My friends were not as smart as I was. I remember the year after I graduated college, my friend Daphne came to me crying that she had caught her live-in boyfriend in bed with another woman when she came home early from her night shift. She was devastated. She could barely get out of bed for months after. It was some solace when her boyfriend was killed in a hit and run not long after.
I found that when you’re an attractive woman, it’s very easy to get a mechanic to replace your dented front fender without asking too many questions.
There were others. I don’t need to get into the details. But trust me, every single one of them deserved it. The same way my parents deserved it.
Claire remained my best friend all those years, and she never knew the truth. If not for me, she might have gotten back together with Ted. She never would have met the love of her life. There were times when I wanted so badly to tell her, but I couldn’t be sure she would understand. I didn’t want her to look at me the way my parents did.
And then one day, everything changed.
It started out innocent—I swear. I had borrowed a pair of earrings from Claire, and I went to her house to return them. I showed up at a time when I thought she would be back from work, but her car wasn’t in the driveway. I should’ve turned away then and gone home. If I had, maybe everything would’ve turned out different. But I figured I would drop the earrings off while I was there. They were Claire’s favorite earrings, after all—she was always very generous with her belongings. It was one of the many things I loved about her.
I rang the doorbell to the Matchetts’ beautiful white house and waited. Noah finally showed up at the door, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, a five o’clock shadow on his chin. He looked mildly embarrassed.
“Claire isn’t here,” he said.
“Oh, that’s okay.” I smiled apologetically. “I just wanted to return some earrings I borrowed.”
Noah took the baggie with the earrings in it. He looked like he was about to close the door, but then he hesitated. “Claire will be home soon. Do you want to wait?”
“Oh.” I hadn’t seen Claire in a few weeks, and I had been hoping to have a chance to catch up. “Sure.”
The Matchetts’ bathroom was like the rest of the house. Clean and homey with powder blue hand towels. I loved their bathroom. After I washed my hands, I stood there for a moment in the center of the room, breathing in the scent of their apple-scented hand soap that was running low.
When I finished in the bathroom, Noah was coming out of the basement. I raised my eyebrows at him and he shrugged. “I told Claire I would switch the laundry from the washer to the dryer. She’ll kill me if I don’t do it.”
Claire had been complaining a lot that Noah was reluctant to do chores. She said that everything she asked him to do resulted in an argument. I tried to stay out of it. I figured they would eventually get past their problems. Noah and Claire loved each other. They were nothing like my parents.
“Would you like anything to drink?” Noah asked me.
I settled down on one of the stools by their kitchen counter. “Sure. What do you have?”
He went over to the fridge and scanned the contents. “Uh… do you want Yoo-hoo? Milk? Orange juice?” He looked up and smiled crookedly. “We also have beer.”
“Beer?”
He shrugged sheepishly.
“Sure,” I said. “Why not?”
He pulled two bottles of Bud Light out of the fridge. He handed one to me and kept the other for himself.
I didn’t know what those two beers would lead to. And I didn’t know that Claire wasn’t going to be home anytime soon. I swear, I didn’t come to Claire’s house with the intention of kissing her husband. But somehow in the time we were talking, I noticed he was looking at me That Way. Many men had looked at me That Way before, but in all the years I knew him, Noah Matchett had never looked at me like that. Not even once. I had thought he was immune to my charms. But apparently not.
And before I knew it, his lips were on mine.
I enjoyed it. For a split second. I hadn’t kissed a man in over a year—at some point, I had gotten sick of the dating scene and given up on it. It felt nice. I won’t lie and say he wasn’t a very good kisser.
I’m ashamed to admit it was Noah who pulled away first. His face was red and he had a panicked look in his eyes.
“I’m sorry.” He got up from his stool so abruptly, he nearly tripped on it. “This was a mistake. I can’t cheat on Claire.”