The Other Man(11)

That was it.

He didn’t even leave his number, or ask for mine.

There was no way whatsoever for me to misinterpret what that meant.

I honestly didn’t think I’d see him again.  I was resigned to that.  Not happy about it, but not bitter either.

Not bitter, because he’d given me something.  Something I hadn’t thought to feel again.

Hope.

Sad as it was, for better or worse, my life had fallen apart soon after I’d turned forty, and I hadn’t imagined, couldn’t even conceive of the idea that my best years of my life lay still ahead of me.

And now, because of Heath, anything seemed possible.

The revelation was liberating.

A heavy weight had left my body; the dead weight of a marriage that I was finished letting deprive me.  Of anything.  Just finished.

I didn’t want to be deprived of anything anymore, or ever again.

CHAPTER SIX

It was a few days later, and I wanted to blame the wine, but I wound up telling my girlfriends all about him.  Way too many salacious details.  I hadn’t meant to so much as mention him, but was hard to hold anything back from the girls.  They were those kind of friends.

We had a running bi-weekly girls’ night that I hardly ever missed.  The group had been going on and off for several years, and though I’d only joined up with them about a year prior, it felt longer.  Like I’d known some of them forever.

It was an impressive group of women.  Over a dozen of us.  Successful women.  Beautiful women.  Funny, entertaining.  Some single, some married.  A bit of anything you could want, really.

It was a large group, but it didn’t feel large.  We came in all ages, and no one broke off into cliques.  We all mixed well together.

Well, I should explain more.  It was more than a girls’ night.  It was more of a weekly, impromptu therapy session with friends.  And alcohol.

“How old is he, exactly?” Frankie asked, sounding zero percent judgmental, and one hundred percent fascinated.

I’d met Frankie first.  She had her own reality show, and I’d been shooting her for a spread in a magazine that featured said show.

We’d hit it off right away, but that was just how Frankie was.  I’d been going through a rough time, and we’d bonded, fast and deep.  She’d quickly invited me to a girls’ night and introduced me to the others.

I’d been impressed with her right away.  She was uniquely beautiful and wildly unconventional, in her looks and lifestyle, and the way she handled it never stopped impressing me.  She had so much acceptance for herself and who she was, but also of her friends.  It was hard not to adore someone who was that loving of both herself and others.

I had a serious girl crush on her, but it was purely platonic. A. Because I wasn’t gay.  And B. Because I was pretty sure her wife, Estella, would claw anyone’s eyes out that tried to come between them.

I grimaced.  “Twenty-five.”

Her smoking hot wife, Estella, whooped, high-fiving the air.  “You go, hot mama!  It’s about time.”

“Hell yeah,” Danika said succinctly.  She was one of my favorites.  A sarcastic soul after my own heart.  She was extravagantly gorgeous, a striking, exotic woman of some mixed Eurasian heritage.  Her face and body were flawless, aside from a slight limp when she walked, but I didn’t think that detracted from any of it.

I’d started attending these get-togethers just after she’d gotten married to a great heaping hunk of a man that put on one of the most successful magic acts on the strip.

“He’s not much older than my children,” I said, eyes swinging to Lucy, the therapist and voice of reason of the group.

“Don’t do that to yourself,” said Danika.  “He’s twenty-five.  Hardly a child.”

Easy for her to say, I thought, as she was sitting somewhere in her late twenties.

“I don’t honestly think I’d have done it,” I said, words still aimed at Lucy, “if I’d had a clue he was that young before we hooked up.  Unfortunately, I only asked him his age after.”  I knew that was likely bullshit.  My lust had been too overwhelming to be stopped at the word twenty-five.  I was trying to save face, though I didn’t actually need to, not in front of this group.

“Stop that,” Lucy said gently.  “Don’t beat yourself up.  You didn’t commit a crime.”

“What’s the lowdown on a cougar relationship happening, doc?” another one of the ladies, Candy, spoke up, asking a question I didn’t have the balls to.

Lucy held up her hands in a sort of c’est la vie gesture.  “It just depends on the individuals involved.  I don’t hand out verdicts for relationships.  You know this.”

“But what is the usual pattern for a thing like this playing out?” I asked her.  I knew better than to accept her pat answer.  She had all the likely scenarios, all the usual dysfunctional relationship patterns memorized.

Ugh, I’d thought the word relationship about a guy I’d only met twice.  I was so old school.

I’ve been out of the dating pool too long, I thought.

Lucy looked amused.  “What, you want me to cite off the statistics for you?”