When I pull into Daniel’s driveway I park and grab my umbrella, then walk quickly toward the front door. It opens and Daniel stands in the doorway, waiting. I’m about to cross the threshold when a loud clap of thunder startles me and I jump. We both laugh and he pulls me inside, shutting the door behind me.
“I guess we’re not going for that ride,” I say.
“Not today,” Daniel says. “We’ll have to take my car instead.”
“Where are we going?” I ask.
He grabs his car keys off the coffee table and smiles. “I thought we could go to lunch. Is that okay?”
“Sure,” I say. “Why not?”
Once we’re in the car Daniel backs out of the garage, turns on the windshield wipers, and presses buttons on the radio. “What kind of music do you like?”
“I usually just listen to whatever the kids want. I know the words to every Disney soundtrack.”
Daniel laughs. “Impressive.” He chooses a station. “Is this okay?”
I hear the opening verse of “Mr. Jones” by Counting Crows. “I love that song. It reminds me of my senior year of high school.”
“I like it, too,” he says. “Someone was always blasting it in my frat house.”
It seems odd, driving somewhere together. I can’t help but feel that there’s something covert about it, and I worry that someone will see us, which is ridiculous because we aren’t doing anything wrong. And it’s not as if I don’t have male friends. I do. I just haven’t seen most of them since college. Aware that I’m fidgeting, I try to relax, lacing my fingers together and resting my hands on my lap. He didn’t ask for my input on lunch, so I’m curious about where we’re going. “Do you have a destination in mind?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says. “Have you ever been to Bella Cucina?”
I shake my head. “No. I’ve heard it’s good, though.”
“It’s a little out of the way, but I think it’s worth the trip.”
The gray sky batters the car with a relentless deluge. It’s the kind of weather most people would not venture out in, but Daniel seems undeterred, his hands resting easily on the wheel. When he pulls into the restaurant parking lot twenty minutes later, he tells me he’ll drop me off at the door.
“I admire your chivalry, but I’m not that delicate.”
“Humor me,” he says, smiling and stopping in front of the restaurant entrance.
“I bet you help little old ladies across the street, don’t you?”
He laughs. “Only when I’m not getting the kitty cats out of the trees.”
Smiling at him, I say, “That’s the fire department.”
“Actually, it’s animal control.”
I grin, step out of the car, and open my umbrella, which isn’t really necessary since I have to take only ten steps before reaching the striped awning over the front door. Daniel parks the car and joins me.
The smell hits me when we walk in: sizzling pancetta, yeasty focaccia bread, garlic, and tomatoes. My stomach rumbles.
“I hope you like Italian,” Daniel says, shaking the raindrops from his umbrella and holding out his hand for mine. “Or this was a really bad move on my part.”
I hand him my umbrella and say, “I love Italian.”
There are very few patrons, and Daniel requests a small table in the corner, tucked away on the other side of the bar. Once we’re seated, our knees almost touching underneath the table, the waitress takes our drink order—iced tea for both of us—and we peruse our menus. “What’s good here?” I ask.
“Everything. The marinara especially. It’s got a bit of a kick, though.”
Daniel orders pasta and I choose the chicken parmesan with a side of steamed broccoli. We help ourselves to the bread basket and I select a sourdough roll while Daniel goes for the focaccia. We dip the bread in olive oil that has been sprinkled with freshly ground black pepper. It’s delicious. When our entrees come I take a bite of my chicken. It’s smothered in the marinara and Daniel’s right: It does have a bit of a kick.
It occurs to me suddenly that I haven’t been out with my own husband in a very long time, but this is the second meal I’ve shared with Daniel.
“Are you working on any new projects?” he asks.
“I have a few new clients. I take yoga classes almost every morning and I’ve been hired to design some brochures and promotional materials for the studio. I’m looking forward to digging into that project.”
“I hope I’m not keeping you from getting your work done.”
“I worked for a few hours this morning. I’ll work some more after the kids are in bed. I’m kind of a night owl.”
“Me, too,” he says. “That’s why I’m glad I switched from the morning to the afternoon shift. I don’t have to be there as early now.”
When we’re done eating the waitress clears our plates and asks if we want dessert. “Claire?” Daniel says.
“No thank you.”
Daniel shakes his head. She leaves the check and I reach for my wallet, but Daniel says, “I’ve got it.” He puts his credit card on the table and the waitress takes it away.
“Thank you,” I say. “The next one’s on me.”
Daniel smiles and says, “Okay.” He leans back in his seat and studies me. I meet his gaze, wishing I had a clue about the thoughts running through his head. Maybe he isn’t thinking about anything at all. The moment ends when the waitress returns. Daniel looks down to sign the check and then we get up and head toward the door. The rain has ended and the sky lightens as we drive home. The rumble of thunder in the distance grows softer and he turns off the windshield wipers. The sun tries valiantly to break through the clouds.
He pulls into his garage and kills the engine. I’m surprised to find that it’s almost three. “Thank you for lunch,” I say. “I better get going.”
“You’re welcome.”
I grip the door handle and open it. He walks me to my car and waits until I’m seated. “Enjoy the rest of your day off,” I say.
“Thanks. I will.” He closes the door and I head for home.
33
claire
I’m not sure how it starts, but by some unspoken agreement Daniel and I begin spending at least one day a week together. Because he works a rotating schedule the chances are good that the two days a week he has off will fall between Monday and Friday, when the rest of the world is at work. My schedule is flexible enough that I can spend my daytime hours any way I want, and I don’t mind working at night after the kids go to bed, because it gives me something to do.
Sometimes we meet for lunch and sometimes we run errands together. I helped him pick out new carpeting for his living room, weighing in with an opinion on my favorites, and he picked me up from the car dealership when I took my vehicle in for an oil change. We often end up at his house afterward, depending on how much time I have before I need to be home to meet the school bus. I’ve gradually become comfortable at Daniel’s; he goes about his business, and I make myself right at home. I think nothing of poking my head into his refrigerator or changing the channel on the TV if he’s not watching it. Daniel runs five miles most mornings and one day when I showed up earlier than usual he answered the door with wet hair, wearing only a pair of jeans. It took some effort to drag my eyes away from his bare chest.
I try my best not to dwell on how comfortable we’ve become with each other, and how quickly it happened, pushing away the thought that maybe it’s not okay. That under the guise of friendship we’re starting to walk down a road I said I wouldn’t travel with him.
Daniel discovered that I like to go to movies and I detected a hint of pity in his expression when I told him that I often went alone. “It doesn’t bother me,” I said. “I’m used to it.”
“Call me next time. I’ll go with you.”
“Okay,” I said. And I did. We had a great ti
me, sharing popcorn in the mostly deserted theater. I don’t think Eat Pray Love would have been Daniel’s first choice, but he didn’t complain once. “You can choose the next movie,” I promised when it was over. “Something with a car chase or an explosion.”
“Deal,” he said.
• • •
“How can you even sit like that?” he asked one day.
I was sitting cross-legged on his couch with a throw blanket around my shoulders while I thumbed through a magazine. “What? It’s comfortable. I twist myself into much more difficult poses in my yoga class.” I continued to meet Elisa for yoga almost every morning, but so far I hadn’t said anything about spending time with Daniel.
“I can’t even get into that position anymore,” he said, setting down a bottle of diet peach Snapple on the side table next to me.
“That’s my favorite drink,” I said.
“I know that, Claire,” he said, looking at me as if I was a bit slow. “That’s why I bought some at the store the other day.”
The doorbell rings one cloudy afternoon while I’m there. Daniel ran out to grab us some lunch, and I’m not sure what to do. I walk over to the door, but there’s no peephole. The doorbell rings again. Hoping it’s just a delivery, I open the door and find myself at a complete loss for words because there’s a woman standing there. Her surprised look and her scowl tell me that she wasn’t expecting me to be here and isn’t very happy about it.
She’s wearing a business suit and looks a few years younger than me. Her brown hair is pulled back in a sleek ponytail and she’s wearing an awful lot of makeup for noon on a Tuesday. She’s striking, with cheekbones that could cut glass. “Where’s Daniel?” she asks.
I’m about to tell her that he stepped out for a minute, but the crunch of tires on gravel as he pulls into the driveway saves me from having to say anything. Her head whips around when she hears the car. Daniel parks and walks toward us, paper bag in one hand, cardboard drink carrier in the other. When he reaches the front door I take the bag from him.
“Hi,” he says, greeting the brunette. “Claire, this is Melissa.”
She says hello to me and her tone is lukewarm at best.
I hold out my hand and she gives it a brief shake. “Nice to meet you,” I say.
The whole exchange is a giant ball of awkward.
Strangely, Daniel doesn’t seem flustered at all. I turn to him and quietly say, “I can go.”
He grabs my wrist and says, “No.”
The three of us go into the house. I put the bag on the counter in the kitchen and Daniel leans over and says, “Why don’t you wait in my room.”
I walk down the hallway. I know which door is his because I often pass it on my way to the bathroom. After entering the bedroom I shut the door behind me.
It’s such a private space for me to be occupying, although being inside this room with Daniel would be even more intimate. His king-size bed is unmade and from the looks of it he’s a restless sleeper. The sheets are twisted and the comforter is halfway off the bed. He’s not much for decorating either, and the walls are bare except for a large TV mounted directly across from the bed. On the dresser there are two bottles of cologne, a pile of change, and an iPod dock. I uncap one of the bottles and inhale. I’ve smelled this cologne on him before. There’s also a flashlight and a police radio plugged into chargers, but no gun. I’m sure Daniel keeps that someplace safe. A picture frame lying flat catches my eye. It contains a small photo of a baby boy, which seems so out of place among the other items. I pick it up and peer at the image closely, then set it back down, wondering who it is.
At a loss for what to do with myself, I make the bed, complete with hospital corners and fluffed pillows. The murmur of voices reaches me, hers louder than his, but I can’t hear what they’re saying. I sit cross-legged in the center of the bed, but I’m uncomfortable, so I scoot up toward the headboard and lean back against it, one of Daniel’s pillows wedged behind my lower back. It feels weird to be using his bed in any fashion, but there’s nowhere else to sit. The minutes crawl by but finally the door opens. Daniel pauses, a ghost of a smile on his face, looking at me in a way that makes me wonder what he thinks about seeing me stretched out on his bed like I belong here. He eases himself down beside me, close enough that our shoulders are almost touching, and leans back against the headboard. “Sorry about that,” he says.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Was that your girlfriend?” I never asked if he was seeing someone, and I feel foolish for assuming he wasn’t. And it’s not as if I’m in a position to care if he is.
He looks contemplative but then says, “No. I don’t have a girlfriend.” He blows out a breath, as if the whole situation has exhausted him. “She’s someone I used to see. I haven’t called her in a while.”
“I’m guessing she isn’t too happy about that.”
He shrugs. “It was just a casual thing.”
“It doesn’t always feel casual to women, especially if you were sleeping together.” I regret the words the minute they come out of my mouth. We never talk about this kind of thing. Never. And initiating a conversation about Daniel’s sex life when we’re sharing his bed—no matter how platonically—may not have been my best move. Now the air feels charged, as if the dynamic in the room has abruptly changed. All my fault.
“I’m not sleeping with her,” he says. “Well, not anymore.”
“Why? Are you sleeping with somebody else instead?”
Shut up, Claire.
Daniel shakes his head. “No.”
“Then why not her?” I have no idea why I’m still talking, still asking him these things. I’m even more alarmed by the fact that suddenly all I can think about is sex and how long it’s been since Chris and I made love.
“I don’t know. I’m just not really feeling it.”
“Do you date much?” I’ve never given much thought to how he spends his evenings and weekends.
“Not really.”
So maybe Daniel is lonely, too.
“How long have you been divorced?”
“A little over a year. My wife kept the house and I moved here.”
There’s more to the story, of this I’m certain, but I don’t push.
Daniel runs his hands along the comforter. “You made my bed.”
“I didn’t know what to do with myself.”
“Thanks,” he says, smiling. “Come on. Let’s go see how cold our lunch is.”
34
claire
In late October, Chris’s boss informs him that he’ll be on the road for the next two weeks, with no time to fly home on the weekend. “I’m sorry,” he says when he calls me from his hotel room to break the news.
“It’s okay,” I say. It’s not like it matters if I’m okay with it or not. It’s going to happen anyway.
I should be upset, and I do feel horrible for the kids, but the more Chris travels, the more I adapt to our current household situation. When he comes home he disrupts the routine I’ve so carefully put in place to give the kids a sense of normalcy, and I’m the one who deals with the fallout when he leaves again. It takes at least a day for everyone to adjust. Josh gets moody and won’t listen, and Jordan develops an unnatural attachment to her stuffed animals, especially the ones Chris has bought her since he’s been out on the road. He’s gone so often that now it feels odd sharing a bed with him on the weekends. Before he lost his job, we used to go upstairs at the same time every night, to make love, to watch TV, to talk. Sometimes all three. Now he stays up late working and when he finally slips between the sheets it wakes me up and I toss and turn for hours, trying to get back to sleep.
It’s not that I’m happy about him being gone—far from it. It’s just that Chris being gone is now what I’m used to.
• • •
The brilliant sunshine and the soaring temperatures of a brief,
last burst of Indian summer at the end of the month offer a temporary respite from the approaching chill of fall. The kids are ecstatic and on our way to the bus stop Jordan asks if we can go to the swimming pool after school. “How about the park?” I say as we walk to the bus stop. “The pools are all closed until next summer.” She sighs and reluctantly agrees that the park will have to do.
My phone rings as I’m walking back into the house. I answer it and say, “Hey.”
“Let’s go for a ride,” Daniel says. “It might be the last one for a while.”
I’m just as eager to enjoy the last few warm days of the season so I say, “Sure. That sounds fun.”
“You’re not too busy today?”
“I have a few things I’m working on, but I can pick them back up tonight when the kids go to bed.”
“Great. Noon?”
“Sure. See you then.”
When I arrive at Daniel’s he’s standing in the doorway. He watches me walk toward him and my breath catches a little when he smiles. I remember when Chris’s face used to brighten like that whenever I walked into the room. How the smile reached all the way to the corners of his eyes.
“Hi,” he says. “How are you?”
“I’m great,” I say. “It’s beautiful out. Jordan wanted to know if we could go swimming when she got home from school.”
Daniel laughs. “It’s certainly warm enough.” He appraises me quickly from head to toe, to make sure I’m dressed properly; I know better than to show up in short sleeves, no matter how high the temperature is, so I’m wearing a long-sleeved cotton T-shirt, a light jacket, jeans, and tennis shoes. No flip-flops on the motorcycle.