Crazy Little Thing (18 page)

What was he talking about now? New assignments? Finally he fell silent. The weight of it crushed me, along with any lingering hope that he had been interested in me.
Just a neighbor?
Fuck him.

How naive could I have been? Of course he wasn’t interested in me. Hadn’t he already hinted he was on his way out of town as soon as he got a better offer? I had let myself pretend that this night was the start of something. But I was wrong. Again.

“Hey, Des. Hey, Sade.” I heard Jasper’s voice. It seemed far away, but suddenly he was standing right next to us. Damn. Was everybody at this restaurant tonight?

Des’s response was terse. “Jasper, hi. What are you doing here?”

“Just checking out the restaurant competition,” he answered. “Beth is in the ladies’ room.” He looked at me. “Sadie? What’s the matter?”

That tipped the scale. I lost it and burst into tears.

“Hey! What the hell? Geez, Des! What did you do?”

I couldn’t hear his response because I started crying harder and poured another cup of sake before Des pried it from my fingers. I let him take it and reached for my wine instead. I leaned back in my chair, confused by having the bed spins, which was totally weird because I wasn’t in a bed.

Jasper said something, but it was warbled and nonsensical, so I ignored him. What did he know anyway? Stupid, naive Jasper wanting to get married. What a dumb-ass. Someday he’d probably end up living at Dody’s with his kids too. Like me. He talked to Des for another minute, frowned at me, and then left.

Des stood up, came around the table, and started pulling out my chair, which was just plain rude because I was not done with my drink.

“Let’s go home, Sadie.” He pulled me up by the shoulders.

Walking through the restaurant lobby, I felt as if scorpions were attacking my feet. I tried to kick them away before seeing the satin instruments of torture Fontaine had made me wear. It was those fucking shoes. I took them off and walked barefoot to the car. I heard the woof of expensive leather upholstery compressing in my seat. I wasn’t crying anymore but felt the cold trail of leftover tears as Des put the car in motion. All I wanted to do was take off that stupid dress and get into my lumpy bed.

Sometime later we pulled into Dody’s driveway and Des stopped the car. He turned as if he wanted to say something, but I opened my door and climbed out, tugging at my hemline. God, I hated this dress.

His car door opened and shut.

“Sadie,” he called after me.

I turned around reluctantly.

He held out his arm, and I saw my shoes dangling from his fingers.

Damn, I must’ve left them in the car. I could go in without them. It’s not as if I’d ever wear them again. But Dody might want them for salsa dancing class.

I stepped gingerly toward him, realizing now how rough the gravel was under my bare feet.

He smiled, the rotten prick.

When I reached for my shoes, he moved his hand back so I had to step closer. I hesitantly took another step and reached for them again. Every time I grabbed, he moved his hand. Didn’t he know it was pure meanness to taunt a drunk girl with pretty shoes? I stomped one foot in frustration and winced as the gravel dug into my sole. And soul.

“Ouch.” My voice was petulant.

He chuckled and finally handed me my shoes. He turned me around by my shoulders and steered me to the front door.

“Are you going to be all right?” he asked.

“Peachy keen, jelly bean.”

“OK. Go put yourself to bed, Sadie.” Then he got in the car and drove away.

CHAPTER 12

RELENTLESS KAMIKAZE PILOTS FIRED WEAPONS inside my brain. I woke to an excruciating headache, as if someone were operating on my skull with rusty knitting needles. When I rolled over, it took a full eleven seconds for my stomach to catch up. Then memories of my disgraceful behavior flooded over me. I had cried. I had sat at that lovely restaurant in my sultry red dress and my strappy sandals and let some stupid boy make me cry. No, even worse. I’d let some skanky ho make me cry. I’d made a complete fool of myself. A YouTube video of me dancing the hokeypokey naked with a weasel on my head would have been less humiliating.

Des must think I’m psychotic. But then again, so what? We were only neighbors, right? It’s not like I gave a flying rat’s ass what he thought of me anyway. And now I didn’t have to wonder if he was attracted to me. I’d ruined any chance of that and saved myself a lot of time and trouble.

So why did I feel like my body was rejecting an organ transplant?

Outside my window the gorgeous blue sky and beaming sunshine mocked me. It was a beautiful new day. Against my will, I started to cry again. I didn’t want a new day full of the same shit as yesterday. I didn’t want to be alone. But I didn’t have the courage not to be.

“Mommy?” Paige opened my bedroom door and peeked inside.

I swiped away my hot tears. Oh, that’s right! I wasn’t alone! I had my children. They would comfort me in my dotage when I started wearing orthopedic shoes and a bra on the outside of my blouse. Jordan would pick me up from the Golden Years old folks’ home every Sunday for church, and then we’d go to the park to feed the ducks. On Wednesdays, I’d wear my ratty gray cardigan and Paige would take me grocery shopping. It wasn’t a very exciting future, but it was good enough for me.

“Come in, sweetie,” I said listlessly.

She scampered over, her exuberance widening the chasm between her vitality and my imminent spiral into miserable old age. She climbed up and over, bumping her knee into my stomach, making it churn again.

“Did you have fun on your playdate with Des?” she asked.

“Yes, honey.” No sense in telling her the truth until it was absolutely necessary. Let her be the fairy princess a little longer.

“What did you do?”

“We had supper at a restaurant.”

“Did you have macaroni and cheese?” She picked at the fringe on one of the bed pillows.

“No, I had fish.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Yuck. I don’t like fish. Did you have ice cream for dessert?”

“No.”

“Hmm.” She looked down at my face. “Why are your eyes all fat?”

I rubbed them with both hands. “I’m just tired.”

“Why are you tired? It’s morning.”

Should I tell her I was tired because her father is a deplorable excuse for a man who ruined my outlook on life? Or that I was boarding the Solitaire Express with a one-way ticket to Lonely-ville? And most of all, should I warn her that no matter how much a man might pretend to like her, he’d always have his eye on other women?

“Oh, no reason,” I said. “Where’s Jordan?”

“He’s downstairs watching Fontaine do Yoda.”

“What?” Please tell me she meant something else.

Paige swayed her arms up, clasping her hands over her head then bringing them down slowly in front of her tummy. “The bendy exercise. Yoda.”

“Oh. Yoga. OK. Well, anyway, Mommy has to get dressed now. Why don’t you go downstairs and I’ll be there in a minute.” I pushed off the covers and took a very deep breath.

“Can we go swimming?”

“We’ll have to see, honey. Mommy doesn’t feel very good right now.”

“Des says it looks like a good day for swimming.”

My churning stomach nearly dumped into my mouth. “When did he say that?”

“This morning.”

“You talked to him this morning?” Neurons fired in every direction in my brain, with not one making a logical connection.

Paige nodded, her little curls bobbing in her face.

“When this morning?”

She wiggled off the bed. “When we were having breakfast on the deck and he was jogging.”

Only my maternal instinct prevented me from grabbing my precious child and shaking her by the shoulders. “What else did he say?”

Taking me literally, she replied, “He said, ‘Hi, Paige. Hey, Jordan.’ I think he said, ‘What’s up, Fontaine?’ Then he told a grown-up joke and I couldn’t hear them.”

“How do you know it was a grown-up joke?”

“Because when I asked what was funny they said it was a grown-up joke.”

And there it was. Word was out. At least I’d be spared the indignity of having to share it myself. “Is he still here?”

Paige shook her head and walked to the door. “Nope. See you later, alligator.”

She left with a flip of her curls. I sat up, with effort, and tried to come to grips with the last twenty-four hours, dreading the knowledge that the next twenty-four could be even worse.

I pulled on some loose pants and a huge T-shirt and tried to brush my teeth. Working up a lather with the toothpaste was tougher than usual. Maybe because my mouth was as dry as if I’d slept with a Shop-Vac in it all night.

I tiptoed downstairs, hearing murmured voices on the sunporch. If I could get to the coffee and ibuprofen before anyone saw me, maybe I could grab it and sneak back to my room. But the minute my big toe hit the hardwood, Fontaine pounced like paparazzi on the latest teen sensation.

“Hold up, kitten chow! There you are!”

I crouched, my reaction time so slow my body still thought it could hide. I’d never noticed how shrill Fontaine’s voice was. Was it always like that? He could frighten bats with a screech like that.

He walked into the kitchen wearing bicycle shorts and a nylon shirt the color of circus peanuts. “How was your date last night?”

“Very funny,” I said, reaching toward the coffee mugs with a trembling hand.

His dark brows furrowed. “What does that mean?”

“You already know I made a fool of myself.”

Furrowed brows rose up. “What are you talking about? What happened?”

I set the coffee pot back in the holder and took a gulp. It burned all the way down my throat yet somehow managed to not leave any moisture behind. I looked at Fontaine through bloodshot eyes. “Des didn’t tell you?”

Fontaine shook his head, his bangs flopping from side to side. He pulled out a chair and sat down. “No, he didn’t, but you’d better!”

Was it possible Des had not revealed my humiliation? Richard would have made a huge production of such an occasion. He loved to repeat stories of my misadventures. Like the time I accidentally ripped an incredibly loud fart during a funeral at precisely the moment the priest asked if anyone had something they’d like to share. Or the time we were out to dinner with Richard’s boss and I discovered I had Jordan’s baby poo all over my sleeve.

“Des didn’t tell you anything?”

Fontaine smacked his hand on the table with impatience. “All he said was you had a nice time. So what’s your story?”

“I cried.”

“You what?”

“Yep. Bawled like a little girl.” I might as well tell it straight up.

Fontaine smacked both palms against his cheeks, sufficiently aghast. “Why? Why did you do that?”

My next slug of coffee didn’t burn nearly so badly now that my throat was scarred over from the last swallow.

“Oh...I’d say it was thirty percent sake and seventy percent because he introduced me to some gorgeous whore as ‘
just a neighbor
.’”

Fontaine sucked air in through clenched teeth. “That bastard.”

I nodded. “I know, right?”

Dody breezed into the kitchen wearing a silky yellow caftan. “Good morning, sunshine. How was your evening?”

“We were just getting to that,” Fontaine said. “Apparently our Sadie here had a bit of a meltdown.”

“It wasn’t that little,” I said.

“She’s not kidding. I was there,” Jasper called out, thumping down the stairs two at a time.

Wonderful. Now we could all share the postmortem details of my evening together.

Jasper kissed Dody on the cheek, flicked Fontaine in the ear, and made a face at me. Then he poured himself a cup of coffee.

Fontaine put his elbows on the table and laced his fingers together.

“All right, let’s have it. What’s the real four-one-one?”

I shrugged and shook my head. “I drank too much. He called me his neighbor. I cried. He’s never going to ask me out again. What else is there to say?”

Fontaine frowned. “When you say you cried, do you mean you had a delicate little tear on your cheek or did you do the whole gasping for breath, hiccupping, scary face thing?”

“I’d say it was somewhere in the middle,” Jasper answered.

“It was not! It wasn’t that bad.”

“Sadie, you wiped your nose with the tablecloth.”

“I did not! It was my napkin!”

“No, trust me. You pulled up the tablecloth. Des had to grab the glasses so they didn’t tip over.”

Oh God. It
was
possible to feel even worse. I didn’t remember any of that!

Dody hugged me tightly, patting my back. “Don’t worry, darling. These things happen. Des will understand. Did you at least remember to stroke his eagle?”

“What?” I gasped.

“His eagle. You know how much men like to talk about themselves.”

“Ego,” Fontaine said, interpreting.

“Oh, um, yeah, I guess.”

“It couldn’t have been that bad. Des was here this morning,” Fontaine noted.

“Maybe he wanted to view the body,” Jasper teased.

I pinched his arm. “You are not helping!”

“I’m not trying to.”

“Clearly!”