She shook out her hair, damp from the drizzle since she didn’t have an umbrella. She was cold, chilled to her core. This was a mistake. She needed to go home and put back the pieces of her life.
But then she found herself in front of the address she was looking for and paused at the door. Last chance to be smart, to do the right and careful thing. Go home and wait for what comes next, the solid advice from a staid and reliable friend. To be the good girl that she’d been raised to be.
A motorcycle gunned up the street. Beneath her feet, she felt the subtle rumble of a subway train.
Almost. She almost turned around.
Just like she almost broke up with Graham right before their wedding. Because didn’t she know that beneath the pulse of excitement that came with doing the wrong thing, there was an abyss? Hadn’t she observed his eyes linger on other women, wondered who he was talking to on the phone with a very particular tone? There’d been a lie or two, said he was somewhere when it was later revealed he hadn’t been.
The week before she’d married, she’d had a drink with Will. He’d been dapper, as always, put together and cool, but she could see the fatigue under his eyes, knew that he chewed on his thumbnail when he was stressed. It was bitten to the quick.
“I couldn’t let this week pass without telling you that I love you as much as I did the day we met,” he said over glasses of prosecco. “That I’ll never stop loving you.”
“Will,” she said. The pull to him was still strong; her guilt for hurting him, disappointing him, was heavy on her heart. They’d been together so long—through college, and his time at law school, their first jobs. Everyone thought they’d get married. Everyone knew they would. It was like she was breaking a promise she’d made to all their family and friends.
“There isn’t more, you know.” He took her hand. “That’s what you said, right? That you want more than safe, more than predictable. You want to experiment, explore, discover. And that’s okay. Do that. Just don’t marry Graham. Come back to me when you’ve done what you need to do.”
His eyes gleamed, and she bowed her head, kept hold of his hand.
“You know,” he went on into her silence. “Quit your job. Travel. See where the road takes you. At the end of the day, when you close your eyes before sleep, think about it. What do we all want? We want to love and be loved. We want to belong. We want to see the world, but we want to go home to the embrace of people who care. That’s all there is. There isn’t more.”
Her sadness dissipated as he spoke, replaced by a bristling annoyance. Will made her feel like a child. Like he was the wise and knowing one, and Selena was the misbehaved bad girl, the one making the big mistake. She hated that feeling, and she had it a lot with Will. She didn’t want a daddy; she wanted a partner.
She’d taken back her hand, shifted away.
“I’m a grown woman, Will,” she said. “I know who I am, where I am going. And I don’t need you to explain to me the true nature of what we all want.”
He looked down at his glass, and when he looked at her again, she saw how much she’d hurt him. Something welled in her and she moved over to his side of the table, slid into the booth beside him. She reached for him then, on impulse, and kissed him long and slow on the mouth.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her lips against his neck. “I’ll always love you. But not the way I love him.”
She left him at the bar that night but thought about him endlessly all that week. She had an inkling that he might be right, woke up at night remembering that last kiss, his eyes, his words. But the wedding, it was a runaway train—costing a fortune, friends and family coming from all over the country, a dress from Paris, the stunning invitations, the forest of flowers. There had been no stopping it.
Now, nearly ten years later, she pushed through the fashionably distressed metal door and stepped into the warmth of the low-lit wine bar.
She spotted Martha right away; she’d grabbed a booth in the far corner of the space. Conversation was a hum, a current run under by a strain of soft piano music, as Selena made her way past the bar.
There it was again, that feeling of knowing her, the tingle of recognition.
Martha’s dark hair was twisted into a thick plait that draped over her shoulder like a snake, a contrast against the light gray of her tasteful silk blouse; she was as erect and slim as a dancer. Martha smiled when she caught sight of Selena—it was genuine and sweet, the expression of a woman happy to see a friend. Selena had been carrying a tension, a sense of foreboding. It all faded.
Had she misread this?
She shouldn’t be here. She knew that. Will had expressly told her not to engage.
What had led her to reach out to this stranger? And why was Selena so pleased to see her, as if they were old friends?
After that late-night text, she drove into the city. She hadn’t been out of her house after 11:00 p.m. since Stephen was born. Nobody told you that when you became a parent, you became a child again; it was early bedtimes and grilled cheese sandwiches for all. Every date night was a negotiation, every invitation that you actually had the desire or energy to accept became a strategic maneuver that may or may not work out after all. It was back to park playgrounds, soccer fields, and Chuck E. Cheese’s.
So, in spite of the odd nature of her outing, the chaos of her life, Selena felt a little thrill at being out, alone, close to midnight, in the city.
She slid in across from Martha.
“So glad you could make it out,” said Martha. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for a night owl.”
“Not usually, but that meeting ran late, and I decided to stay in the city. My husband’s away; my kids are at my mom’s. So—why not?” She offered a conspiratorial wink.
“Live dangerously, right?”
“Right!”
Selena shifted off her coat, looked at the wine list and, when the waiter who was also the bartender arrived, ordered a cabernet.
“I was surprised to hear from you,” Selena said. Light, chatty. “How did you get my number?”
Martha tilted her head a little, smiled. “You gave me your card.”
“Did I?”
Martha dug through her bag and came out with the blue-and-white card, handing it over to Selena. The other woman’s nails, bloodred, glittered in the candlelight.
“Oh,” she said, staring at it. She had no memory at all of the exchange. “That vodka must have hit me harder than I thought.”
“Me, too,” said Martha, rolling her eyes. “Look. The reason I reached out—”
The bartender came with Selena’s wine and Martha paused, thanking him. A moment passed between the two, a lingering look, a smile. Oh, right—that. People flirted, hooked up when they were free and single. Martha was a stunning beauty; she could probably have any man she wanted.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said,” Martha went on when he’d left them. “Any of it. I’m embarrassed.”
Selena sipped from her glass, feeling its warmth, and allowing the liquid to wash away any lingering tension. Now that she knew she’d given Martha her card, the texts seemed way less unsettling. More like just someone looking to connect, like Will said. But—when? She did not remember at all.