Текст книги "A Little Too Much"

Автор книги: Lisa Desrochers

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 1 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

A Little Too Much
A Little Too Far – 2
by
Lisa Desrochers

To Amanda, editor extraordinaire, for making this into the book I thought I wrote.

Acknowledgments

AS ALWAYS, MY most heartfelt gratitude goes to you, my fabulous readers, for investing yourselves in my poor, tormented characters. I can truly say that I love my job, and it’s only because of you that I can do what I do. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

I dedicated this book to my brilliant editor, Amanda Bergeron, who pulled the story out of the pit of darkness it started in and made it into something you might enjoy reading. I am so honored that she decided Hilary and I were worth the effort. The day my agent sent my manuscript to Amanda was the luckiest day of my life.

And speaking of my omnipotent uber-agent, Suzie Townsend, as always, I owe everything to her tireless efforts on my behalf. She’s blown away every hope and expectation I could have had for an agent, and has become someone I consider a friend. There aren’t words to thank her adequately for everything she’s done for me.

There’s also a village that needs thanking. Everyone behind the scenes at New Leaf Literary and HarperCollins—including, but not limited to, Jo Volpe, Kathleen Ortiz, Pouya Shahbazian, Jaida Temperly, Danielle Barthel, Abigail Tyson, and Dana Trombley—has put in countless hours to get Hilary’s story out into the world, and I owe them my deepest gratitude. And the William Morrow Art Department are some of my favorite people! Thanks for the awesome covers!

To my crit partner, Kody Keplinger, smooches! Love you, girl! Thanks also to Ingrid Paulson for steering me toward some amazing NA books, and for helping to smooth over some lumps in this one.

My family is my greatest source of inspiration. Without their support, I never would be able to do what I do. If I could have hand chosen who I’m related to, I would have picked each and every one of you. Love you. And a special thanks to my nephews for their Minecraft expertise.

And, as always, because my muse is a wannabe rock star, I need to send a shout-out to the musical inspiration for this book. Hilary and Alessandro are very complex characters, and there are several songs that shaped them, but the one that most embodies Hilary is Pink’s “Just Give Me a Reason.” Alessandro evolves over the course of the first two books in this series, but his song throughout is Creed’s “My Sacrifice,” which Hilary chooses as his ringtone.

Chapter One

THE FAKE BLONDE with the fake lips and the fake double Ds is glaring at me. Hell, I’d be glaring at me too if I could. I can’t believe I screwed that up.

But I did.

I always do.

The only auditions I can get without an agent are for off-off-Broadway musicals. That’s because the only thing on my resume is American Idol, where I made it all the way to Hollywood Week three years ago. Unfortunately for me, I can’t dance . . . which is a problem unless you’re playing a paraplegic or something, so I’m basically screwed.

But that was worse than usual. Christ, I actually knocked that girl over.

In my defense, she was screwing up almost as much as I was. If she were where she belonged, I wouldn’t have run her down. But . . . shit.

I pull my gaze away from the deathbeam of Blondie’s glare and glance at the casting director, flitting around up front like she’s all that. She’s never acted a single part on Broadway, and yet here she is, my judge and jury.

Brett’s worked with her before. Says she’s pretty cool. He told me he’d talk to her—put in a good word. But he came in halfway through the audition, plunked down in the back row, and hasn’t budged since. I really only noticed his arrival because of the burst of pheromones up front and the estrogen shuffle that followed. All of a sudden, all the girls onstage were adjusting their cleavages and fluffing their hair. But I never saw him even look our direction. And he never went up front.

I look up at him now and force myself to breathe. He’s texting, looks like, and clearly has no intention of saying anything to anybody.

A flicker of annoyance starts in my gut, but it’s snuffed out cold by nerves when Casting Director Chick approaches the stage. She looks up at us and claps her hands twice to get our attention.

“Okay . . .” she says loudly, then pulls her iPad out from under her arm and glances at it. “Numbers one, two . . . seven, ten, twelve . . . fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, twenty, and twenty-one: I need you to sit tight. We’ll do the number again in five. The rest of you, thank you for auditioning. You’re free to go.”

Damn.

Most Idol rejects record indies, or try for record contracts, but since I was six and my grandpa took me to see Annie on Broadway right before he died, my dream has always been to act onstage. But everything is so political, and the competition is tough, so this is pretty much how the last three years have gone. Thanks, but no thanks.

My muscles are bunched so tight that when I look down to double check the number pinned to my sleeve, I feel something in my neck pull.

Thirteen.

That should have been my first clue that things weren’t going to go well. Lucky number seven made it. Unlucky thirteen, not so much.

“That blows, Hilary.”

Jessica’s sympathetic voice snaps me out of my one person pity party and I try to smile at her. She’s miles of legs topped by big brown doe eyes, which are looking at me like my puppy just became roadkill. Her long honey-brown hair is pulled off her face in a high ponytail, and her fair skin is perfectly flushed without a stitch of makeup, making her look very I-have-no-clue-how-hot-I-am.

“It was just bad karma. Number thirteen,” she says with a poke to my shoulder. “I think everyone should take their cue from hotels and just skip it.”

“What?”

She plants one slender white hand on her hip and flips the other one palm up in a presenting-the-obvious gesture. “You know, how there’s never a thirteenth floor in hotels?”

“I never noticed.” Mostly because I’ve never stayed in one with more than two floors and a broken ice maker.

“So, we’re still going out for my birthday next week?”

This brightens my mood a little. As adorable as she is, Jess knows how to have a good time, and that is so what I need right now. “Definitely. A week from Thursday, right?”

She nods. “We should try that new place on the Lower East Side . . . Club Sixty-nine, I think?”

“Sounds good.”

She bounces on her toes a little and her ponytail swings behind her. “It’s going to be epic!”

“Break a leg, Jess,” I tell her with a punch to the shoulder—right at her lucky number seven. If I’d said this to anyone else, I’d have meant it literally. There’s nowhere on this planet more cutthroat than Broadway. But Jessica is a really sweet kid. At nineteen and pretty fresh off the bus from Biloxi, she hasn’t let this place ruin her yet. She’s a walking contradiction: an adorably gay Southern bell who believes in karma.

I try to remember what I was like three years ago, at that same age. I wasn’t as jaded as I am now, but I was never as innocent and naive as Jess is. This world doled me my first swift kick three days before my fourteenth birthday, when my dear mother got her drunken ass thrown in jail, leaving me to fend for myself.

And that was only the beginning.

“Thanks,” she says with an unsure smile, like she wants to jump up and down in her excitement, but she doesn’t want to hurt my feelings.

I give her a quick hug. “We’ll talk later, okay?”

She bobs a nod. “I’ll call you.”

As she makes her way to the callback group, I glance at Blondie—number three. Actual flames are shooting out of her eyeballs in my direction. I head for the stage stairs before she blowtorches me through sheer force of will.

Exit stage left: the story of my life.

I grab my backpack from the mound at the bottom of the stairs and hike it onto my shoulder, then head toward Brett, at the end of the back row of seats. He’s in black warm-up pants and an unzipped gray hoodie over a wifebeater, slouching down with his feet on the seatback in front of him. He’s still sweaty from rehearsal, which is his best look. When I reach him, he’s laughing a low chuckle at whatever’s on his iPhone screen. He grins, then his thumbs start moving furiously over the screen as he texts whoever back.

“Did you talk to her?”

My voice slices into his awareness and he looks up with those deep, ocean-blue eyes, surprised. He gives me a sympathetic squint. “Sorry, babe. But for what it’s worth, I don’t really think it would have made any difference.”

He did not seriously just say that.

“Fuck you very much, Brett.” But as I spin and start hoofing it toward the side door, I see some of the other girls eye me, then Brett, and feel the sudden urge to go back and lay claim to my property.

Yes, he’s gorgeous, and yes, everybody wants him. He’s basically six feet of blond beach god in the middle of Manhattan, complete with perfect teeth and dimples. Sex on a stick. I always joked that if they ever cast any of those animated Barbie movies on Broadway, Brett would get the Ken role every time.

But he got something better.

The name Brett Collins might not mean anything to you, but to aspiring Broadway actresses, it does. He scored a major support role in the new show Calculus, My Cock, and Other Hard Things, which opens at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre in two weeks, then goes on the road for a nationwide tour. It’s about five college guys and all that self-discovery crap. Brett has a killer bod, so his partial nude catches a lot of attention. Preview performances started this week and the reviews are unexpectedly good. And they all mention Brett specifically.

But even he admits he’s not nearly as good an actor as I am.

For about a year after American Idol, I had an agent. With my look, which is unique, I guess she thought my fifteen minutes of Idol fame would score me a big role in no time. When it didn’t happen, she stopped calling me for auditions, then dropped me. I’ve got a couple of leads for new agents, but until I get one, I need someone on the inside to get me auditions. Brett’s my ticket onto Broadway, and if any of those cutthroat bitches lays a hand on him, I swear to God, I’ll take it off at the wrist.

I spin and glare at him. As he hauls himself out of the seat, he gives me that goddamn sexy half-smile that he knows makes me want to jump his bones. That’s pretty much how we end all our fights—in a sweaty, grunting, tangled mass of arms and legs.

But not this time.

He promised he’d say something to Casting Chick.

But then he catches up to me and I feel a tingle zing up my spine when he lays a hand on my hip. “I really am sorry,” he says low in my ear in that voice—just a little rough around the edges—and the tingle in my spine turns into a throb in my groin.

Damn him.

I spin and glare at him, so wanting to be pissed, but he glides his fingertips along the curve of my breast and melts me from the inside out.

He leans closer and his lips brush my ear as he says, “You’ll get the next one.”

When his lips press into mine, I forget to breathe. That’s what he does to me. That’s what just looking at him does to most women. Since the first time he touched me at an off-Broadway audition a year ago, there’s been no denying the attraction.

But I have no illusion this is love. He doesn’t love me and I don’t love him. We never do anything together outside the bedroom, and we don’t really even have any friends in common. We’re all about the physical, which works for me. I don’t do love.

He finally lets me go, and when I look up, a group of my fellow rejectees, including Blondie, are standing near the door, staring at us with gaping jaws.

I tug my jacket on and smile sweetly at them while glaring daggers, but despite my “back off” vibe, Blondie takes a step closer.

“Hey, Brett,” she says, brushing her fingers over his arm and thrusting her silicone in his face. “Long time no see. Congrats on your part.”

He gives her that same sexy smile he just gave me. “Thanks. You looked great up there,” he adds with a nod at the stage.

I grab his hand, towing him toward the door.

“See ya around,” he calls back to her as we hit the sidewalk.

I pull my jacket tight around me. A cold October drizzle is falling, but at least it’s not snowing yet, so that’s something. “You know her?”

He shrugs. “We hooked up a few times.”

I glare at him.

He smiles and loops an elbow around my neck, pulling me closer. “Way before you, babe. Don’t worry,” he says into my hair as we weave our way through the pedestrian horde jockeying for sidewalk space.

“I’m not worried. I’m disgusted. She’s skanky.” Truth is, I’m used to girls falling all over Brett, but he’s been good in the year we’ve been together and kept his hands off, so I can’t really give him too much crap.

New Yorkers have seen it all, so not much warrants the turn of a native’s head, but Brett and I always get a few head turns, and the occasional tourist will openly gawk. Brett is gorgeous and I’m . . . interesting.

Where my sister Mallory got all Mom’s Irish—the wavy red hair, fair skin, and freckles, I’ve got funny hazelly-green eyes and a shoulder-length black lion’s mane in loose kinks, with red highlights that really come out in the summer. My skin is coffee-with-too-much-cream, and if I spend any time in the sun, it turns almost as black as my dad’s, totally obliterating the faint smattering of freckles across my nose and cheeks.

Mom was only ever married to Mallory’s dad, and I guess that only lasted a few years, until Mallory was, like, three. After that was just a string of live-in boyfriends, one of whom was my dad. He was out of the picture before I was old enough to remember him, though. When I was little and I asked Mom why Mallory’s dad came and took her places and mine didn’t, she said that my dad went back to Jamaica when I was a baby. I used to wonder if it was because of me, but I’ve figured out since that he wasn’t what you’d call an upstanding citizen. I think he got deported after he got arrested for dealing drugs. I’ve only seen photos of him—enough to know I’m a funny combination of him and Mom.

By the time we get off the subway and walk to our apartment, I’m late for Mallory’s. Our apartment is on the fourth floor in a decent Upper West Side neighborhood. It’s small, one bedroom, a bathroom, and a great room—just a white box, basically.

When I moved in here almost a year ago, it was a total bachelor pad. I’m no neatnik, so it’s only slightly less messy now than it was before, but unlike Brett, I have a breaking point. When I can’t stand it anymore I’ll do the dishes or scrub the bathroom. I’ve added a few touches of my own, too. I’m not into frilly knickknacks or anything, but I put up some prints and tossed some red throw pillows on Brett’s brown leather couch. And I bought some stuff for the kitchen even though I don’t get much of a chance to cook. It’s not much, but it anchors me to this place. I own something. I exist in this space. I belong here.

I head to the bathroom and crank on the shower. I strip off my yoga pants and thong and pull the clip out of my hair, running a hand through it so it falls around my shoulders.

My eyes trace over the first orange and black butterfly tattooed at the front of my right hip. I turn and follow in the mirror up the twisting, brightly-colored line of tiny fluttering wings that arches over my right butt cheek, across my low back, and underneath my left shoulder blade, then skims the back of my shoulder on its way to looping over the top and ending at my left collarbone. No single butterfly has a wingspan larger than half an inch, and most are smaller, but there are two hundred and nine of them, one for each day I spent in the group home. They took two years to finish, and the money I spent on them really should have gone to dance lessons, but they remind me of my freedom . . . and never to let myself get trapped again.

I step into the warm water, feeling its fingers tickling over my skin. I’m just rinsing my conditioner a few minutes later when the shower curtain slides open and Brett steps in. He cups my backside in his hands. “Hilary McIntyre, this is one fine ass.”

I turn and glance at his growing erection. “Sorry, baby, but I’m late for my sister’s.”

He lays a hand on himself and strokes, a wicked grin curving his mouth. “I’ve got a few ideas on how to make you even later.”

“I’ve gotta go. It’s Jeff’s birthday dinner.”

He shrugs and lets himself go, but that smile is still there. “Later then.”

I know better than to invite Brett to Mallory’s. He would probably go, but he wouldn’t want to be there. He hates kids. And the truth is, I don’t want him there anyway. I like to keep the three Fs compartmentalized. Family=Mallory, Friend=Jessica, Fuck=Brett. No cross-pollination. It’s just easier that way.

I finish up in the shower and abandon him to the cold water. Wrapping a towel around my hips without bothering to dry off, I pad up the hall to our room, where I pillage the closet and come out with a short, layered skirt and a snug black sweater. This outfit is kick-ass with my new boots. I drop my towel on the bed and go to the mirror over the dresser. I squirt some Frizz-Ease into my palm and tame my kinks into soft curls, then twist them around my fingers so they come out tight corkscrews. I’m leaning against the dresser brushing on my mascara a few minutes later when Brett comes in, a towel slung low on his hips.

His fingers trail up the inside of my thigh. “You sure you’re not up for a quickie?”

No, I’m not sure at all. But if I miss Jeff’s dinner, I’ll never hear the end of it. “I’m already late.” I reach for him and squeeze. “But hold that thought.”

Chapter Two

THERE IS NOTHING quite as effective at throwing all my inadequacies in my face as a trip to my sister’s. She’s the picture of middle-class America: a husband, two point four kids, a white picket fence, and a dog. (Okay, there’s no actual picket fence, or point four of a kid, but there may as well be.) She’s everything I’m not and never could be, even if I wanted to. Which I don’t.

Don’t get me wrong. I owe everything to Mallory and Jeff. They’re the only family I have. But it’s still hard to be around them sometimes, even though I really don’t want that life. I’m not cut out for marriage, or motherhood, or a mortgage, or any kind of commitment at all, for that matter.

And I’m not jealous.

I’m really not.

But, still . . .

I celebrated my fourteenth birthday by getting shipped off to a group home after our mother decided to pull her little stunt and got herself thrown in jail. The law doesn’t look kindly on driving with a 2.1 blood alcohol level and running down an innocent man in the process. But the truth is, everyone had already abandoned me years earlier. By the time Mallory left for college when I was ten, Mom was too wrapped up in the bottle and her boyfriends (even the ones that hit her) to give much of a shit about anything else, so I was just baggage. We never heard from Mallory. I was alone. I started doing things like ripping out hunks of hair or biting my nails until they bled, because physical pain was something I could grasp. It meant I existed. And it was easier to deal with than the loneliness.

After Mom went to jail, the court wouldn’t let Mallory have custody of me until she was twenty-one and employed, even though she wanted me, so I had seven months in the system. That was all I needed to see why kids who come out of foster care nearly always go bad. Mallory was finishing college in Florida, so she wasn’t around until I went to rehab, then she was trying to find a job so they’d let her have me. It was a long seven months.

When I finally came to live with her I was pretty messed up. It couldn’t have been easy to take me in. And on top of it, she and Jeff had only been dating, like, eight months. Me and all my baggage would have been enough to send most guys running for the hills, but Jeff treated me like a princess—like part of the family. Anything I wanted, he got it for me. He got me caught up so I could go back to school for my sophomore year. He’s always felt like the father I never had.

He and Mallory got married four months after I moved in, eighteen days before Henri was born. From there, it was all late-night feedings and burpings and the inevitable spit-up, doctor’s appointments, and poopy diapers. Tons of poopy diapers. But Jeff didn’t shy away from any of it. He was in poop and puke up to his elbows and never once complained.

And he and Mallory are still totally in love. Like I said: the picture of America.

I take the PATH to Jersey City, but my bus connection is delayed, so I’m even later than I’d thought. When I finally step up to their door and ring the bell, their big golden lab, Rufus, starts barking in the backyard. A second later, the door is flung open and I’m looking down at a four-and-a-half-foot person with a mop of sable hair and big gray eyes. Henri.

“Hey, buddy! How’s it going?” I say, ruffling his shaggy hair.

“Auntie! Come see what I made for Dad!” He takes my hand in his sweaty little one and tows me through the door, then waits while I kick off my shoes.

“Hey, Hil! I’m in the kitchen,” Mallory calls when we reach the family room.

“You need help?” I yell back as Henri drags me across the room toward his little brother, who is sprawled on the carpet, propped on his elbows, poking away at a laptop in front of him.

“See!” Henri exclaims, kneeling next to a Lego pirate ship on the coffee table in front of the worn green couch. There’s a big red bow attached to the mainmast.

“Wow, buddy. That’s really amazing. He’s going to love it.” And I’m not just saying that. Jeff and Henri are both Lego geeks. Before the night is through, they’ll have taken this apart and rebuilt it together. I ruffle his hair again and cross to his little brother. I fold my legs and drop onto the carpet next to him cross-legged. “Hey, Max. What ya doing?”

“Shhh!” Max hisses without looking away from the screen.

“Minecraft,” Henri says, coming up behind me and hugging my shoulders.

Max is madly poking at keys and staring at the screen as if we aren’t even here. He’s always been the serious kid. Though he looks like his dad, he’s just like his mom—totally focused and self-sufficient. Six going on sixty, Mallory likes to joke. That kid was dressing himself at eleven months and he potty trained himself by two. If you try to cuddle him, he’ll struggle out of your arms, and if you don’t let go, he’ll hit you. They say he’s high-spectrum autistic, but I don’t put much stock in labels.

God knows I’ve got a few that are bullshit.

Henri, on the other hand, has always been the cuddlebug. He’s just about the happiest kid I’ve ever seen, and even at seven, he loves to snuggle. Mallory calls him her “big ball of love.” When he was little and I still lived here, he used to crawl into my lap and cuddle against my shoulder, wrapping a strand of my kinky hair around his hand and sucking it with his thumb. The feeling of his little body burrowed into me tugged at my heart in a way nothing else ever could.

But I’m not cut out for kids. There are some people that were just never meant to be parents. The biggest favor they can do the world is to recognize it before it’s too late. So kudos for me.

Mallory comes to the door and props herself in the door frame between the family room and the kitchen. “I think I have things mostly under control, but if you and the boys could do the streamers in the dining room, that would really help. Jeff should be here in about fifteen, and I haven’t had a chance to do it yet.”

She doesn’t say, “You promised you’d help. Where were you?” but it’s in the twist to her mouth and the crinkled edges of her gaze.

“I got hung up at an audition and then the bus was running late,” I tell her, answering the question she didn’t really ask.

She spins back to the kitchen. “How did it go?”

“Shi—” I catch myself, but Henri giggles anyway. That kid doesn’t miss much. He’s always been one of the most observant people I know. I think he’s at the age where kids start thinking cussing is funny. I give him a look and press my finger to my lips to shush him before Mallory gives me shit. “Pretty bad.”

“Bummer,” she calls from deeper in the kitchen.

Tell me about it.

I stand and grab Henri’s hand, tugging him up. “Let’s go decorate for your dad.”

He grins at me and charges into the dining room.

Mallory is a neat freak and the place is always spotless, despite the havoc of two young boys. I liked living here. It was a good place to heal. But a year after graduating high school, I moved to the city. Mallory was pretty upset that I didn’t apply to college, but even that felt like too much of a commitment. And by that time I’d decided to chase my dream of stage acting for a living anyway. Idol auditions were coming up and I was sure I’d turn my success there into a Broadway career.

Three and a half years later, I’m still tending bar.

“Do you want to help, Max?” I ask, stooping next to him.

“In a minute.” He still doesn’t look up from his game.

He shakes my hand off when I ruffle his strawberry-blond waves, so I stand and follow Henri into the dining room. When I get there I find he already has the streamers open and has unwound most of the roll, which is lying in a mound at his feet. I look around the room at the antique dining-room set and chandelier. “So how do you want to do this?”

A grin lights up his whole little face. “I want to decorate Dad.”

I laugh. “That would be interesting.”

He picks up the pile of streamers. “I’m going to tie him to his chair with these.”

“Maybe you should ask your mom about that.” I think it sounds fun, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what Mallory had in mind.

“Mom!” Henri wails, running toward the kitchen just as Rufus starts barking again. A second later, the front door swings open and Jeff steps through. Henri abruptly changes course and launches into him. “Dad!”

Jeff slips off his shoes then stoops down to hug him. “Hey, champ. How’s tricks?”

Henri climbs on his dad’s back as Jeff stands. “I’m going to tie you to your chair!”

“Really . . . ?” Jeff says with a grin. He gives me a wave as he piggybacks his son past me into the kitchen. “Hey, Hilary.”

“Happy birthday,” I tell him.

There’s a tug on my jeans and when I look down, Max has finally pulled himself away from the computer. I take his hand and we follow Jeff and Henri.

“Happy birthday, Daddy,” Max says quietly as we catch up to them in the kitchen.

Jeff has set Henri on the counter, where he’s happily swinging his legs and banging his heels into the cabinet below. He stoops down and waits for his youngest son to come to him. Max slowly makes his way the few steps between him and his dad, and Jeff folds him into his arms, hugging him tightly. But a second later, Max is backing out of his grasp and Jeff lets him go. It’s like Jeff craves his son, but knows Max can only handle so much. He’s willing to play by Max’s rules, greedily taking whatever affection Max will offer, but never pushing for more.

I wish I had a dad like Jeff.

I look at them together. Jeff is on the short side with a stocky build. His eyes are dark brown and his face is strong. Max is his spitting image except for his strawberry-blond waves. Jeff’s hair is sandy brown and bone straight.

“Happy birthday, Mr. LaForte,” Mallory says, stirring something simmering in a cast-iron skillet and smiling down at them.

“Why, thank you, Mrs. LaForte,” Jeff says with a grin. He stands and moves to Mallory at the stove, planting a kiss on her lips so tenderly that I have to look away. It feels too personal. “So what’s this about tying me to my chair?” he asks her as their lips part.

Mallory shoots me a look.

“I’m going to tie Daddy up!” Henri announces, banging both heels hard into the cabinet to punctuate his point.

Jeff’s gaze shifts to him, then back to me.

“With the streamers,” I clarify. “He wants to decorate you.”

Mallory rolls her eyes and turns back to the stove, stirring the pot. “You’re early,” she tells Jeff. “Dinner won’t be ready for another fifteen minutes.”

Jeff tugs at the collar of his button-down shirt. “Good. Then I have time to change.” He swings Henri off the counter on his way past, and his oldest follows him to the bedroom as Max goes back to the computer.

I lean into the counter. “So if you’re okay with the whole bondage thing, I guess I don’t need to put up any streamers.”

Mallory shoots a look over her shoulder. “Then make yourself useful and fill that pot with water and put it on to boil,” she says, tipping her head at a pot on the back burner.

I take it to the sink and start the water.

“What’s Brett doing tonight? Thought we might see him.”

“Rehearsal,” I lie. I’ve explained our deal to her over and over, but she doesn’t like it. She keeps thinking we’re going to fall madly in love, move into a house in Jersey with a picket fence, and have two point four kids and a dog, just like she did.

It’s not gonna happen.

I put the pot on and crank the burner just as Jeff comes back in wearing a green Heineken T-shirt and baggy black sweats.

“Is that any way to dress for your birthday dinner?” Mallory asks, waving a hand at him, exasperated.

He steps up behind her and pulls her into the curve of his body. “Are you saying you’d prefer me in my birthday suit?” he mutters in her ear.

She blushes and glances at me as if I’m still fourteen. “Jeff,” she says, slapping his wandering hand off her ass.

But she’s smiling.

I have the definite feeling that Mallory and Jeff still have a lot of sex. I remember hearing them when I was a teenager—the creak of bedsprings and their muffled moans.

I’d had sex before and it sounded nothing like that. I’d never moaned anyone’s name or said, “oh, God,” and I’d never giggled. So one night when they were doing it, I snuck down the hall to their door and pushed it open a crack. Henri was a baby, probably three months old or so, and he was asleep in a basket at Mallory’s side of the bed. The sheets were pooled on the floor on Jeff’s side and he and Mallory were naked on the mattress. Jeff was moving so slowly between Mallory’s legs that it looked like a dance. She was making these soft moaning sounds deep in her chest, and one at a time, she wrapped her legs around him, crossing them at the ankles and pulling him closer.