Golden Girl(84)

When JP comes back, he rubs a towel over his head and says, “Do you want to take a walk?”

“I just got settled.”

“Oh,” he says. “Okay.” Instead of sitting in his chair, he plops next to her on the blanket. “Amy?”

She props herself up on her elbows and sucks in her stomach and tenses her thighs. “JP?”

He’s silent for a second and Amy realizes that the moment she’s been dreading is upon her. We probably should have a talk at some point.

“I know that things haven’t been easy for you since Vivi died,” he says.

Understatement.

“Don’t worry about me,” Amy says. “I’m worried about you. And the kids.”

“I worry about the kids too,” JP says. “I need to make them my focus.”

“Of course,” Amy says. She has kind of stalled where the kids are concerned. She hasn’t seen any of them since Vivi died. “Maybe we should invite them over for dinner?” This sounds like a solid starting point, but dinner for their family is a pipe dream. JP works at the Cone every night until ten, Willa lives in married bliss with Rip, Leo is leaving for college in another month, and Carson also works at night, plus, sorry, she’s not the family-dinner type.

“Amy,” JP says. “I want to take a break. No, that’s misleading. I want to break up. I want you to move out. I want us to go our separate ways.”

The words hit Amy like pellets, and her jaw drops in increments until her mouth is hanging fully open. She knows she must look shocked. But she’s not shocked. If she were very honest, she would admit that the second she let JP Quinboro kiss her in the wineshop after drinking two and a half bottles of Cristal, she knew this was one way it could end—with JP cutting the line, deciding that she wasn’t a keeper.

“I’m sorry,” JP says, but Amy can hear in his voice that he’s not sorry, he’s relieved. The death blow has been landed. The ten years that Amy has invested in this relationship has been dissolved with a few sentences. “You’re a wonderful girl—”

“Stop,” Amy says. “There will be no patronizing, please.” Her voice is surprisingly clear and firm, a welcome change from the singsongy tone she typically uses with JP in an attempt to sound charming, cute, lighthearted. “Does this have anything to do with Vivi’s death?”

“Kind of,” JP says. “I’ve taken a self-inventory. I don’t have the right feelings for you. You deserve to be loved and adored.”

“And you don’t love me? You don’t adore me?”

“No.”

There’s no hedging, no gray area, no room for any interpretation except one, and for this, Amy is grateful. JP is sparing her from believing there’s hope. And without hope, Amy is free to be honest.

“I should never have let you kiss me in the wineshop,” she says. “I knew it was wrong, I knew you were just unhappy in your marriage and looking for validation from an attractive female.”

“You were the answer to my prayers,” JP says. “Every day that summer, I was happy. I looked forward to waking up and going to work. You were the sun.”

“I was blinded by my feelings for you. You were older, you were sophisticated, so handsome, so…forbidden.” That was part of the allure, Amy knows—JP belonged to someone else.

“I wanted it to work, Amy. I gave it my best shot. I think when you moved in…”

Yes, three years ago when Amy moved in with JP, things became stressful, and that stress eroded the romance. The kids were older; they had opinions and allegiances. But Amy had needed a place to live, and she and JP had been together nearly seven years—it made sense. But she should have maintained her independence. She should have rented, or even purchased, her own place.

“I was always jealous of Vivi,” Amy says. “You were divorced, but the two of you were still codependent. Even after we’d been together for years, she was still the most important woman in your life. It was never me, it was always Vivi.” She expects JP to refute this, but he says nothing. “You used to tease me about being jealous of her. You said it was absurd, that I was insecure. But I was only reacting to always coming in second.” Now the anger surfaces. It feels like acid she wants to throw on him. “I shouldn’t have believed a word you said. I should have left years ago. You stole the best years of my life.”

“You’re only thirty-three. There’s still plenty of time for you to meet someone else and have a baby.”

He’s right. Now that Amy is free, she can meet someone and get pregnant, whereas with JP, that avenue was closed. He’d had a vasectomy after Leo was born.

“Do you remember the night you went to Savannah’s for dinner?” she says. “I spied on you through the back window of her house.”

“You did not.” He holds her gaze. “You did? Wow, that’s a new low for you, Aim. You do realize that Savannah and I are just friends—”

“You weren’t friends before. You hated her before.”

JP concedes this with a dip of his head. “Our relationship is complicated. Lots of history. I’ve known Savannah my whole life. Long before Vivi.”

Amy has heard it all before. JP and Savannah grew up together at the Field and Oar Club, two children of extreme privilege with shared memories of this tennis match, that sailing race, their parents laughing and drinking gin and tonics together on the patio. “You looked pretty cozy.”