The Good Widow(11)
“Yes?” Dylan answered, trying to keep her voice neutral. Really good-looking (possibly older?) men like him had gleaming black Range Rovers and gorgeous brunette women like the one he’d been with earlier. They certainly didn’t need Dylan.
“I wanted to give you this.” He waved the money at her.
“You already tipped me,” she reminded him, thinking back to how she’d known Mr. Mimosa would be generous. It was the way he’d slowly given Dylan their order so she’d have time to write it down, how he said please and thank you whenever he asked her for something, how he’d made small talk about her personal life. A customer like that was always a good tipper. He’d given her almost 30 percent.
“So maybe I thought you deserved more. Is that wrong?” He smiled sheepishly, and there were those beautiful eyes again.
“That depends,” Dylan said, pressing her lips together in a failed attempt not to grin. But it was impossible, and she felt the corners of her mouth inch upward anyway. There was something about him. Dylan had never known anyone who shined from the inside out before. She found it intriguing, even though she really didn’t want to. What she really wanted to do was get home and soak her shirt before the ketchup stain became permanent.
“Depends on what?” He said it like he already knew what her answer was going to be. She liked that too.
“How much more you think I need.” She laughed.
He joined her, his laugh low and strong. “Here.” He held out the money again.
“I can’t,” Dylan said, fidgeting with her diamond.
“Is it because you’re engaged?”
Dylan absorbed his words, looking at his bare ring finger. “No. Well, yes,” she stuttered, flustered at his straightforwardness. “But more because you’re married. You are, right? That was your wife?”
“Right,” he said simply.
Dylan wanted to ask more questions about her. Why did her face tighten when she talked about her husband? And why had she drunk so much she’d be sure she wouldn’t remember the two-hundred-dollar brunch she had with her handsome, seemingly charming spouse? But instead Dylan just said, “I don’t even know your name.”
“It’s James Morales. And it’s very nice to meet you.” He took her hand in his, slipping a business card and the twenty into it before she could refuse again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
JACKS—AFTER
I’m so tired of condolence cards. First off, they are ugly—like your-grandmother’s-curtains kind of unattractive. Second, they never say the right thing. I’m sorry for your loss. My thoughts are with you. You have my deepest sympathy. I stopped opening them last week, and they’re now stacked on the kitchen counter, where I add three more that have arrived today.
I’m still waiting for the card that says, I’m sorry your husband careened off a cliff with his mistress in a Jeep he couldn’t be bothered to rent for you. I know, because he’s dead, that it’s bad form to write this, but fuck him!
That’s a card that would speak to me.
I’m clearly in the angry phase now. I’m all kinds of pissed. Like the seeing-red, flaring-nostrils type of mad. I took it out on someone who called the house this morning. I don’t even know why I answered the phone. Maybe I was looking for a fight. The unfortunate woman, who sounded like a teenager, was calling from the alumni office of my alma mater, San Diego State University, to update my information. I held it together until she asked if I was still married, and then I unleashed all the pent-up frustration that had been building. I told her off, then threw the cordless receiver across the room.
I know I have misplaced aggression. Clearly it’s James I’m raging at. But I can’t tell him to go fuck himself and will never get the chance to yell at him for being a lying cheat. To see his gorgeous green eyes shift to the side when I confront him as he decides which way he wants to go—deny it or come clean? To see him hang his head as I cry and ask him, Why? To feel the shame deep inside that I might already know the answer to that question.
Naturally the cause of my rage, that little detail, is something that no one in my family besides Beth knows: James was in Maui because he was having an affair—with a girl so young she probably didn’t know who Debbie Gibson was. It’s obvious my mom suspects there’s more I’m not telling her, her eyes searching mine each time she asks why in the world James was in Hawaii without me, not quite accepting my answer that he had a very important client he was courting there. I hate to lie. Especially because it’s lies that have brought my world crashing down around me. But I remain tight lipped, knowing she’ll just add to the confusion.
And his mother. I can’t bring myself to tell her the truth. Even though she’s never liked me much—she made that clear years ago—she does not deserve to think about her son that way. To realize you can love a person and not know them at all. To start to question everyone and everything in your life. What else do you not know? Who else is keeping things from you?
Beth, for one. Turns out, she had an admission of her own. After she’d told me not to go to Maui with Nick, her left eye started twitching—the way it has since we were kids. It was her tell—that she’d done something I wasn’t going to like. The first time I noticed it, I was seven or eight. I couldn’t find my Malibu Barbie convertible. The twitching eye led me to her closet, where I not only located the bubblegum-pink plastic car, but Barbie and Ken in a compromising position in the backseat. So when her left eyelid started blinking uncontrollably in her living room yesterday, I pressed her for what she wasn’t saying. At first she denied there was anything. But I wouldn’t give up. You see, once you find out there are so many lies sitting right below the surface of your relationships, you want to know them all. Every single one. I used to think that some things were better left unsaid, like when my mom asked me if she was too old to wear that fedora at the pool a few months back. She was. But I told her she worked it because I knew she wanted to wear it. I had reasoned I was helping her feel confident. But now I realize that lies, even small, well-meaning ones, just pile up until they eventually topple over.