Good Time(36)

“So you’re suggesting a social experiment in which strangers marry each other to see if the divorce rates improve any based on random pairings?”

“It wouldn’t be totally random. It’d be based on mutual coveting.” I grin but he doesn’t say anything. “Coveting is a fancy word for ‘lust,’” I add helpfully. “Passion? Ardor? Desire?”

“Deranged,” he replies. “It’s a fancy word for ‘crazy.’”





Chapter Eighteen





Since he’s already divorcing me I set about clearing my entire plate when he serves up his chicken pasta dish. There’s no reason to pretend I’m a delicate flower at this point, we’re way past that. I’m also still harboring a little resentment over choosing that salad for lunch and too hungry to care.

“So good,” I moan around a mouthful of pasta. “Did they let you sample this cheese you used or did you already know it was good?” I ask when I’m done chewing.

“I can’t tell if you’re serious or insane.”

“I’m just a real good time.”

“You’re something,” he agrees. He takes a sip of wine, observing me over the rim of the glass.

“Have you ever met anyone like me though?”

He pauses for a long time, watching me as if he’s giving this some real thought. “No,” he finally says. “No, I most definitely have not.”

“Have you ever been married before, Vince?”

“No.” He shakes his head, a single back-and-forth motion. I wonder if he thought about marrying Gwen. That was the name of the ex Staci mentioned.

“Yeah, me neither.” I shrug. “I’m afraid I might be terrible at it.”

“What makes you think that?”

“My parents are terrible at it.”

“It’s not genetic.”

“No, but it’s learned behavior, isn’t it? That might be worse.”

“You seem very much like a woman who can do anything she sets her mind to.”

“Hmm.” I like that. I like that a lot. “What about your parents? Are they still married?”

“They were never married.”

“Oh.” I stab my fork into a bite of chicken while I imagine all the possibilities of what that means. Maybe it’s something very tragic, like his parents were madly in love but his father died while his mother was pregnant. Maybe he was on a military mission or in a car accident while on his way to pick up a crib. I wonder if it makes Vince sad, whatever it was. I take a bite and observe him, wanting to know more but sure I don’t have any right to ask.

“My mother was a stripper and my father was no one worth mentioning,” he says after a couple of minutes of silence as we ate. It’s like he can see the curiosity swirling around in my brain. Or maybe he’s already familiar with my vivid imagination and decided to nip whatever visions I was having in the bud.

“Oh.” It takes me a moment to process what he said. “Was?” I question. “Is she, um… has she passed?”

“Yes.” He doesn’t look sad, exactly. Vince doesn’t give away much, I’ve found, but there’s a definite poignancy that flashes across his eyes, a quick blink. “It’s been a long time.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.”

“Did she teach you how to make this?” I stuff another bite into my mouth. I wonder if he’d like to be roommates if nothing else. I am good at doing the dishes when Lydia cooks, so I’m not a total deadbeat roommate.

“Not this specifically”—he smiles—“but she taught me to be self-reliant. She used to tell me she was my mother, not my maid.”

“Smart.”

“She was. She would have liked you,” he adds. Then he blinks, looking surprised that he said it, that he revealed something he hadn’t meant to.

“Do you have any siblings?”

“No, it was just me and me and my mom.”

“Where do you go at the holidays then? Thanksgiving? Christmas?”

“What?”

“If you don’t have a mom? Or a family? Where do you go?”

He looks at me for a long moment like my questions fascinate him. I think they’re pretty ordinary questions but maybe he’s not used to being asked such things.

“I work a lot during the holidays. Sometimes if I’m”—he pauses here as if he’s not sure how to phrase this part—“with someone, we might travel.”

Right. When he’s with someone. Someone who is not me.

“You can come here for Thanksgiving if you want. If you’re not with someone, that is.” I use my fingers to air-quote the word ‘someone.’ “If you’re home, you can come over. I won’t even ask you to cook, because Lydia will do everything. I’ll probably peel the potatoes or something.” I frown, thinking about how Thanksgiving is a couple months away and perhaps Lydia won’t be making Thanksgiving dinner in our apartment. We’d planned on it, discussed it when we made the move to Nevada, deciding it would be too expensive to fly home and we wouldn’t have enough vacation time to make it worth a trip. But things change and she might be officially living with Rhys by then. She might want to have Thanksgiving there, not here.