The Perfect Couple(48)
“Hello,” Tag says. “Sergio, how are you?”
It turns out that Sergio is calling for a very different reason. His contact at Skadden, Arps has told Sergio that there’s grumbling within the litigation department about Thomas Winbury. He isn’t pulling his weight, apparently. He takes long lunches and unscheduled vacation days. He often leaves work at five o’clock when other associates stay until nine or ten at night. At his last review, he was given a warning, but he’s shown no improvement. There’s talk of letting him go.
Tag sighs. Thomas has always put in just enough work to get by. Abby’s family is so wealthy that Tag suspects Thomas wants to get fired. He’ll work for Mr. Freeman in the oil business. He’ll move to Texas, which will break Greer’s heart.
“Thanks for the heads-up, Sergio,” Tag says. “I’ll have a talk with him.” He hangs up before Sergio can ask him how the wine dinner was and then he swears at the ceiling.
A few nights later, Thomas and Abby come for dinner at Tag and Greer’s apartment. Greer has made a leg of lamb and the apartment is redolent with the smell of roasting meat, garlic, and rosemary, but as soon as Abby enters the apartment, she covers her mouth with her hand and bolts for the bathroom.
Thomas shakes his head. “I guess she’s gone and ruined the surprise,” he says. “We’re pregnant again.”
Greer reaches out for Thomas, but they all know to limit their reaction to cautious optimism.
Tag shakes Thomas’s hand, then pulls him in for a hug and says, “You’ll make one hell of a father.” No sooner are the words out of his mouth than Tag doubts their veracity. Will Thomas make a hell of a father? He needs to buckle down at work, start setting an example. Tag nearly brings Thomas into his study to tell him as much, but he decides, in the end, to let the occasion be a happy one, or as happy as it can be with a woefully sick Abby. He’ll talk to Thomas another time.
That night, Tag can’t sleep. He slips from bed and goes into his study. His three home studies—the one in New York, the one in London, and the one on Nantucket—are sanctuaries dedicated to Tag’s privacy. No one enters without permission except the cleaning ladies.
Tag takes out his phone and scrolls for Merritt’s number.
She answers on the third ring. “Hey, Tag.”
Her voice brings it all back. There is noise in the background, voices, music—she’s out somewhere. It’s two o’clock in the morning on a Wednesday night. Tag should not be pursuing this.
“Hey yourself,” he says. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”
She laughs. “I’m downtown at this speakeasy thing. It looks like a laundromat but there’s a secret door, a code word, and voilà, you enter the underworld. Do you want to come join me? I’ll tell you how to get in.”
“No, thank you,” Tag says. “I just called to tell you your instincts were correct. Abby is pregnant. She and Thomas told us tonight at dinner.”
“Who?” Merritt says.
“Abby. Abby, my daughter-in-law. She was with you during Celeste’s bachelorette weekend. You said—”
“Oh, that’s right,” Merritt says. “Abby. Yeah, I’m not surprised.”
Tag feels like a fool. He should hang up. He’s going to see Merritt in a few weeks at the wedding and it would be best if their dalliance were a thing of the past. But there is something about this girl. He can’t leave it alone.
“Where did you say your apartment is?” he asks. “I think I’ve forgotten.”
Tag sees Merritt the next day after work, and the day after that, and on Saturday he tells Greer he’s going to run in Central Park but instead he goes to Merritt’s apartment. After sex, they walk down the street to a really good sandwich place and order lunch and sit side by side and talk and laugh—and in the middle of it, Tag realizes that he is losing control of the situation. What is he doing? Anyone might see him here with this girl.
He walks Merritt back to her apartment and she pulls him in by the front of the shirt. She wants him to come inside. And he wants to, oh, does he want to. He agrees, but just for a minute, he says.
She has turned him into a teenager again. His desire is so intense, so relentless, it frightens him. He can’t remember wanting anyone or anything as much as he wants this girl. His feelings for Greer seem almost quaint by comparison.
Merritt is twenty-eight years old, nearly twenty-nine. She has a lukewarm relationship with her brother and she doesn’t speak to her parents at all. This, Tag can’t understand.
“What do you do on Thanksgiving?” he asks. “Christmas?”
She shrugs. “Last year, Thanksgiving was Chinese food and a movie. On Christmas, I flew to Tulum for a yoga retreat.”
Tag senses a hole inside of Merritt, an emotional hole, which he knows is very, very dangerous. He needs to end this thing now, while there is still time to recover before the wedding. But the attraction grows stronger. Soon, he thinks only of Merritt—when he’s working, when he’s exercising, when he and Greer are eating dinner at Rosa Mexicano. Greer is consumed with finishing her novel and planning Benji’s wedding. She is so focused on these two projects that she doesn’t notice any change in Tag. She doesn’t see him, she doesn’t hear him, and sex is out of the question. She jokes that they’ll have a second honeymoon once Benji and Celeste are on their first honeymoon. But Tag knows that once the wedding is over, Greer will collapse, exhausted, or she’ll go into a funk because there’s nothing left to look forward to.