She, Myself & I (25 page)

“No, it’s just something I had,” I said. “So, do you think you’ll be okay? Is Zack coming over to help you?”

“God, no. I need a break from him. Every time I turn around, he’s there trying to help me with something or telling me that I need to get off my feet. Is it normal that I’m so irritated with the father of my child? Oh . . . I’m sorry, that’s probably not the best thing to be asking you right now,” Paige said.

“Totally normal. I wanted to kill Aidan the entire time I was pregnant. Everything he said or did made me want to throw heavy things at his head,” I said.

“When did that stop?”

“Never,” I said. I leaned over to kiss Ben good night on his chubby cheeks, now slack with sleep. His grapey scent filled my nose, and for a minute I wanted to grab him up against me and stay that way for the rest of the night. I could change into my soft cotton knit pajamas with the pink flowers on them and watch movies with Paige, and just check out of life for another day. “Do you want me to settle him into his crib before I leave?”

“No, you better get going. Go on, have fun. We’ll be fine,” Paige said.

“Okay.” I stood up reluctantly. “I just nursed him an hour ago, but he’ll probably wake up before I get home and want a bottle. There’s one in the fridge. Heat it up by running it under some warm water, but don’t put it in the microwave, ’cause it’ll scorch.”

“Go. Have fun,” Paige said.

“Bye,” I said.

I glanced back at Ben one more time before I left. And then I walked out of the house and out to my Tahoe, while the cicadas sang to the setting sun.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Vinay was already at the Hyde Park Bar and Grill when I got there. I had a last-minute attack of nerves when I saw him standing at the bar, holding a glass of red wine. He was wearing a white button-down shirt tucked into Levi’s, and the outfit set off his wide shoulders and tapered waist. He turned and smiled at me, and I raised my hand up in a nervous greeting.

“Sophie,” Vinay said. He leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. His lips felt warm, and I could smell the merlot on his breath. “Can I get you a glass of wine?”

“Yes, thanks. I’ll have what you’re having,” I said.

He retrieved a glass from the bartender and turned to hand it to me.

“Cheers,” he said, lifting his glass, and I clinked mine against his before lifting it to my lips.

“You look beautiful,” Vinay said, his eyes drifting over me.

“Thanks,” I said, blushing, but beginning to enjoy myself. Under his appreciative gaze, I felt beautiful for the first time since I’d had Ben.

“Is your party complete? Then come right this way,” the hostess said, appearing behind us.

I turned to follow her, and as I did, Vinay rested his hand on my waist, guiding me in front of him. I could feel the warm pressure of his fingers through the sheer fabric of my shirt.

As we sat down at a corner table, I suddenly realized that no matter how smitten I was, there wasn’t a chance in hell I could let this man see me and my flobby stomach naked. And my milk supply was still unpredictable . . . all I had to do was miss a feeding and my breasts would swell up into enormous, hard bowling balls. One touch and milk would squirt everywhere. What had I been thinking? How could I take this baby-stretched, milk-excreting body out on a date?

This was bad. Really, really bad.

“Is everything all right?” Vinay asked. He leaned his head toward me, his dark eyes fixed on mine.

“Mm-hmm,” I said. I opened my eyes wide nodding vigorously. I grabbed for a glass of water and took a big gulp, realizing too late that I’d picked up my wine instead.

“Mpfh,” I sputtered, as the too-large gulp burned against the back of my throat.

I set the glass down and focused on the menu.

“Have you ever been here before?” Vinay asked.

“Aidan and I used to come here all the time before we moved out to the burbs,” I said, and then did a mental head slap. Although I hadn’t been out there long enough to know the ground rules, I was pretty sure that mentioning your maybe-soon-to-be-ex-husband was a no-no on a first date.

“What do you recommend?” Vinay asked, graciously ignoring my gaffe.

“The sirloin burger. And they have the best fries in Austin,” I said.

“Is that what you’re going to have?”

I thought again of my flobby stomach, and then of my judgmental, stick-thin sisters-in-law.

“No . . . I think I’ll just have a salad,” I said.

“Absolutely not. Two sirloin burgers, and one very large order of chips,” Vinay said to the waitress, who’d appeared at the table. I noticed that she was staring at Vinay with an undisguised interest. She was about four sizes smaller than me, and her ass was as high and round as a supermodel’s.

“Chips?” she repeated stupidly.

“He means french fries,” I said, handing her the menus. “And I’ll have another glass of merlot, please.”

“French fries, right. I always forget that,” Vinay said, grinning at me.

“Is Austin a temporary move, or are you in Texas permanently?” I asked, once the flirty waitress had moved on.

“Permanent. Well, permanent for now, if that makes sense. I went to medical school at Tulane in New Orleans, and ended up in Houston for my residency. I decided to specialize in pediatrics, and was casting around for a job, and then one opened up here, so I thought I’d try it out,” he said.

“Where are you from originally? Where in England?”

“London.”

“Really? And you’d rather be here than there? I’ve always wanted to go there, it seems like such an amazing city. And so much more interesting than Austin,” I said.

“I imagine I’ll move back there someday. My parents are there, as are my brothers and sister,” Vinay said.

“Are they upset that you’re staying in the U.S. for now?”

“Yes and no. I think that if I married a nice Indian girl, settled down, and started having babies, they wouldn’t care if I lived on the moon.”

“And what’s been holding you back?”

“I just never met the right nice Indian girl. It’s silly, really, how hung up they are on it. But they emigrated to Britain from India in the sixties, and still live near and socialize with other Indian families, so they have a hard time getting away from traditions,” Vinay said.

“What do your parents do?”

“Both doctors. My mother is a psychiatrist and my father is an anesthesiologist.”

“Wow. And they’re still married?”

“Yes. Are your parents divorced?”

“Sort of. They divorced when I was in college, but they just recently got back together. They’re dating now, if you can believe that,” I said.

“Bloody hell. That must make for interesting family get-togethers,” Vinay said.

“You have no idea,” I said.

The waitress arrived with our hamburgers and two more glasses of wine, and dinner passed in a pleasant haze of good, greasy food and amiable conversation. The wine was making me light-headed, but in a pleasant, loose-limbed kind of way. And it seemed from the way that Vinay was smiling at me that flobby stomachs were the last thing on his mind.

Maybe he’s the one I’m supposed to be with, I thought. Maybe Aidan was just the wrong man for me all along. I couldn’t remember when—if ever—Aidan’s touch had made my heart speed up or if his smile made my senses hum with possibility. Sure, maybe back in the beginning it had been like this, but if it was true love and meant to be, would those feelings really have eroded over time, a mortgage, and a baby?

Yes, another part of me—apparently one unaffected by winsome smiles, candlelit dinners, and the rich timbre of a British accent—said. It’s entirely normal. The heightened senses and sweet obsessions of early love never last. It morphs and changes and grows. And even if my frayed bond with Aidan has snapped for good, and this flirtation with Vinay grows into something meaningful and permanent, the flutters that I get when he smiles at me across the table will eventually dissipate, too.

I couldn’t decide if this thought was comforting or depressing.

Vinay paid the bill, slipping his gold American Express card into the plastic billfold, and the annoyingly thin waitress tried to catch his eye as she returned the receipt for his signature. I felt a stab of triumph when Vinay responded to her coy smiles and hair flips with a polite disinterest.

We walked out of the restaurant, and unseasonably chilly air rushed by us, eager to pass into the warm recesses of the restaurant. I hadn’t thought to bring a jacket.

“Brrr. When did it get so cold out?” I asked. “Wasn’t it in the eighties today?”

“I’ll keep you warm,” Vinay said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders.

For the first time, I felt a little uncomfortable with him. It was a borderline-smarmy line, just one step removed from the horrible yawning-then-arm-stretching-then-boob-feeling move my freshman high school boyfriend actually tried on me.

“I’m parked right over there,” I said, pointing at my SUV in the alley at the side of the restaurant.

“Did you want to get some coffee somewhere, or maybe we could rent a movie and take it back to my place?” he said. He rubbed his thumb against my shoulder in a repetitive motion that irritated my skin.

“I wish I could,” I said. “But my sister is sitting with Ben, and she’s expecting me back.”

“You could call her, see if she’d mind staying a little later,” Vinay said, stepping closer to me.

I knew then that he was going to kiss me, and every last inch of my body went on high alert.

“No, I can’t. She’s pregnant and hasn’t been feeling well,” I said.

He was now standing so close that I had to tip my head back to see him. The glow of the streetlights cast a bluish light over his face, and he looked so different than he had in the restaurant. I wondered if I did, too. Candlelight is so much more flattering, more seductive.

And just as I was thinking that this could be the most ingenious invention of modern mankind—some sort of device to secure a candle under your chin, so that everyone could walk around in dark rooms with their faces glowing in the light (and yes, the high rate of singed hair and stubbed toes might be an issue, but it was still a brilliant idea)—Vinay leaned forward and pressed his lips against mine.

The pressure was soft but insistent, and as he kissed me, he rested a hand gently on the back of my neck to draw me closer to him. I closed my eyes and leaned into the kiss, catching my breath as the tip of his tongue flickered against my lips. And I waited for the falling-from-a-high-height-while-simultaneously-melting first-kiss feeling to hit me.

It didn’t come.

I’d always loved first kisses when I was single—they were what made the horrors of first dates worthwhile. Nine times out of ten, you wouldn’t click, but on those rare occasions when you did, the first kiss was the jackpot payoff. So I gave it another minute, forcing my body not to tense up, and instead rested my hands on his waist, where I could feel warm skin through the heavy cotton of his shirt.

Still nothing.

Instead, I was starting to become all too aware of the hint of onions on his breath. And that the fine hairs on his upper lip were tickling me. And then his other hand was suddenly on my lower back, teetering on the brink of heading toward my too-large bottom. That was it. I didn’t mind letting the lukewarm kissing go on for a while—maybe I was just out of practice or too stressed out to enjoy it—but I wasn’t about to let him get anywhere near my ass. I took a step back, breaking off the kiss.

“I really should get going. Thanks again for dinner,” I said.

Vinay looked at me, and his dark, still eyes were so kind, I started to think that maybe I should give him a second chance on the kissing. For all I knew, he was the best kisser to have ever puckered lips, and the lack of reaction on my part was just one more lovely little postpartum side effect.

“Are you sure?” he asked. He ran his hands up my arms until they were both resting on my shoulders. A few hours earlier, the very thought of this sort of close proximity to him, this casually intimate touching, would have thrilled me. Now I just felt tired and wanted to retreat back to where it was safe and quiet.

What I really wanted to do was to go home. Not to my mother’s house, but to my home, the one I shared with Aidan. And suddenly, just like that, I was missing my husband. I missed the soapy scent of his aftershave, the way he always closed his eyes and took a deep breath when he cuddled Ben, and Saturday afternoons spent lazing around the house in our sweats together, watching videos and screening phone calls. I missed that he knew I never drank coffee at night since it keeps me up. I missed how he always made sure my gas tank was full and my cell phone charged. I missed how he always got up with Ben in the morning, and carried him into the bedroom, so that the first thing I saw every day were my two smiling, sleepy-eyed guys.

“I really have to. But, I mean it, thanks. This meant a lot to me,” I said.

“Right then.” Vinay cleared his throat and thrust his hands in his pockets. “I take it there’s not going to be a second date.”

“I haven’t been completely honest with you,” I said. “My husband and I are separated, but only just recently. I still don’t know what’s going to happen with my marriage. But it’s probably a little early for me to start dating.”