasped. “No! Are you serious? Why?”

“He’s angry that I didn’t return his phone calls sooner. Which I do understand. But I apologized and asked for a second chance, and he just said no,” I said, feeling a stab of self-pity.

“But . . . he was just asking me about you the other day. I can’t believe he wouldn’t accept your apology. Does he know about your history?”

“You mean about Scott? No!”

“Why not?”

“It’s not exactly a great selling point for me. It makes me sound . . . damaged.”

“That’s ridiculous. You should call him back and explain your history and tell him that’s why you got freaked out and treated him like shit on a stick,” Sophie said judiciously.

“I wouldn’t exactly characterize it that way,” I said.

“Are you going to call him back?”

“Why, so he can just hang up on me again?”

“He hung up on you?”

“Practically. It was very clear that he wanted nothing to do with me,” I said.

“Still. I don’t think you should give up on him. He’s a really sweet guy, and I think that if he knew your history, he’d be much more forgiving,” Sophie said. “Maybe you could send him a letter. Or I could tell him, if you want.”

“No! That’s a terrible idea!”

“Which one? The letter or my telling him?” Sophie asked.

“Both! I don’t want you to tell him, that’s ridiculous. I can speak for myself. And what am I going to do, pass him a note like we’re in junior high?”

“Do you remember doing that? You’d write the cute boy in math class a note on a folded piece of paper that says ‘Do you like me? Check box.’ And then there’d be a ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ and ‘maybe’ listed below,” Sophie said, giggling.

“Can you imagine doing that now?” I said, and couldn’t help laughing at how ridiculous it sounded. Had I ever been that young, or that open with my feelings?

“So what are you going to do?” Sophie asked.

“For now, nothing. What else can I do?” I asked. “I have to go, though, I have a pile of work to do.”

“Okay, I’ll talk to you later. Wait, Paige?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you sure it’s not possible for Mom to be an evil robot? Because I swear, she had a really strange look on her face when she was over here earlier,” Sophie said.

I was guessing that the strange expression probably had a lot more to do with what an enormous pain in the ass Sophie was being than anything else.

“Yes. I’m sure she’s not a robot. Good-bye.”

“Okay, bye.”

Chapter Fourteen

“Did you mean it when you said that if I ever wanted to talk about . . . you know, why we divorced . . . we, um, could?” I asked Scott over the phone.

“Talk?” he asked, sounding surprised and a little wary.

“I just want to clear some things up. Try to understand everything better.”

Scott was quiet.

“But every time I tried to talk to you, you shut me out,” he finally said.

“I know. It’s taken me a while to get to the point where I can deal with it,” I said.

“Okay. I’ll come over,” he said.

“When? Now?” I asked, suddenly feeling a surge of panic at the idea. The first step had been reaching out to him, and I’d had to psych myself up for that. I didn’t know if I was ready for the one-on-one encounter yet.

“I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” Scott said.

And exactly twenty-one minutes later, there was a knock on the door. I opened it, and Scott was standing there, looking like a Banana Republic model in dark-rinse jeans, a stylishly untucked striped shirt, and a blue cotton blazer that was nipped in at the hips. On his feet, he wore a pair of rounded black oxford shoes, the very kind that I remember him making fun of the college kids for wearing. I looked him up and down.

“I can’t get used to your dressing like this,” I said. “It’s so weird.”

“I know, I was always the dirty-jeans-and-T-shirt kind of a guy in my straight days,” Scott said. This time he moved toward me as if to hug me, and then hesitated when I froze. It was just so bizarre, feeling this awkward around someone I had once thought I knew better than anyone. I put an arm around him and patted him on the back, and he kissed me on the cheek.

“This is strange,” I said, and rested my head on his shoulder for a minute.

“Totally weird,” he agreed, and then we both laughed, and then everything suddenly felt familiar. Even if the clothes and hair were different, the face was still the same: the eyes that were just a smidge too far apart, the long, prominent nose, the wide mouth that smiled easily. It wasn’t a handsome face, but it was kind. I had always loved that about him.

He stepped into the condo, shutting the door behind him. “And it’s so surreal to stand out there in the hallway and knock on the door. I almost reached for my keys when I got here,” Scott said.

“Where are you living now?” I asked.

“I’ve been—we’ve been—renting a house in Hyde Park,” he said shortly, which didn’t explain much, but at the same time said everything.

We walked into the living room, and Scott sat on one of the white sofas.

“Do you want a glass of wine?” I asked.

“Probably more than one. I have to admit, I’m a little nervous,” he said, and then he ran his hand over his head. His hair was cropped so short, I could see the vulnerable whiteness of his scalp underneath.

“Yeah. I know; me, too,” I said, and I poured him a glass of wine from the bottle I’d opened a minute after I got off the phone with him. “But don’t worry, I didn’t ask you over here to yell at you.”

I handed him his glass, and then poured myself one and sat across from him on the love seat. I’d put out a dish of cashews on the coffee table before he arrived, and I slid it toward him. He nodded toward the framed picture of Sophie, Mickey, and me on the side table.

“How’s the kid?” he asked.

“Mick? She’s doing great. She’s graduating this spring and going to medical school next year,” I said.

“No way. I can’t believe it. They’re going to give her a license to practice medicine?” Scott said.

“You should call her, I know she’d love to hear from you,” I said, surprising myself. I hadn’t asked my family to cut off contact with Scott, but I also hadn’t encouraged them to stay in touch. I knew how much Mickey loved Scott, and our divorce had deeply upset her. It suddenly occurred to me how selfish I’d been not to encourage her to continue a relationship with the man who’d been like a big brother to her for so many years.

“Yeah, I should do that. I miss letting her beat me in chess,” he said.

“Yeah, right. She always beat you fair and square,” I said.

“Don’t remind me. And how’s the prom queen?”

“Pregnant, and due in a few weeks,” I said.

“Good for them, but . . . that must be hard for you.”

I shrugged and didn’t answer. Instead I took a sip of my wine and looked at the flickering freesia-scented pillar candle sitting on the low coffee table. The white wax ran down one side and pooled by the base, hardening almost immediately.

“Boy or girl?” Scott asked.

“They’re not finding out. I wish they would, it makes shopping hard, but you know how stubborn Sophie is,” I said.

“It’s a trait that tends to run in your family,” Scott said, and he laughed.

This is bizarre, I thought. Scott sitting again in the living room, teasing me, poking fun at my sisters. It was as though my life had suddenly looped backward.

“So. How’s work going?” I asked.

“Same as usual. Busy. You?”

“Pretty good, I guess. I’m not so sure anymore. I’m getting a little tired of spending all of my waking hours destroying people’s marriages,” I said.

“That’s just one way to look at it. Maybe you’re helping people get fresh starts,” Scott said quietly.

“Like with you,” I said.

He nodded. “I hope that for both of us.”

I sipped at my wine and looked at him some more, and realized for the first time that I truly wasn’t in love with him anymore. I hadn’t thought about it in a long time—there’d been hurt and anger and numbness to distract me—but I now knew for sure that the man sitting across from me wasn’t the one that I was supposed to be spending my life with. My lungs felt open, and as I inhaled, the breath rushed through my body.

“Well, that brings me to my first question. Did you know? When we got married, did you know that you were gay?”

Scott shrugged and looked down at his wineglass. “It depends. I knew that I was different, and I knew that I wasn’t feeling all of the things that I should. Certainly I knew that I was drawn to men, and you were the first woman I’d ever had a strong attraction to. But no, I didn’t have any clarity about being gay, and the idea of living any kind of a life other than as a heterosexual man would have terrified me, if I’d allowed myself to think about it. And I did love you, and was in love with you when we married. You know that, right?”

“It’s one of the things that I’ve wondered about. Not knowing just how much of it was fake, how much of it was real,” I admitted.

“That’s fair. I really fucked everything up. I could bear screwing up my own life, but dragging you into it . . . that was the worst part,” he said. “And I even thought that maybe I could keep going on the same way, and never tell you . . . but then that didn’t seem fair to you, fair to either of us. Maybe it would have saved you the unpleasantness of learning the truth about me, but it also would have prevented you from pursuing a relationship with someone else, someone you could be real with.”

“And if . . . the baby had made it?” I asked. I nearly choked on the words, but I had to know. I needed to stop playing the “what if” game in my head: what if Scott had never figured out he was gay, what if we were still together and raising our child, what if everything in my life hadn’t been turned upside down.

“I don’t know what would have happened. I think I would have tried to stay, but . . . I don’t know how long I could have pulled it off. It’s like I was wearing clothes that didn’t fit,” he said. “I know, I’m crap at analogies, but try to understand: I was living a life that was a lie in almost every way. And once I realized that, it was never going to work.”

I nodded. His wineglass was empty, so I gestured to him with the bottle, and he held his glass out so I could refill it.

“How are you doing? I mean really doing?” he asked. He’d always been great at this, the listening part.

“It’s been hard. I haven’t been dating much. It’s hard to get back out there again. I don’t really . . . trust myself,” I admitted.

“Don’t do that. Don’t punish yourself just because I let you down. When we met and got married, I thought I was straight. So if I didn’t know, how could you?”

“No, I get that. And I know that you didn’t mean to hurt me. But there’s also no guarantee that I won’t be hurt again,” I said.

“Oh God, I did this to you, didn’t I?” Scott said, and he slouched down on the sofa, looking miserable. “You didn’t use to be this guarded.”

“I’m not that bad, really. I’ve started seeing my therapist again, and I did go out with a guy last month.”

“Yeah? How’d that go?”

“Actually it was pretty great. I didn’t think he was my type at first, but I really liked him,” I said.

“Are you still seeing him?”

“No, I messed it up. I got kind of freaked out and didn’t return his phone calls. I called him yesterday to see if we could try again, but now he doesn’t want anything to do with me. That’s actually what prompted me to call you. I thought if I could get past everything that happened between us, then maybe I wouldn’t screw things up next time,” I admitted.

“You deserve to be happy,” Scott said. “I’m really sorry, Paige. For everything.”

“I know. But as far as you and I are concerned, we’re okay,” I said. “Who knows, maybe we can even be friends again.”

“I’d like that,” Scott said. His eyes were moist with emotion. “It’s been so strange not having you in my life.”

“Yeah, I know, it has been weird. So . . . what about you?”

“What about me?”

“You asked about my nonexistent love life, now what about yours?”

“Are you sure you want to talk about this?”

I nodded.

“Well . . . it’s not nonexistent,” Scott said. “I met someone.”

“Is this the chef?” I asked.

“So you’ve been keeping tabs on me? Yeah, he’s a pastry chef, his name is Kevin. And he’s pretty great. In fact, he’s introducing me to his parents this weekend. I haven’t had to go through that since you took me home to meet Blair.” Scott laughed, and I did, too.

Scott had been so nervous meeting my mother, he’d barely said two words at that first dinner. She concluded that he was a drug addict. Why, I don’t know, because I’m pretty sure my mom doesn’t know any drug addicts, and certainly not any mute ones. Later she fell in love with him, but that first meeting had been uncomfortable. Mom later claimed, with typical revisionist clarity, that she’d had a feeling that night that Scott was gay.

“Speaking of whom, how are your parents? Do they still hate me?” Scott asked.

“They’re fine. And apparently best buddies all of a sudden. But no, I don’t think they hate you. Of course, you’re also no longer their favorite son-in-law.”

“Yeah, I can see that. My parents aren’t too thrilled with me either,” he said.

“They’re not being supportive?” I asked.

“They just pretend that it’s not happening. I tried to tell Mom about Kevin, and she just acted like she didn’t know what I was talking about. And my dad won’t look me in the eye,” he said.

My heart squeezed. “That doesn’t sound like them . . . they never struck me as intolerant people,” I said.

“Yeah, well, it’s different when it’s your own kid, I guess. I think they’ll come around. It’s just been a tough couple of years for all of us,” Scott said. “You, me, them, your family. We’ll all get past it eventually.”

“I hope so,” I said.

Chapter Fifteen

Thanksgiving was only a week away, and promised to be especially grim this year. I was still divorced, Sophie was on bed rest and crabby as hell, and my parents were acting so strangely they had all of us on edge. On the bright side, Mickey had come home a few days early—no doubt with an enormous garbage bag full of dirty clothes and a bottomless appetite—and our resident court jester always lightened the mood of the family. She called me the day after she arrived.

“What are you doing tomorrow night?” Mickey asked.

“No plans. Why? Do you want to catch a movie or something?”

“I’m at Sophie’s right now, and she wants us all to have dinner over here. But we can rent some videos if you want,” Mickey said.

“Well . . . is she still being scary?” I asked.

“Give me the phone. Hey, I heard that,” Sophie said. “You have to come over, Paige. Mom and Dad are coming, too.”

“I thought Mom said she was staying with you,” I said.

“I couldn’t take it anymore, so I kicked her out. If she asked me one more question about her stupid crossword puzzle, I was going to sit on her. And that’s a real threat coming from a woman who’s about to give birth at any minute,” Sophie said.

The idea of a family get-together was sounding less and less attractive.

“I think I might be having a migraine on Saturday,” I said.

“Don’t even think about it. You have to come, there’s no way you’re going to leave Mickey and I to deal with them alone,” Sophie huffed.

“Okay, fine, I’ll come,” I said.

“Good. Would you mind picking up the pizzas on your way over? And maybe you could make a salad or something, too,” Sophie said brightly. I heard Mickey shout in the background, “And Mickey wants some cheesecake. Mmm, that sounds good.”

“Let me get this straight: You’re inviting me over for dinner, and you want me to bring the dinner? And the dessert?” I asked.

“And although I can’t have any, you might seriously want to consider bringing a bottle of wine, too. Who knows how long Mom and Dad will be able to stay in the same room without going for each other’s throats? Truce or no truce,” Sophie said.

         

I arrived at Sophie’s with three large pizzas—one veggie, one pepperoni, and one with everything—and also a store-bought salad, cheesecake, and two bottles of wine. Everyone was already there, and Sophie had descended from her bedroom for the occasion. She was lying regally on her Pottery Barn sectional sofa with a cranberry chenille blanket draped over her huge belly. Mom and Mickey were huddled on the couch together, looking at some photos, and they looked up when I came in.

“Hi, honey,” Dad said, and he stood up to kiss me on the cheek.

“Hi,” I said, hugging him. “Hey, everyone. What pictures are those?”

“Hey!” Mickey said, and she jumped up and started rummaging through the shopping bags I’d brought.

“They’re from Sophie’s shower,” Mom said. “Here’s a good one of you, Soph.”

“No, I don’t want to see them. I’m sure I look enormous in every single one,” Sophie said. Her face lit up when she saw the pizza boxes in my hands. “The food’s here! Will you put it in the kitchen? Mick, help Paige get everything out. There are plates in the cupboard to the right of the sink . . . wait, never mind, I’ll just do it.”

“No!” everyone shouted, and Sophie slumped back on the couch.

“I’m sick of lying down,” she said pitifully.

“You promised you’d stay off your feet. If you don’t, you’re going to have to go back upstairs to bed,” Mom admonished her.

Sophie rolled her eyes. “I’m not five years old, you know,” she complained, but she stayed down.

I walked into the kitchen with Mickey. Aidan was there, sitting at the kitchen table, drinking a beer straight from the bottle and reading the sports page of the paper. Aidan had been a quarterback in high school, and twelve years later, like most ex-jocks, his body had thickened while his hair thinned. Still, he was an attractive guy with an amiable face and brilliant blue eyes.

“Are you hiding?” I asked him.

“Hi, Paige. No, not hiding, just came in to get a beer,” he said, smiling, and pecked me on the cheek before sidling out of the kitchen.

“I think we scared him off,” Mickey whispered in my ear, and we both laughed. Aidan was unfailingly polite to all of us, but he always found a reason to disappear when our family descended upon him.

“Wow. The kitchen looks fantastic,” I said, looking around at the gorgeous cherry wood cabinets, the new granite countertop, the stainless steel backsplash and appliances. The floor was tiled in a slate gray, and the walls were a lighter dove gray. It looked like something out of an interior-decorating magazine. “Did Zack do all of this?” I wondered out loud.

“Yup. Except for the floor—I had my tile guy do that,” a male voice said from behind me. I whirled around, and there was Zack, standing in the doorway of the kitchen, just as he had been the first time I saw him.

I gaped at him, feeling like the breath had been sucked out of me. After Zack’s brusque refusal to have dinner with me, I’d fantasized about how fabulously cutting I’d be if and when I ever did see him again. But now that the moment was here, all I could do was stand there, feeling the sting of just how firmly he’d rejected me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Your sister wanted me to install some built-in bookshelves in the nursery. And she was very insistent that I come over tonight to measure for them. I just got here. I thought I recognized your car when I pulled up,” Zack said.

“Are you Zack? Hi, I’m Mickey,” Mickey said, and she held out her hand. Zack grinned at her, and Mickey colored. She turned to me and mouthed, “He’s hot,” and then scampered out of the room.

I bit my lip, and considered throttling Sophie, since she’d obviously ignored my strict instructions not to interfere and I was now in the mortifying position of having to make small talk with the guy I’d had a one-night stand with. At least he seemed pleasant enough, and the curt edge had disappeared from his voice.

“I didn’t know you’d be here,” I said, and paused. There were two courses of action open to me: I could take advantage of Sophie’s meddling by asking Zack for another chance, or I could turn around and walk away. I made my decision. “But actually, I would like to talk to you, if you have a minute.”

Zack hesitated for a second, but then nodded. “Sure. Did you want to talk here, or . . . ?” His voice trailed off in a question mark.

I looked over my shoulder and could see Mickey trying to look inconspicuous as she eavesdropped from the hallway. I rolled my eyes.

“Not here,” I said firmly. “Let’s go outside.”

We walked out of Soph’s house. I was glad that I hadn’t taken my coat off yet, as the wind that had been blowing all day had picked up a sharp bite now that the sun had set. I followed Zack to his vintage truck, and he opened up the passenger-side door for me.

“It would probably be warmer if we got in,” he said. He smiled, but his eyes were shuttered, so I couldn’t tell if he was still feeling hostile toward me. Or if he just wasn’t feeling anything at all.

I climbed up into the cab of the pickup, and watched through the window as Zack walked around to the driver’s-side door, and tried to figure out what in the hell I was going to say to him. I could always fall back on the eighties pop song lyrics of my youth: I want you to want me, or If you leave, don’t leave now, or I’ll stop the world and melt with you.

Oh no, it’s happened, I’ve actually lost my mind, I thought. I balled up my hand and rested it against my forehead.

Zack opened the driver’s-side door, letting in another blast of wind, and then slid in next to me and started the engine. He smelled wonderful, a combination of aftershave and freshly cut wood. And he looked distressingly handsome in his faded Levi’s and a dark blue T-shirt underneath a heavier plaid shirt.

“So. What did you want to talk about?” Zack asked, glancing in my direction. He fiddled with his car keys, jingling them in his right hand.

He’s nervous, I suddenly realized. He wouldn’t be nervous if he didn’t care about me at all . . . unless of course it stemmed from a fear that I was going to start screaming at him or turn into an obsessed stalker.

“Just that I again wanted to say that I’m sorry. About everything. I don’t know why I didn’t return your phone calls earlier . . . wait, no, that’s not true,” I said, deciding that since I knew I didn’t have much of a chance with Zack anyway, I might as well be honest.

“The reason I didn’t call you back is that I had intended for that night that we slept together to be a one-time thing. I was trying to prove something to myself, and I didn’t stop to consider your feelings. Or my own,” I continued.

“Which were?”

I took a deep breath and then forged on.

“I was trying to convince myself that I could have a relationship with a man that was purely physical, with no emotional attachments, because . . . well, you know that I’m divorced. But I didn’t tell you why. My husband left me because he was—he is—gay. And since then I’ve been wary of getting involved with anyone,” I said, and squirmed a little at this last part.

“Actually, I already knew that, about your husband and how it had messed you up,” he said.

“Well, I wouldn’t say it messed me up. I was just a little . . . sideways. Anyway, who told you? Sophie, I assume? Right. After we finish here, I’m going to go inside and kill her.”

“Don’t be too hard on her. She was trying to help. But that’s not what I mean, anyway. You said you didn’t stop to consider your feelings, and I wanted to know what those feelings are,” he said.

I looked down, examining my hands. They were dry and needed moisturizing lotion. And the sensible beige polish had chipped away at the edge of the ring finger of my left hand.

“Does it matter?” I asked quietly.

“It matters to me,” Zack said, and he reached out and took my hand and cradled it between both of his. He didn’t seem to notice the dry skin or the chipped polish.

“Well. I . . . I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,” I admitted.

I looked up at him, and he leaned forward and caught my lips on his. His mouth was warm and sweet, and then he was cradling his hand against my neck, pressing me closer to him. It rated as one of the all-time greatest kisses of my life.

“I really hope that wasn’t a good-bye kiss,” I said when we came up for air.

“Nah. I have to give you another chance to beat me at Scrabble,” Zack said, and he kissed me again.

“No time like the present,” I said, grinning at him until the skin at the corners of my mouth was sore.

“Don’t you have to go back in there and do family stuff?” he asked.

“Well, no, but I should probably tell them I’m leaving. I don’t want them to think you’ve abducted me,” I said.

I climbed out of the truck and let myself back into Sophie’s house through the garage. I passed through the laundry room and opened the door into the kitchen . . . and walked right in on my mother and father. Mom was leaning back against Sophie’s new granite-topped island, and Dad had his arms around her, and—oh God—he was sticking his tongue down her throat.

“Ack!” I said.

They jumped apart like teenagers caught necking when they’re supposed to be studying for midterms. My mother turned around, and when she saw me standing there, my mouth wide open, she blushed.

“Uh . . . Paige,” she said delicately.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” my father said. My mother’s cherry red lipstick was smeared all around his mouth, and his glasses were askew.

“Don’t tell me, I don’t want to know,” I said, raising both hands in front of me.

“But honey—” Mom said.

“Nope, nuh-uh, not interested.”

“Um, guys, I think you’d better get in here,” Mickey yelled from the living room. “I think Sophie’s going into labor.”

I dashed to the living room, my parents right behind me. Sophie was standing up, looking behind her at the couch.

“Shit. My water broke on my brand-new couch. Mom, do you think that’s going to stain?” she wailed.

“Sophie, sit down. Mick, go get Aidan, I think he’s upstairs. Dad, you’d better drive Sophie’s car, Aidan will probably be too nervous. Mom, Mickey and I will meet you at the hospital,” I said.

“Stop being so bossy,” Sophie grumbled, but she sat down heavily, her hands resting on her giant bump, and Mickey went flying out of the room. I could hear the thump-thump-thump as she ran up the stairs.

“Are you having contractions, honey?” Mom asked, sitting down next to Sophie and putting an arm around her.

“No, I’m not feeling anything yet. Other than hunger. I’m going to go get a piece of pizz—Yow! Oh . . . dear . . . God, what the hell was that?”

“It’s probably a contraction. Stephen, are you wearing a watch? Start timing how long until her next contraction,” Mom said.

“Are you okay, Soph?” I asked.

“No, I’m not okay! That fucking hurt! I . . . I don’t think I can do this,” Sophie said, shaking her head from side to side and rubbing her hands over her swollen belly.

“I think it’s a little too late for that now,” I said wryly.

“What the . . . Now? Is it . . . Oh my God,” Aidan said, running into the room, Mickey behind him. “Car. We need a car. Where? I should drive. Keys. I need my keys.”

Aidan just stood there, raising and then dropping his hands helplessly, his eyes unfocused. Clearly he would not be any help.

“Do you have a bag you’d like me to bring?” I asked Sophie.

“No, it’s already in the back of my SUV. Aidan, the keys are in my purse, but Dad’s going to drive,” Sophie said calmly. “Mom, help me up. And Paige, will you help Aidan, he seems a little . . . out of it.”

I gently held my brother-in-law’s arm. “Why don’t we go out to the car,” I said to him.

“I have to prepare. Shouldn’t I be boiling some water or something?” Aidan said. “Or ripping sheets?”

“Don’t even think about it. The sheets have a six hundred thread count, and they cost a fortune,” Sophie said.

“I know! I’ll call an ambulance,” Aidan said.

“We’ll just drive you guys to the hospital,” I said.

“I should change,” Sophie said, turning on her heel and marching out of the room. “And I need to paint my toenails.”

“What? Sophie, you look fine,” I said, running after her. She moved fast for a woman in labor, and I didn’t catch up to her until she was already in her walk-in closet, pulling clothes off hangers.

“I’m not going to go to the hospital wearing sweats. Where’s my Mimi Maternity dress? The black one with the flowers on it?” Sophie asked.

“Here, just wear this,” I said, holding up flax linen overalls.

“No way. I look like a clown in that,” Sophie sniffed. “Here’s the dress.”

She pulled off her purple T-shirt and stepped out of the gray cotton maternity sweatpants, and then pulled the sundress on over her head, exposing her enormous, round stomach. Standing in front of the mirror, she pulled her blonde curls forward into two low pigtails and fastened them with elastics. I had to admit, she did look better.

“Okay, now I need to do my toenails,” she said, walking past me out of the closet and then turning left toward the en suite bathroom.

I scrambled after her. “Have you lost your mind? Your water broke, we have to get you to the hospital,” I said.

“No, we have loads of time. I’ve only had one contraction, we don’t even have to go in until they start getting closer together,” Sophie said.

“And what if we get stuck in traffic? Or if it all starts to happen quickly?”

“Well then, help me. The faster we do this, the faster we’ll get out of here,” Soph said. She handed me a bottle of bright red nail polish and then sat down on the rim of the bathtub.

“I can’t believe I’m actually doing this. If you weren’t in labor . . . ,” I muttered, but I kneeled down in front of her and unscrewed the top of the nail polish bottle. I dabbed the brush in. “This is a pretty color.”

“Isn’t it? I just bought it the other day. I was saving it for when I went into labor,” Sophie said, beaming.

I knelt down and dabbed the brush over her shell-shaped nails.

“Okay, nutty girl, that should do it. I think I did a pretty good job. I guess if I ever tire of practicing law, I can always get a job giving pedicures,” I said, sitting back to admire my handiwork.

“Oh shit!” Sophie exclaimed. She went pale and bent over, clutching her stomach.

“Mom! Sophie just had another contraction,” I yelled. “How long was that?”

“Eight minutes,” my mother called back. “Come on, we’d better get her to the hospital.”

“Can you walk? Here, let me help you get up,” I said, and heaved Sophie up onto her feet. “Do you want to lean on me?”

“No, I can walk, but wait . . . Paige? I’m scared,” Sophie said, her voice wavering. Her face was small and pale, and I was reminded of when we were little and Sophie broke her leg skiing. She’d been determinedly cheerful right up to the point when she was wheeled into the hospital.

“I know, sweetie. I know. But just think, when it’s all over, you’ll look down and see your daughter’s face for the first time, and it will all be over,” I said.

Sophie looked at me sideways. “How do you know the baby will be a girl?”

“I’m just getting a strong female vibe,” I said.

“Do you promise me that you won’t leave me?” she asked, grabbing my hand as we started to walk out of the bedroom.

I suddenly remembered Zack was outside in his truck, waiting for me to sneak off with him. The promise of sinking into his arms—he was a world-class hugger, pulling me close to him until our hearts lined up and his arms were wrapped all the way around me—was snatched away.

For now, I reminded myself. Just for now.

“I won’t leave you, no matter what,” I promised.

Mom, Dad, Mickey, and Aidan were all standing by the front door, looking excited and worried, with the exception of Aidan, who seemed a little woozy. But to his credit, he came forward and put his arm around his wife.

“Are you okay?” he asked her softly, and she just rested her head against his shoulder for a minute.

“We’re ready to go,” Sophie said brightly, rallying back, just as her eight-year-old self had done when it was time to set the broken leg.

“Baby, I’m going to drive you and Aidan. Mickey and Paige will go with your mother,” Dad said.

“Actually, I have a ride. I’ll meet you there,” I said, and although Mickey shot me a curious look, everyone else was too busy scrambling out the front door and into the assortment of cars to pay much attention.

I watched while Aidan carefully helped Sophie into the backseat of her Tahoe and then crossed himself before climbing in after her (I hadn’t known he was religious, but perhaps the birth of a child was atheist-free in the same way that foxholes were said to be). And then I turned and walked over to Zack’s truck.

“Is everything okay? I got worried, you were gone so long,” Zack said.

I leaned over and kissed him firmly on the lips. Zack smiled, even as our lips were touching, and threaded his hands through my hair.

“I thought you might have been running away again,” he said.

“No. Definitely not. But there’s been a slight change in plans,” I said. And then I sat back in the seat and turned to pull on my seatbelt. “I’ll tell you about it on the way to the hospital.”