He was rambling, and maybe this was the confession, the moment that he would share everything about his mistress. Did she work there? I didn’t want to hear this. I didn’t want to know, didn’t want to picture the two of them growing closer over bad coffee and greasy bacon. “Mike,” I said faintly.
“Right. Anyway. I go there because they always have the Times. And I read your obits with breakfast each morning. It’s stupid.” He shrugged. “But it makes me feel connected to you, like I’m not as big of a dunce about your job as I am.”
Oh no. A gesture that would have touched me months ago had now incriminated me.
“And you’re really talented. I can always pick out yours, even before I get to the byline. I cut out the favorites and keep them in a drawer in my desk.” The corners of his mouth lifted in a proud smile. “That one about the lacrosse player—that was my favorite. It made me think of Jacob.”
The lacrosse player was one of my favorites too. He hadn’t been a superstar athlete—he’d played only a year of the sport before he had been cut—but I had made him shine as best I could. His mother had visited me after the obit had printed, her eyes filled with tears, her hug fierce and long.
“You haven’t written anything since you found out about the affair.” He swallowed and I realized what the tension in his face was—not anger or suspicion. Guilt.
He was wrong with the timing. My firing had come a week or two after the affair blowup, but I saw where his mindset was. A typical man, thinking that he was the cause of everything, that my psyche was so destroyed that I couldn’t pick up a pen and write. It took only a heartbeat to decide to let him keep the guilt, and to move further down a path of deception. “I’m actually on a sabbatical. I’m still writing, just not obits. I’m working on a novel.”
He perked up at this, and I should have picked something less exciting. “Oh really? You’d be great at that, Lill. Really, really great at that.”
A naive and stupid statement. Mike had no idea whether I’d be good at fiction writing, and the chances were high that I wouldn’t be. A novel was a complex fit of scenes, characters, and plot. A month ago, I’d thought about tackling the task. Now I just wanted to get drunk and have sex with David.
I shouldn’t be thinking that, especially not here in our dining room, where Jacob lost his first tooth and I’d shared the news of my third miscarriage over fish sticks and tater tots. But I was. I was thinking about how each experience with David seemed to unlock something new in me, and maybe sex would break the links that I still felt with Mike, the emotions that I couldn’t seem to shake, even with constant reminders of his affair.
I was on an emotional seesaw. Up from a missing you text from David. Down from the puppy-dog looks Mike was giving me, like this one right here.
I tilted back my glass and finished it off. If this was the road to hell, I was traveling down it at a steady pace. “I should get the dishes in the sink. I’m meeting Sam for drinks.”
“Oh. You guys have been hanging out? I haven’t seen him here lately.”
I started to gather my plate and silverware and paused to let out a sharp laugh that sounded convincing. “Of course we’ve been hanging out.” After all, who else would I be filling my days with?
Mike would never suspect the truth, not from his boring plod of a wife. I was the woman who’d spent one summer reorganizing our spice cabinet alphabetically and with custom labels printed on our discount label maker.
I watched as my dear cheating husband straightened his clean knife in line next to his dirty spoon. “Tell him I said hi.”
I nodded as if it would be done, but I’d made the “going to meet Sam for drinks” line up on the spot. In truth, I hadn’t seen Sam in weeks. Despite his daily calls and texts, I’d made excuses every time he wanted to hang out.
“I’ll do the dishes.” Mike carried his plate into the kitchen. I followed suit, and when our paths crossed in the kitchen, he had that look in his eyes, one with romantic intent. When he went in for a kiss, I stepped to one side.
He let out an irritated huff. “It’s been over a month, Lill.”
“Exactly.” I continued for the door. “It’s not my fault you’ve suddenly decided to start paying attention to your wife.”
He said nothing and I grabbed my purse and lifted my keys from the hook. My back was stiff, my words firm, but inside . . . I’d been close to kissing him. I’d wanted to sink into his touch and feel the familiar meet of our mouths. I’d wanted him to hold me and need me and still love me.
And I wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.
CHAPTER 26
LILLIAN
I escaped from the house and drove north, through downtown, to the PCH, and past Venice and Santa Monica. Near the Getty, I decided to follow up on my story and called Sam, who agreed to meet me in Paradise Cove. I found a frozen yogurt stand and was halfway through a cone of blueberry when Sam’s Range Rover pulled into the lot.
He gave me a kiss and a hug, then stepped back and did a once-over. “Wow, look at you.”
I looked down at my workout shorts and T-shirt. “Yeah, look at me.”
“No, I’m serious. You look good. Have you lost weight?”
“I think it’s just the tan.” But I had lost weight. Eight pounds. Between me and our bathroom mirror, I looked fantastic.
“Well,” he said graciously, “it looks good on you.”
“Thanks.” I pointed to the yogurt window. “Want some?”
“Of course.”
Over his bowl of piña colada yogurt with white chocolate chips, I confessed everything that had happened with David. Sam paid close attention, his forehead pinching together as he absorbed the information. He had always been a fierce fan of Mike’s, and I steeled myself for a lecture on promiscuity. Instead, he stuck his red plastic spoon into the concoction and tented his fingers in front of his mouth, thinking.
“Lillian,” he finally said.
“Yes?” I tucked my hands between my knees and waited for my punishment.
“I think . . . ,” he said slowly. “I think that you need to be very careful and use this time to decide what you are going to do with the rest of your life.”
He placed his hand on my shoulder, and it felt a little like I was being knighted. He stared deep into my eyes, and I fought the urge not to roll them. Sam was a man who planned and thought things through to the nth degree. He also listened to a slew of podcasts when he was in the car, which gave him hours of relationship, motivational, and business opinions each day. The end result was a GQ-attired walking encyclopedia of wisdom—most of which was complete garbage.
I didn’t want to decide what to do with the rest of my life. I wanted to be selfish for once, and do something for me. Maybe I’d get over the pain of Mike’s affair and forgive him. Maybe I wouldn’t and we’d get a divorce.
A fly buzzed by, close to my ear, and I swatted at it. “I’m figuring things out.”
He gave me an exasperated look.
“What?” I plucked a white chocolate chip from the top of the yogurt. “I’m figuring things out. I know you want me to just sit in a room and decide whether to stay with Mike or leave him, but that’s a big decision, Sam. He’s my husband. We have twenty years together.”