“I don’t know what’s worse,” she whispered hoarsely. Logan searched her face and felt his stomach tie itself in a knot, sinking like a lead balloon.
“Ro, just…geez, lemme explain!”
“What, the part where you screwed my best friend “ my MARRIED best friend “ or where you screwed over my brother?” Logan blanched. Ororo’s entire body tensed, and she backed out of his embrace, brushing away his hands that felt so good only moments ago.
“Ororo, when I…when I was with Jeannie…”
“Jeannie,” she snapped, throwing up her hands and rolling her teary eyes. “Pet names. Nice!”
“Quit it!” he grumbled. Trying to smooth things over would get him nowhere if he didn’t get a word in edgewise. “I didn’t know you then! Things were a mess back then. I had needs, fer fuck’s sake! Jeannie was beautiful, and she had needs, too! She listened ta me when everything was fallin’ apart! She was bored, with her life, ‘Ro, and wanted a taste of something different.”
“That’s what Baskin Robbins is for,” she retorted, dashing away tears. “You get bored with vanilla, then you try pistachio, butter pecan, or any of the other 31 flavors!”
“Shit,” he muttered. This didn’t look good.
“So now you’re telling me she was ‘bored.’ Two perfect kids, head of the PTO, volunteers at the hospital and drives everyone’s kids on field trips, and you thought you were the ‘cure’ for her boredom?” she accused.
Okay. It just got worse.
“Her live ain’t perfect, darlin’.”
“Don’t call me that!”
“Ro, c’mon!”
“Don’t call me that, either!” She rubbed her temples and leaned on the arm of the couch, reeling.
“Ororo,” he prodded, frustrated, “gimme a minute, will ya?”
“You can’t explain this. A minute won’t make a bit of difference. Are there more? What number am I on the list, Logan?”
“There’s no list…!” Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
“Scott didn’t deserve what you did to him. You don’t know what you’ve done. This is probably killing him.” She turned away. Logan worried that she’d cry again, but her voice was almost far away.
“One thing you have to understand about Scott is that he doesn’t love or trust very easily. Not at all. The first day we met, Mom and Dad left us in the basement to watch a movie. I teased him, and he hit me with a pillow. I started tickling him, and he…I hurt him when I squeezed too hard around his ribs. He pulled away like I’d punched him. I told him ‘I didn’t do it that hard.’ He just said ‘It still hurts. Everyone hurts me when they touch me.’ He showed me his scars. Bruises.” She shivered at the memory. “His foster parents before didn’t love him, they just used him. So how do you think he feels now?”
Logan was digesting this slowly, dread and regret choked him and made him feel sick.
“You can hurt people with the choices you make. Did you think it was some…I don’t know, thrill to sneak Jean away from Scott? For some kind of challenge?”
“No. That ain’t it. It ain’t about Scott.” Logan went for broke “ again. “When ya get divorced and start datin’ again, ya meet single women who don’t have kids and who don’t wanna play Wicked Stepmom to the kids that ya love more than yer own life.” She tsked in disgust, but he plowed on. “Then ya meet some single moms who still treat any men that come along after their ex-husband like kryptonite. Ya end up hauling out yer old baggage and listenin’ ta theirs over dinner at Denny’s and knowin’ it ain’t gonna work if yer kids don’t get alone.”
Ororo’s face was going through different emotions, one after the other. Disgust. Wry amusement. More disgust. Anger. Confusion.
“Baggage.” With one word, she condemned him.
Oh, shit. Open mouth, insert world’s largest foot and choke on it.
“I. Didn’t. Mean. Us.”
“The hell you didn’t!” She stalked into her kitchen and began to run hot water, rinsing her spatula and the silverware.
“Let me do that.”
“You’ve done enough. So that was the appeal. Married women like Jean were nice and safe. And what about Emma?”
“I made a mistake,” he admitted.
“Hello, understatement?”
“Cut me some friggin’ slack!” Frustration simmered inside him, bubbling and threatening to boil over.
“I can’t. You see, we have a problem. You took your sweet time telling me about you and Jean, and since she never said anything, that makes me wonder, ‘Hmmm, are they still tippy-tippy pausing around, knockin’ boots?’ Are the sheets still warm?”
“Sometimes there weren’t any sheets!” he burst out. “No! We ain’t sleepin’ around anymore! I came clean with Scooter! I came to him on my fuckin’ knees to help me keep custody of Laura.”
“You weren’t that worried about Laura to sleep with her principal, or to risk being found out.”
“Don’t. Tell. Me. I don’t. Care. About Laura.” His jaw was a steel trap. She paused in emptying the leftover eggs into the trash as he approached. His hand captured her wrist to hold her still, not hard, but he didn’t want her to ignore him. “Ya don’t know what it was like. Sil wanted ta send her away to a private school a couple of hours from here if we didn’t get her into this one. I could still keep joint custory with her here. I might not be a great husband, Ororo, but I’ve only got the one character reference fer that job. I’m still a damned good father.” He had his back up, and she began to lose steam.
“You can’t blame me for taking exception to what you did.”
“Ororo…whaddya want me ta do? I’m sorry. I’m ten kinds of sorry. I haven’t slept with Jeannie in weeks. Or with Emma.”
“That makes me feel special. So I’m just what you needed to end the old dry spell?” Not to mention her own. Damn.
“No!” Yes. She was sexy, even in chili pepper pajama bottoms. All he could think about was her, and then this blew up in his face.
Then Logan fell back on an age-old rescue maneuver that people used to distract their lover during the most pivotal of spats.
He turned it around.
“What about you and me?”
“Wait…what about you and me?”
“You in the middle of a dry spell?”
“That’s just…I’m not going to discuss this with you now!”
“Why not? Seemed like ya were gonna before,” he shrugged. “Am I kryptonite, ‘Ro?”
“Not when you walked in through that door a couple of hours ago.” Then she dashed his hopes. “I don’t just bring men home to meet Luke. I run a business and I have a difficult ex. I have to be careful about who I let into my life!”
“I was a safe risk?”
“I thought so.”
“I like Luke,” he bristled.
“That’s what makes this hard. I’m already having a hard time getting my ex-husband to leave me and Luke to live our lives. I don’t want him to think he has one more reason to take him from me because I’m having a dysfunctional relationship.”
WHOA.
“Dysfunctional.” He closed his mouth, turned on his heel and grabbed his jacket. Hurt and frustration crawled down his spine in an ugly flush. The frying pan clattered from her limp fingers, landing in the sink.
“Dysfunctional,” he repeated under his breath. Mutter. Frustrated glance over the shoulder. Jingling pockets for keys. Mutter, mutter.
Her indignance suddenly took a hike. “Logan, I left a bad marriage. It took me forever to get back on my feet!”
“What’d we say about ‘baggage’ earlier? I’m done airin’ mine.” She tripped after him and watched him fumble with her dead bolt.
Oh. Crap. “Logan…”
“There ain’t one, count it, ONE relationship on this earth that ain’t at least a little dysfunctional, Ororo. I’m still fightin’ ta get my own equilibrium back. Sil took me to the cleaners. All I wanted out of my marriage when I left was Laura. I ain’t rich. I don’t need ta be. And I ain’t perfect.”
“I don’t need you to be. But I don’t share you. I won’t wait and watched while you and Scott puzzle out your case, because I can’t bear what this is doing to him.”
“Fine,” he shrugged. “Ya made up yer mind.”
“You made up my mind,” she corrected him. Her words made her feel even worse. Logan radiated hurt and resentment. Their perfect morning evaporated into thin air.
When she stood alone minutes later, watching his car drive off, she felt like crap.
~0~
Two Saturday nights later:
This kind of music didn’t have a lesson plan.
Allison sipped her Coke and swizzled the shrinking ice cubes with the slim red straw. She listened to the sound check, cringing at the sour thrum of feedback from the left amp.
Ali was garbed in her signature black and she didn’t skimp on eye makeup; her eyes still resembled luminous blue topaz, even thickly lined in kohl. Her tattoos laddered up her arms, exposed by the snug, short-sleeved tee that landed just short of her navel. Her hair was teased and blown out, making her look as wanton as she felt. Ali was ready to misbehave.
The bar was already drawing a crowd keen on snapping up the dollar shots that were the special of the night. No matter how many times Ali came out to strut her stuff, she still felt those butterflies taking wing in her gut. The music ruled her. It nourished her when she had nothing else to live for.
Her first few gigs were pitiful. Ali couldn’t package herself easily as a pop princess. It just didn’t fit. She couldn’t sing Joan Jett while she looked like Go-Go’s era Belinda Carlisle. Her mother stopped returning her calls after she dyed her enviably golden hair an inky black, to say nothing of the ink that she sported everywhere else. For the first time in longer than she could remember, Ali finally felt like herself.
Her concerts were her escape. No sheet music and tone-deaf fifth graders tonight. She didn’t have to take attendance; all she had to do was call everybody to the dance floor.
She finished her drink and set the glass on the bar, nodding to her bassist that she was nearly ready. She listened to his warm-up chords, appreciating the quality and humming the melody in time with him while she adjusted the mike.
Scott hadn’t shown up to her last couple of shows. Ali was crestfallen, but there was nothing she could do. Except mope. Or kick herself.
He was married. Even if he and Jean weren’t living the life of Ozzie and Harriet (okay, at least it wasn’t Ozzy and Sharon), it was still a marriage. He still had two beautiful children in the woodwind and brass sections of her third period orchestra class.
And he was Scott. That made him special.
He was the tall drink of water who slouched to hide his height and fade into the wallpaper. He was bookish and funny and occasionally nerdy when no one was looking, kinda like Ororo. He was shy. He was nice. And he was off-limits back then, because back then, Ali didn’t do nice. High school was a bitch.
Like Jean, Ali went to the cool kids’ parties, drank the cool kids’ beers, hung out in the cool kids’ basements, and snuck around with the cool guys. Typically they weren’t good boys. Outside of cheerleading practice, repertory singers’ rehearsal and honor society fundraisers, Ali was bad. Live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse. Ask her what she wanted to do with her life five years from high school graduation, and that was your answer, slurred drunkenly after about four Jell-O shots.
She got into Northeastern. She flunked out after two semesters. Her parents had been furious.
So Ali headed off to New York. Had two roomies whose priorities included freebasing, all-night raves, and shoving men out the door the morning after with a false phone number, whether they said they’d call or not. Ali woke one day, horrified, when a strange man bade her goodbye as he was buttoning up his shirt, and she had no recollection of how he got there, or how she got home.
Ali lived for the moment. One dead-end job led to another, until she had her phone turned off. The collections calls she no longer received turned into red notices in the mail. She couldn’t eat and pay rent during the same month. She used her last three dollars to purchase a newspaper and a pack of Twinkies at the corner store. The nudie bar next door had a Help Wanted sign in the window.
And that was all she wrote. The beginning of the end.
She made enough to afford a one-bedroom unit over a hardware store, just in time to move out after her roommates stole her necklace to trade for a fix.
Ali heard the music and she danced. She focused on its rhythm as the patrons focused on her goods, and it was the only thing that kept her sane. She imagined the crowded bar was her high school gym at homecoming and lost herself. She’d lost herself a long time ago.
The club owner heard her singing one night while she packed up her things and clocked out. He had a friend whose friend knew a friend who owned club, and they were looking for someone like her with a voice, not just a body or a face. It didn’t hurt that she had both. The club ended up being a dive that served watered down drinks and had one broken toilet. The gig itself nearly killed her that first night; the crowed looked bored through most of her first set, but gradually people drifted onto the tiny, sticky dance floor and heard her.
Ali held onto the music like a life raft. She still barely ate and made rent, but it gave her reason to keep trying.
She was restless. She kept perusing the want ads in the paper and saw an insert listing classes in the Sunday edition for the local junior college. Music classes. “Call one of our counselors now!” So she did.
One gig at a time. One class at a time. One semester at a time, until she transferred all of her units to the state school. Her dismal income guaranteed her financial aid, if she could just continue to make rent.
She reinvented herself one day after buying a print of Bettie Page at the poster shop, envying her sleek, dark looks and the fearless energy that blazed from her eyes, burning anyone looking. Something was still missing, she realized; she needed a symbol of some kind, to mark her new direction. Her rebirth.
The tattoo of a burning phoenix raptor on her back almost resembled angel’s wings and was worth the pain. She loved it.
Her old boss listed her job title on her tax forms as “Cocktail waitress.” Ali never questioned why; she seldom served drinks, anyway, unless Lila was out sick. When her buddy Lila turned out to have a fine set of pipes, too, they began sharing gigs and posters, passing out flyers with both their names, or she sang backup with Lila’s band, Cat’s Laughing.
It was less about becoming famous, and more about being heard. It was about being able to sing, and make music for the sheer joy of it.
Finishing her credential to be able to teach what she loved was the icing on the cake. It was exhilarating. And since she’d begun working at the school, every now and again, Ali would look into the eyes of one of her students and see a bit of herself, the way she was. That student inevitably became her prodigy.
More people filed into the bar a few at a time, gradually snagging tables near the stage. Ali smiled at a few of them as they met eyes. Some of them drooled over her lithe, petite body. One man murmured to the waitress to send over another of what she was already having but was disappointed to find out that it was only Coke.
Minutes later, the lights were down except for the ones onstage, illuminating her movements and the subtle burgundy highlights she’d added to her jet black hair.
Baby you'll come knocking on my front door
Same old line you used to use before
I said ya... well... what am I supposed to do
I didn't know what I was getting into
So you've had a little trouble in town
Now you're keeping some demons down
Stop draggin' my...
Stop draggin' my...
Stop draggin' my heart around
The Stevie Nicks standard was one of her favorites for its gritty flavor and her own belief that she’d lived it. She grew lost in it. The heat swelled in the tiny bar, making the air slightly humid. Ali slowly began to taste her own sweat.
She had a sense of being watched, above and beyond patrons’ eyes following her around the stage. She scanned the dance floor and came up empty; most of those couples were ignoring her and merely following the song. She was okay with that…for the moment.
Her eyes flitted toward the entrance, and there he was. Scott hovered near the door, looking uncertain as he glanced around his surroundings, but his expression changed as their gaze locked.
He was more casual than she’d ever seen him, not buttoned up in his double-breasted suits and polished Italian shoes. He looked broken-in and comfy in a pair of boots she never expected him to have in his closet, faded jeans and an oatmeal beige thermal. Now this, she decided, looked like a man who belonged in a park, playing Frisbee with his dog. Ali licked her lips and poured her heart out. Her bassist backed her up for the male vocal.
It's hard to think about what you've wanted
It's hard to think about what you've lost
This doesn't have to be the big get even
This doesn't have to be anything at all
I know you really want to tell me good-bye
I know you really want to be your own girl
Baby you could never look me in the eye
Yeah you buckle with the weight of the words
Stop draggin' my...
Stop draggin' my...
Stop draggin' my heart around
There's people running 'round loose in the world
Ain't got nothin' better to do
Than make a meal of some bright eyed kid
You need someone looking after you
He hunkered down to the bar and ordered a bottle of Sam Adams lager. He uncapped it and took a long pull, licking a bead of it from his lip. Her stomach fluttered. He had a wonderful mouth. Coffee brown eyes pierced her. Ali felt naked.
So she sang. She danced. She told her story in Stevie’s words because she was at a loss for her own.
I know you really want to tell me goodbye
I know you really want to be your own girl
Baby you could never look me in the eye
Yeah you buckle with the weight of the words
Stop draggin' my...
Stop draggin' my...
Stop draggin' my heart around
Stop draggin' my heart around
Her set was low-key and featured old favorites such as No Doubt’s “Don’t Speak,” which was soulful and plaintive, sung from the gut. She watched several women in the bar mouthing the words and swaying to it, as though they, too, felt the way she did, possibly recalling old flames and a dream that died. Mick Jagger’s “Beast of Burden” was next after she refreshed herself with another gulp of Coke and some banter with the crowd.
“Folks, I’m enjoying myself up here so much. But I’m gonna let Harry spin a few records for you while I take a breather.” A few people “awwwww’d” in disappointment, but they migrated back to the dance floor when throbbing house music pounded from the speakers.
Her feet pulled her to the bar in a slow saunter. She nodded hellos to a few people on her way back, but Ali only had eyes for one man in the back, nursing a beer and looking awed as she approached.
“Wow,” he murmured. “You were great.”
“You’re here,” she countered, and her smile that was so wicked before became shy. She toyed with her hair and peered up at him through her lashes. “I almost didn’t expect you.”
“I almost didn’t come,” he admitted. “But I needed to get out of the house. I took my work home with me. I drove myself a little nuts.”
“Then you came to the right place for the cure.” Scott pulled up a bar stool next to him. She sat and leaned in toward him as she listened to his words.
“I’ve had a crappy week.”
“What’s the matter, Scott?” she asked softly, keeping her voice low and staying close to him to be better heard over the loud music.
“Everything.”
“Wanna talk about it?” He looked pensive and sighed, making his chest rise and fall. That subtle motion made her want to stroke him, but she reined in the urge.
“No.” He took a sip of his beer, then changed his mind. “Yes.” She reached for him and covered his hand, caressing his knuckles with her thumb. It felt forbidden, touching him.
Ali didn’t care.
“Tell me.”
~0~
The next day:
Hey, Ororo. You haven’t returned my calls! Get back to me. Jean’s voice was slightly confused but cheerful as Ororo reviewed her voice mail messages. Heifer.
How dare she? How in the heck DARE SHE?
All those warnings not to fall for Logan’s lines. All of her denials that she was never involved him. “Wishful thinking,” she said, on Logan’s part.
Luke was absorbed in his Phoenix Wright game and working his way through a one-liter bottle of 7-Up. She watched him fondly and felt a small pang. He was growing up.
“Hey, Luke?” she prodded. He looked up expectantly.
“Yeah, Mom?”
“Don’t grow up to be a player,” she suggested gravely.
“Oooookay.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah, Mom.” He went back to his game.
“I mean it, buddy. You know how to treat girls, right?”
“I can’t hit girls, even when they do something jacked up,” he shrugged over his console.
“That, too. But I’m talking about when you start to like them.”
“Moooommmmm,” he groaned, finally facing her with a sour look. He rolled his eyes.
“I mean it, Lucas! When you like a girl, be honest with her. And just one at a time, okay? I know you think you’re cute. Partly because I think you’re cute,” she added. Ororo reached out and tweaked his ear, making her son grin and bat at her hand. “But no nonsense. Be up front with anyone who you care about, and they’ll be up front with you. Make sure you really like a girl for who she is, and that she isn’t trying to be anyone else.”
“I get it, Mom.”
“Good.” She gave him a smooch that he promptly wiped off when she wasn’t looking. She’d just started setting the table when he interrupted her.
“Hey, Mom, when are we gonna do something with Logan and Laura again?” She froze.
Crap. Crap. Crap. Why, Lord? Ororo’s face grew hot and she felt her temples begin to ache.
“You see Laura all the time at soccer practice,” she argued.
“You could call them and we could go to Chuck E Cheese again, if you want,” he offered gamely.
“You’re too kind to think of me,” she muttered. “If I want, huh?”
“Yeah!” he encouraged cheerfully.
“Luke, I don’t know if…” RIINNNGGG… “Shoot. Hold on, buddy.” RIIINNNGGG… “I’m coming!” she griped as she ran for the handset.
“H’lo?”
“I caught you at home,” T’Challa informed her smugly and without preamble.
“Can’t just say hello like normal people, huh?”
“Since when can’t a king do as he pleases?”
“When he’s talking with his ex-wife and wasting her time. What d’you want, T’Challa?”
“I’d like you to clear a date in your schedule. Specifically, the twenty-sixth.”
“And why would I want to do that, pray tell?” Luke peered over at her while he unscrewed the soda bottle. His expression was slightly worried at the change in his mother’s tone. She smiled to reassure him.
“I’d like to revisit the custody agreement,” he mentioned casually.
“Wait…you WHAT?”
“Lucas is coming of age to learn the ways of his people.”
“His people live here in Queens!!” she snapped.
“Don’t be coy, woman. I want him here more often with me, and with his grandmother. She misses him, and you’ve monopolized him long enough.” Bitterly, Ororo pictured Ramonda smirking over her husband’s shoulder and whispering in his ear.
She probably was…
“You have property here, T’Challa. You can see him whenever you want.”
“I’m exercising my right to have him live with me. I’ve done it your way long enough.” His voice was smooth and held the same note of arrogance he’d always used when they were married. She itched to slap him through the phone.
“My way? You’ve done it my way?” she fumed. “You could’ve told me you were doing it ‘my way’ all this time, T’Challa. Then the marriage, the nagging and turning my life upside down wouldn’t have happened.”
“Then Luke wouldn’t have happened, and you’re not going to win with that logic, Ororo. Feel free to tell me you regret having Luke,” he mused, and she detected an edge to his voice. “It will look nice in the transcripts when we go back to court.”
“Like hell it will, and don’t you put words in my mouth, you motherfucker!” she spat. Luke’s head whipped around and his eyes were wary. Ororo mouthed “I’m sorry” at him before she shooed him from the room. She winced when he stomped down the hall and slammed his bedroom door. Again, she prayed Why, Lord?
“T’Challa, the only qualities of yours that I’ve ever been able to stand from the get-go went straight into Luke and kissed your ass goodbye. I don’t regret having that boy in my life, because he IS my life. You can take that with you to court. Better yet, tell your lawyers to stick it up your royal, arrogant ass!”
“Hostility doesn’t go far with me,” he reminded her. He had the nerve to sound amused. “You could make this easier on yourself.”
“Oh, I could? Feel free to spill how,” she snorted.
“I want Luke back in Wakanda with me. I have business interests here…”
“Damn skippy. That stunt you pulled with my warehouses wasn’t cute. You’re not cute, either, with that nonsense.” Then she added, “And don’t think I won’t bring that to the attention of my lawyer, T’Challa. I demand full disclosure from any vendor who provides contracted services with Raindrops. So I have the right to break that contract.”
“Look how much energy you’re putting into fighting me over your ridiculous little company, when Luke is who you should be fighting for. And that’s not even necessary.”
“What?” Ororo drilled her pinky into her ear as if she heard him wrong.
“You could run your company just as easily from Wakanda as you can here. Rather than be selfish, Ororo, think about Luke and consider moving back to Wakanda.” Ororo’s cheeks felt hot; anger and frustration over his complete nerve roiled in her gut.
Just let it go. Hang up the phone before you have a screaming conniption…
“SELFISH???” Just as Ororo was getting good and lathered up, she heard the familiar feminine tones of her mother-in-law bustling around in the background.
“You heard my son. You never thought T’Challa was good enough for you, when it was the other way around from the moment your mother and I arranged his marriage to you. You’re impulsive, Ororo, and yes, you are selfish. You won’t keep my grandson from me and only offer us a glimpse of him whenever you choose.”
“A glimpse! So you’ll just continue to invade my privacy, show up unannounced, disrupt my business, and upset my son with talk of uprooting him from the school he loves?”
“Lucas will have the finest teachers and tutors money can buy when he moves here,” Ramonda sniffed. Ororo heard T’Challa’s faint sigh in the background this time. His mother had taken over. As usual.
“Then plan to wait about fifteen to twenty years for him to finish school, graduate from college with five degrees and spend his own money on a plane ticket, because that’ll happen way before I ever hand him over to you two. You controlled my life long enough. You won’t control my son’s.”
“He’s his country’s future king.”
“He’s a boy who needs his mother.
“That remains to be seen,” Ramonda pronounced with satisfaction. Just as Ororo was just warming up to pounce, T’Challa took back the phone.
“Lucas would have both of his parents in one place if you weren’t so stubborn.”
“It’s called having free will, and maybe that would’ve been possible if you and your mother hadn’t tried to take mine away.”
“Let me talk to Lucas,” he ordered.
“That’s up to him,” she snarled before cupping her hand around her mouth. “LUKE! Your dad wants to talk to you for a sec.” She repeated her demand when she received no response. “LUKE! PHONE!”
Lucas looked sullen and unhappy when he made his way back out to join his mother.
“Be polite,” Ororo hissed, but she didn’t mean it.
Luke’s end of the conversation was terse and perfunctory. “Uh-huh. Fine. Yeah, I guess. Hi, Grandma. Sorry. Hello, Grandmother. School’s fine, I like my chess club and I’m goalie this year…huh? A new school?” His brows furrowed and drew together. “I like it here. I wanna live with Ma.” Ororo heard the buzz of T’Challa’s voice through the receiver and sighed. Blast that man…
“Here, you can talk to Mom now,” he announced before shoving the phone at Ororo and running back to his room. Ororo grated her teeth and held the handset to her ear.
“Happy now?”
“I’d like to visit with Luke to talk to him in more detail.”
“That’s up to him. And since we’re doing this my way, T’Challa, call my secretary to arrange a time.” With that, she hung up.
In T’Challa’s penthouse, Ramonda crossed her arms and shook her head. “In my day, girls were raised better than that.”
~0~
Jean hummed as she loaded the dishwasher. The phone jangled from its cradle on the wall.
“Who on earth could that be?” She wasn’t expecting any calls from Scott; he already told her he’d be home late, daring her to argue. She’d already run out of steam. “This is Jean?”
“You left me a voice mail,” Warren informed her. She stifled her surprise and curled her hand around the edge of the receiver to muffle her voice.
“What are you doing? You can’t call me at home!” she railed. “Scott already raked me over the coals about-“
“I know. I know, Jeannie.” His sigh was gusty. “I knew something was wrong all week long at work. He just looks through me whenever I stop by to go over the files on a case he’s been helping me on, and he just handed it back to me yesterday, and told me I’m on my own.”
“So now what?” Her voice was as plaintive as a child’s.
“You tell me. What do you plan to do?”
“This isn’t something you just plan. I didn’t wake up today and make out a to-do list that said ‘Shop for toilet paper. Walk the dog. Tell Scott I had an affair’ this morning.” She ran her fingers through her hair, coiling the coppery tresses around her fist.
“Might help if you had a plan, Jeannie. I need to know how to deal with this.”
“What’s the problem? There’s nothing for you to deal with, Warren! All I need to know is this: Are you in love with me?”
The silence between them was thick and charged with tension. It was broken by Warren’s sigh. She could practically hear him choosing his words, and she leaned back against the wall, closing her eyes.
“Go ahead and call me back.”
“Warren!”
“You’ve got my cell.” He hung up before she could pry it out of him, and she wanted to scream.
~0~
She only meant to talk.
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s awful, Scott.”
“Story of my life.”
“Don’t say that. You didn’t know Jean had a flexible concept of commitment when you got married. You loved her.” His body felt warm beneath the soft knit of his shirt. She rubbed her cheek against it as they swayed gently together.
They talked endlessly. Ali and Scott’s glasses were empty; she acquiesced to his offer of a drink and added rum to her Coke. They began chatting at the bar, getting caught up with each other’s lives over the past decade. Slowly they made their way to the patio for a breath of fresh air, standing just inside the doorway. Ali shivered slightly after a while, chilled by the night air.
Scott’s arm found its way around her shoulders, and her body betrayed her, settling too easily into his warmth.
“We shouldn’t be doing this.” She faced him. “I’m an idiot. You shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have asked you to come.”
“Why not?” He looked taken aback, but he didn’t let go. She didn’t move away.
“Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“We’re two old friends having a drink and enjoying some music. And you owe me a dance.”
“What?” she cried, incredulous. “Scott, we can’t…”
“Ah, but you can!” he cajoled. His grin was smug, bringing out a dimple she never noticed he had before. “Ororo beat your socks off at Dance Dance Revolution, so you owe it to yourself to have a rematch.”
“Ororo’s not here, so that hardly seems fair.”
“Okay. She loses by default. But you’re still here.” His logic was too sound.
“I want to,” she explained. She faced him, backing away just enough to be heard over the volume of the music as it drifted outside. “But you’re Jean’s husband. Not boyfriend. You’re a conscientious adult, Scott, but you’re not a free man yet. I don’t want you to make a mistake that might make you feel guilty. You’re a good person.” His hands slipped from her upper arms, but he took her hands instead, holding them between them. He was intrigued by her hands, she mused. He stroked her long, slender fingers that had slightly calloused fingertips and brutally short nails from playing guitar. “Dancing with me might not be a good idea.”
“Because you’re worried about me feeling guilty, or because you really don’t want to dance with me?” he pried, and then he looked into her eyes. She saw the strength in his face that she’d always identified him by, but also pain and overwhelming need. He was uncertain of himself. And he was uncertain of how she felt about him.
“Because I’m afraid of what will happen between us if ““ Ali stopped herself.
“Go on,” he replied softly. She closed her eyes and squeezed his fingers. His hands were strong and warm and felt so good.
“No. That’s it. Nothing can happen between us. It would hurt Rachel and Nate, and I can’t betray Jean.” Even if we don’t get along because she’s a shallow, self-serving hose beast…
“There’s already something between us, but I’ll let you decide what it is, if and when you decide the time is right. I have feelings for you, Alison. I don’t know where they came from out of the blue. I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know why it happened. But I can’t stop thinking about you, and damn it, will you please give me one dance for the road?” His voice rose on a petulant note, and the beginnings of a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.
That’s how they ended up here. The DJ’s set was winding down to a close, and he announced last call for the dollar shot special before Ali was due to close out her number.
Ali and Scott felt a heavy sense of irony over the song that moved them around the floor; Madonna’s torch singer’s wail that “Love Don’t Live Here Anymore” cut Ali like a knife. Scott seemed unmoved by the song, but he slowly eased her closer until his hands were no longer politely placed at her hips; his arms twined themselves around her waist, and his caress along her back was greedy. She drank in his male scent mingled with his soap and the detergent in his shirt; he breathed in the scent of her shampoo from her soft, silky hair.
“I can’t kiss you,” she warned him. “Not tonight. Not yet.” She drew back and looked longingly into his face, hating how sexy his mouth looked. His lips were thin and chiseled, and Scott had perfect teeth. Damn it… “When you sort out what you want to do with your marriage, and when things don’t feel so raw, we can talk about it. You can still talk to me. I just can’t offer you anything else.” That guilty little voice of reason in her head nagged that she shouldn’t even be offering him that much, courtesy of the wedding band on his finger. Her heart told her voice of reason to shut her piehole.
“I’ve been trying to sort out my marriage for months,” he replied despondently. “But you’re right. Everything’s so raw that I’m bleeding.” He knew she was right.
It was going to be so much harder, knowing how it felt to hold him, even surrounded by so many people. Ali’s heart pounded so hard and fast she felt dizzy, matching the pulse in Scott’s neck pressed against her temple. For the moment, they had a reprieve. Ali would wake up and go to school the next morning to lead a group of forty students through a Souza march. Scott would be up to his neck in reports, records and transcripts, buttoned back up in his suit, wearing his game face. They wouldn’t be too people wondering what could have been.
For the sake of her sanity, Ali knew that was it.
“I just won’t be a mistake that you make if you decide to stay with Jean.”
“Staying with Jean may be the biggest mistake I can make, Ali.”
“I’ll leave that up to you to decide,” Ali told him gently, “without any interference from me.”
“Ali,” Scott asked.
“Uh-huh?”
“Do you have feelings for me?”
“Should I? No. That doesn’t mean I don’t.” He took cold comfort in her honesty. Ali lost herself in his heartbeat.
“Thanks for the dance, Alison.”
“Good night, Scott.” Ali’s body protested the absence of his against her. Her fingers slipped reluctantly from his hand as he turned to go. By the time he had his coat on by the front door, Ali had already resumed her place behind the mike. She picked up her guitar, already out of its case and propped against the speaker, and she started to play a few chords of a song that always made her moody, but it wouldn’t leave her alone.
God, I feel like hell tonight
Tears of rage I cannot fight
I'd be the last to help you understand
Are you strong enough to be my man?
Nothing's true and nothing's right
So let me be alone tonight
Cause you can't change the way I am
Are you strong enough to be my man?
Lie to me
I promise I'll believe
Lie to me
But please don't leave
She was glad he’d already left before she made it to the second chorus. By the time the bartender announced last call, Ali was heartsick.
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