Never Have I Ever(30)

She tilted her head to the side, that half smile still quirking up her lips. “What are my options?”

“I don’t know. Did you need to borrow something?” Her eyebrows rose, but I stuck to my cool, calm guns. I wouldn’t let her see the sick, strange eagerness spreading in my middle, at war with the fear that her version of Never Have I Ever had been aimed at me. “Did you want to know what book club’s reading next? It’s Persuasion. I can get you on the e-mail list.”

“Austen, huh? It must be Kanga’s turn to pick. Or is it always Kanga’s pick?” She must have seen the answer on my face, because she laughed. “I’d rather read something with teeth.”

“I like Austen,” I said, though I had long wished Char would choose books I’d describe in just that way. More teeth. “So. What did you need? Because I know you aren’t here for a cup of sugar.”

“I like sugar,” she said, and now she was the one lying. She used the exact same intonations I’d just used, claiming to like Austen.

“You don’t look like a person with a sweet tooth,” I told her. This woman didn’t allow bread inside her house. No way she had a bedside drawer full of Mallomars.

“I like sugar,” she insisted, stepping in. Close. Too close, so that it felt like a double entendre. “But I don’t let myself have everything I like. Do you?”

I stepped back, almost involuntarily, and she breezed past, the elegant skirt billowing around her slim legs. She beelined down the hall between the dining room and living room, passing the stairs down to the basement, going right for the swinging door into the kitchen. I followed, all the way to the keeping room. Oliver blew another raspberry, misting my cheek with a fine spray of baby spit.

Roux finally stopped by the far leather sofa, examining the photo grouping of muck diving pictures, exactly as her son had. By then it felt too late to say something sarcastic, like, No, please. Make yourself at home. I’d been thrown off guard. Of all the ways I’d imagined our first postgame meeting, fending off a pass had never crossed my mind.

Oliver was struggling in my arms now, bending toward the floor and saying, “Babababa.” I closed the baby gate and let him down. He went speed-crawling toward the bookshelf full of toys.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” Roux said. She was still looking at the pictures, her back firmly to me, but there was something flirty in her tone. “All week.”

“Well that’s . . . a little weird,” I said. I’d been thinking about her, of course, too much. But not in the way she was implying.

“Have you been thinking about me?” she asked, as if she’d plucked the words out of my mind.

“Not really,” I lied. I was glad her back was to me. She’d looked at me and known I was lying about liking the book-club picks.

She didn’t say anything else. Instead she drifted in small steps down the length of my sofa, studying every shot. I felt more awkward every second, but I made myself wait her out, practicing diver’s breathing, readying a calm, cool smile. When she came to the end of the pictures, she peeked over her shoulder at me, coy. The silence stretched, getting thinner, making even the air feel thinner. I kept the smile, though it was starting to feel plastic.

It occurred to me that this was a game, too. A silent game.

That ticked me off, but I was almost glad. Irked wasn’t good, but it was better than anxious.

“I don’t have time to play ‘who’ll talk first’ this morning, Roux,” I said.

Her eyes sparked with amusement. “See, I do. That’s why I just won.”

“I don’t have time to play anything,” I said, snappish in spite of myself, and her spark became a full-blown grin. She came sauntering back toward me.

“You don’t like games?” she asked.

Acknowledging the silent game had been a mistake. “Games” wasn’t a topic I wanted to explore with her. She’d thrown me off balance, though, and now she was coming way too close again. I held my ground this time, even though I could feel how guarded my eyes had gone, could feel my body still wanting to bend away from her.

“Are you trying to—” I didn’t know how to even ask. It seemed so presumptuous. And yet she was now so close I could smell her breath, minty and cool. I put my hands up and stepped back. I couldn’t help it. “Whatever this is, its fine for you, but it’s not my thing.”

She smiled at me. It was a seductive, almost predatory smile. If I had been gay, or male, I was willing to bet it would have gotten my attention. All my skin had gone in prickles.

“You like men?” she asked.

“I like my husband,” I said, firm.

“How very Stepford of you,” she said. “Relax, I like men, too. For fucking anyway.” She seemed oblivious to the unstated mother rules about cursing, dropping the f-bomb as if my baby weren’t right there with his language centers all wide open, seeking his first word. “You’re perfectly safe alone with me.”

“We aren’t alone,” I said, my voice tight. Oliver was three feet away, investigating a plastic stand stacked with brightly colored concentric rings.

“Alone enough. That doesn’t even talk,” she said, glancing at him, then back to me. “I’m straight as they come. I go for lawyers, mostly. Not just because they are one kinky-ass batch of humans, though that’s a perk. I like them because if you fuck ’em right, they talk. Lawyers gossip easy as a gaggle of drunk women at a book club.”