Read The Secret Desires of a Soccer Mom Online
Authors: Robyn Harding
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Women's Fiction, #Contemporary Women, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Women Sleuths, #Contemporary Fiction, #Detective
The Secret Desires of a Soccer Mom
The Secret Desires of a Soccer Mom
by Robyn Harding
Copyright © 2006 by Robyn Harding. All rights reserved.
Originally published in the United States by Ballantine
Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random
House, Inc., New York.
First Kindle Edition: February 2012
Cover design by
Streetlight
Graphics
.
Visit Robyn Harding’s
website
.
LICENSE NOTES
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DISCLAIMER
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and
incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and
are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales,
organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Praise for Robyn Harding’s Novels
“Painfully funny… Harding is a skilled writer who is able to
transcend and even exploit cliché…
The Journal of
Mortifying Moments
is light fiction executed by a writer who knows her
craft.”
—
The Boston Globe
(“The Journal
of Mortifying Moments”)
"This hilarious tale of motherhood, marriage, murder
and suburban lust is laugh-out-loud funny.”
—
Tucson Citizen
(“The Secret
Desires of a Soccer Mom”)
“Harding’s sense of humor and keenly observed account of
social mores in the new ecology will keep modern parents, especially those with
opinions on the green movement, tickled throughout.”
—
Publishers Weekly
, Starred
Review (“Mom, Will This Chicken Give Me Man Boobs?”)
“Harding (
Unravelled
) takes a
hilarious warts-and-all look at the breakup of Lucy and Trent, and its effect
on their sullen 15-year-old daughter, Sam.”
—
Publishers Weekly
(“Chronicles
of a Midlife Crisis”)
For Susan Matthews.
We were loading coffee cups into the
dishwasher, when my friend, Karen made a startling confession.
“I have something to tell you,” she said.
“Okay.” I continued tipping the dregs of
cold coffee into the sink and plunking the empty cups into the top tray. It was
a Wednesday, the day the five of us got together for coffee and conversation.
This week, it had been my turn to host. When the others left to pick up various
children from pre-school, run errands, or go to the gym, Karen had volunteered
to stay behind and help me clean up.
Although… she wasn’t really helping
anymore.
Now, she was just standing there, leaning against the
blue tiles of my kitchen island, with a strange look on her face.
“Don’t judge me, okay?”
“Okay.” This time I stopped what I was
doing and looked at my friend. Her cheeks were pink under her late summer tan
and she seemed to be trying to maintain a sombre expression while on the verge
of hysterical giggles.
“Umm…” She cleared her throat. “I’ve been
seeing someone.”
I was silent for a few moments, choosing my
words carefully. “Well, that’s nothing to feel ashamed of. I’ve often thought I
should get some therapy to deal with my parent’s divorce. I know I was twenty-seven
when they split up, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t still hurt.”
“I’m not seeing a shrink, Paige.”
“Oh…” It took me a second. “Oh!”
“You promised not to judge me!”
“I won’t. I’m not! It’s just that…”
“What?”
“I’m just shocked, that’s all. I thought
that you and Doug were so happy.”
“We were happy. But when I met—
this
person
,” Karen said, blushing again and forcing away the delighted smile
that was threatening to curl her lips, “I realized that my relationship with
Doug just wasn’t enough for me. I know it sounds terrible.”
“Well…” I said.
“If you’re going to look down on me for
this, then I won’t say anymore.” Karen moved to retrieve her coat off the back
of a kitchen chair.
“No, don’t go,” I soothed, realizing that I
had offended her. “Let’s have some more cake and talk.” I cut two enormous
slabs of Sarah Lee apple-cinnamon coffee cake and led her to the breakfast
nook. When we were seated at the pine kitchen table in the sunny alcove, I took
a moment to study my friend. The sun streaming in through the bank of windows
picked up the highlights in her chestnut hair and gave her complexion a golden
glow. With her sparkling blue eyes and flush of delighted embarrassment, she looked
almost impossibly girlish and pretty—far younger than her thirty-six years.
Extra-marital sex obviously agreed with her.
“Okay…,” I said gently. “Tell me how this
happened.” Of course, I was trying to be a supportive and non-judgmental
friend, but a small part of me was positively gleeful! This was the most
exciting news I’d heard in years. Our Denver suburb was very quiet.
“Well…” she began, daintily picking at the
drizzled icing with her fork tines. “Like I said, Doug and I were happy.
We
have the big house, the nice cars, the time-share in Playa del Carmen…
I was content, complacent even. But sexually…”
I choked on my mouthful of cake. “I’m
fine,” I mumbled. “Go on.”
“Sexually, I wasn’t fulfilled. You know
we’ve been trying to get pregnant for almost two years now, thanks to Doug’s
low-mobility sperm.
That’s really taken the fun out of it—the schedules,
the ovulation predictor, the cold packs in Doug’s shorts…”
I managed to refrain from choking again,
but I was sure I’d never look at Karen’s CFO husband the same way again.
“Sex should be spontaneous! Passionate! Sex
should make you feel like you are the most beautiful, sensual creature on the
planet, like you could conquer the world.”
I was nodding along here, but it had been a
very long time since sex had made me feel anything but…
good
. If it had
ever made me feel like a world-conqueror, I couldn’t remember it.
“And that’s how I feel when I make love
with Javier. It’s mind-blowing! I’ve never had this kind of sex with Doug.”
“Javier?”
“He’s Spaaaanish!” She said this like she
was saying “He’s covered in chocolate.”
“Where did you meet him?”
“At my art class. I know it’s wrong, Paige,
but I swear, he’s completely irresistible!” Cue the pink cheeks and girlish
giggles.
“Spanish
and
an artist,” I said. “That
does sound pretty irresistible.”
“He’s not an artist. He’s the model.”
“Oh! Wow!”
“Yeah, I know,” she practically squealed.
“He’s also a barista—to make ends meet. He doesn’t care about status and he
doesn’t want to get caught up in the rat race. It’s a different culture, a
different attitude.”
“Well, I, personally, love coffee,” I said
gamely.
“He is just so beautiful, inside and out—and
not in that plastic, Hollywood kind of way. His face has so much character.
That’s why he’s so great to draw. And his body is unbelievable! And his eyes!
Oh God, Paige, his eyes—they smolder.”
“Smolder, eh?” I didn’t know what else to
say.
“Smolder,” she said, flopping back in her
chair with a positively post-coital sigh.
I cleared my throat. “He sounds amazing,
but…”
“And it’s not just his looks. He really
gets me, you know? Like, he can see who I am—the real me—deep down inside.
There’s a bit of a language barrier, of course, but it’s almost like we
transcend words.”
“Umm… okay. But what does this mean for you
and Doug?”
She sat forward and stabbed a forkful of
cake. “I don’t know. When this all started, I thought it would be a fling. It
was just passion, just lust in the beginning. But now…we have so much more. ”
She stuffed the cake into her mouth.
“Do you still love Doug?”
“Of course I do,” she mumbled through her
apple-cinnamon confection, “but isn’t it possible to love someone, and yet not
feel a real emotional connection to him?”
I thought about my own marriage for a
second. Paul and I had celebrated our twelfth anniversary last month, but would
I say we had a real emotional connection? We certainly did have one when we
were first together, but over the last ten years, things had changed. His life
revolved around his job in software sales and mine had been focussed on our two
kids. But I still loved him. He was my husband, the father of my children… “I
suppose it’s possible,” I said.
“And now I just want to be with Javier all
the time! Honestly Paige, I can’t get enough of him—physically, emotionally,
spiritually. I don’t know how much longer I can keep up this façade with Doug.”
“But Karen,” I said solemnly. “You and Doug
have a life together. You and Javier just have great sex.”
“Ha!” A
humorless
laugh erupted from within her. “Doug and I have
things
together, possessions.
That’s not a life, Paige: Javier taught me that. Seriously…”—she looked at me
intently—“I’m beginning to think there was a reason I couldn’t get pregnant. If
I had a baby with Doug, I’d be tied to him forever.”
“True,” I murmured. My own fruitful marriage
suddenly felt like a life sentence in Sing Sing.
Karen suddenly looked at her watch. “I’ve
got to go.” She jumped up. “I’ve got a bikini wax at noon.” I followed her down
the hall and into the front foyer, a large open space with an Italian tiled floor
and high, coved ceiling. This ‘grand entryway’, as the architect had called it,
was a common feature in the area’s newer homes. Undoubtedly, it was
intended to give the impression of a Georgian Manor or something, but the piles
of kids’ shoes, sporting equipment, and school books tended to detract from its
grandeur.
I waited patiently while Karen slipped into her
chocolate leather blazer, zipping up her matching stiletto boots.