The Good Widow(14)
My hand flew off her arm. “We don’t know that for sure, Isabella,” I said, my voice faltering slightly. I caught the eye of the woman behind us in the aisle, who quickly focused on a placemat covered in snowmen, trying to pretend she hadn’t heard our exchange.
“Oh, but you do know, don’t you?” she accused, her eyes steely.
I realized later, looking back, that she had been waiting for that moment. To let me know that she knew. Had she held her tongue at Pottery Barn? Bitten her lip at Williams-Sonoma? Was she being patient and calculated, making sure we had the perfect tablecloth picked out before she punched me in the gut?
But the real question was: How long had she known? And why had James told her?
CHAPTER TEN
DYLAN—BEFORE
Dylan rubbed her hands over her bare arms, feeling a chill as soon as she stepped out of the cab.
James noticed her hugging her arms to her chest. “Let’s get you inside and on the dance floor. That will warm you up. I can’t wait to see you move in that dress.” James looked her over, then offered his hand with so much authority that Dylan didn’t even question him as he tugged her arm to join the crowd of bodies moving to the music. She’d never been much of a dancer, but she felt her hips obliging with ease and swinging to the beat, as if on autopilot.
James put his arms around Dylan’s waist and pulled her into him so she was grinding on his thigh. He closed his eyes and moved his body in time with the song. Dylan couldn’t believe the drastic change in him since they’d arrived. He’d been quiet on the ride over, but then he’d inched forward in the backseat of their cab when it pulled into the parking lot. And the second he opened the door of the bar for her and heard the music, every muscle in his neck and face seemed to relax.
He’d brought her to his favorite bar, hidden away in a Hispanic neighborhood in a corner of Santa Ana. She’d never danced to traditional Mexican music or witnessed the enthusiasm, no, the joy that it seemed to bring to the people listening to it. Her only exposure to anything like this was an awkward moment with a mariachi band at a bad chain restaurant, their horns blaring as her father tried to swallow the last of his enchilada combo plate that her mother had chastised him for ordering because it was too expensive. Dylan’s parents had spent a huge chunk of her childhood discussing the cost of things. What a rip-off! It’s two dollars less at Walmart! Did you use the coupon I gave you? It always left her feeling embarrassed and a little bit exhausted.
But this wasn’t a chain restaurant in Phoenix with stale tortilla chips submerged in bland salsa. This was a hole-in-the-wall in a neighborhood even her roommates, who didn’t have super high standards when it came to places to drink, wouldn’t be caught dead in. But they’re missing out, she thought as James spun her around. She was dizzy, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t understand a word the band was singing, but it was now her favorite song. She had never met the Hispanic couple dancing beside them, but she wanted to be their new best friends. Maybe they’d teach Dylan culture, something she often feared she lacked after growing up in a house that was literally whitewashed—her mother’s decorating style bringing new meaning to the word neutral.
Dylan had always felt bland—her blonde locks blending into her alabaster skin. A mean girl in middle school had once said Dylan was so plain she faded into the walls. But not when she was with James. He made her feel colorful. And sometimes she could almost pretend that this was their life. That he didn’t belong to someone else. That she hadn’t become the type of person who danced with another woman’s husband in a dark bar so far off the beaten path that no one would ever find her.
Several songs later, James said he wanted a margarita. Dylan wished she liked alcohol, but she couldn’t stand the taste, having gotten drunk once and only once in high school, her hangover so terrible the next day she vowed to never drink again. And she hadn’t. But she knew the buzz would help blunt the guilt she felt. Because she did feel terrible shame about the affair—she wasn’t a monster! Her conscience kept her up more nights than she’d ever admit. Her tossing and turning would often wake her fiancé, Nick, who would reach his large hand to her bare thigh to calm her, falling back asleep with his grip around her leg tight. Then she’d will her thoughts about James to be quiet, lying so still that it was almost like she wasn’t there.
She glanced at her phone as the bartender handed a margarita rimmed with salt to James and they said something to each other in Spanish. Dylan thought she caught the words delicious and beautiful, but she couldn’t be sure. She was a long way from the high school Spanish she’d waded through.
Nick was on a seventy-two-hour shift, so she was surprised to see one missed call and a text from him. He worked in a busy fire station in Long Beach and would often take several calls a night, usually coming home exhausted. Sometimes he’d tell her stories that made her heart hurt—a child who had been burned, a mother who had suffered a major heart attack and left her family behind, the homeless man who hadn’t bothered to get off the train tracks. He described the situations with such detachment, it was like he was reading the newspaper.
Yet he had no trouble connecting with his buddies at work, who adored him, insisting he use his athletic prowess to be pitcher on their many slow-pitch softball teams, and use the culinary skills he’d gleaned from his mother to win the chili cook-off for their firehouse each year. Nick was a guy who could be counted on. But Dylan wondered where he stored the anger and sadness—the helplessness he witnessed each day. Because she knew there was only so much one person could handle, and a small part of her often worried he might be close to bursting. But maybe he was like an earthquake—there would be no way of knowing it was coming until it was already there.