It’s been almost three weeks since the yacht, and I hope it’s a good sign that she brought up Seth without my prompting.
She pours herself a glass of white wine and lifts it to mine for a toast. “We’re going to have the best time!” she says, and I’m not sure if she’s trying to convince me, herself, or both of us.
After we get the pleasantries out of the way—how’s your arm, how was your day, how’s work been—she settles back onto the couch. I expected weekend Torrance would be casual Torrance, and she is—a little. Jeans, a loose top, hair naturally straight instead of the barrel curls she wears on camera.
She spreads some fig jam on a piece of bread, which she then tops with a single olive. “It’s good. You should try it,” she says when I give her a horrified look.
“I’ll take your word for it,” I say as I help myself to a hunk of imitation cheddar.
I’m reminded of that moment at the holiday party, when she and Seth joked about her favorite song. There’s a true goofball stuck in Torrance’s body, and I want to draw her out as much as I can.
“We’ve talked far too much about me lately,” Torrance says after another fig-olive monstrosity. “Are you still single?”
I cough, trying to dislodge the olive caught in my throat. “I’m . . . I don’t know what I am right now, honestly.”
“Is it someone I know? Someone from work?” She leans in and drapes a conspiratorial hand over her mouth. “Is it Russell?”
My blush must completely give me away.
She reaches out to gently slap my knee. “You and Russell,” she says, a lipsticked grin spreading across her face. “I’m not sure I’d have predicted it, but I can see it. He’s very cute. Nice, too.”
“He is,” I say, my mind drifting back to just how nice Russell was in my bed last weekend. How eager I am to get him back there.
Except for Joanna, Torrance is the first to hear about him. With my brother, anything I tell him gets passed to Javier, which I don’t mind, but I’m not quite ready for that. It’s tough not to envy what they have, this assumption that you can trust someone with a secret as much as the person telling it could trust you.
I’m not sure I’ve ever felt that with someone. Not even with the man I thought I was going to marry.
If I can trust Torrance with this secret, though, maybe she’ll trust me with hers.
“You are hard-core blushing.” Torrance lets out a giggle I’ve never heard from her, this sound that has nothing in common with her TV laugh. I realize I haven’t talked like this with anyone in a while, and it feels good. “Did it happen on the retreat? When he took you to the hospital?”
“I was way too zonked on Vicodin for anything to happen,” I say. “We just talked. A lot. Our first date was only last weekend.”
“I love this so much. I love this for both of you.”
“We still haven’t defined it or anything. And he has a kid, and . . . I’ve never dated anyone with a kid.”
“You two are smart,” she says, sounding encouraging. “You’ll figure it out.”
With a jolt, I realize this is the kind of reaction I’d want from my mother. In an alternate universe where my mother is the first person I tell about a new relationship, this is how I’d want to her reply.
And it makes me pull out one of my sunshine grins and immediately change the subject.
“This is a gorgeous house,” I say, because if there’s one thing people with nice houses like, it’s showing off how nice their house is. “When did you say it was built?”
But Torrance doesn’t take the bait. “You’re always doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Giving out compliments like that. Completely out of nowhere.” She backtracks, as though worried she’s offended me, which might be a Torrance first. “It’s not that they aren’t nice, they’re just . . . a bit random, I guess.”
“I—I’m sorry.” It isn’t that I don’t mean them, but of course, I can’t tell her the real reason. “I guess I just . . . get too deep in my head sometimes.” I drain my glass of wine, hoping this works as a brush-off. “I’m serious, though. I’d love to see more of the house.”
And maybe Torrance realizes that’s all she’s going to get from me, so she leaps up—still elegant, still poised, though probably not for long, if the amount of wine in her glass is any indication—and starts the tour.
She leads me through the kitchen, an exercise room, gestures toward a hot tub in her backyard. The hallway is lined with photos, a tribute to Torrance and Seth and questionable fashion choices. Seth with a mullet, Torrance in the mid-nineties with the Rachel haircut.
“That’s me the first year I was on TV,” she says, tapping her hair in the photo. “That didn’t work for my face at all. Somewhere, a hairdresser should lose their license.” She lets out a half laugh, her gaze lingering on the next picture, one of a surprisingly scrawny Seth in a too-big suit jacket. “But Seth looks cute here.”
Then there’s Patrick, her son, growing up, getting braces, graduating high school. Patrick and his wife, Roxanne.
We end the tour back in the all-white kitchen, where I spot the succulent Seth gave her, sitting on the marble counter all by itself. “Seth knew how much I loved this house,” she says. “He wanted me to keep it.”
“It seems like you two have been getting cozy lately?” I say.
“That night on the yacht was . . . well, it was amazing, to be honest,” she says, running her knuckles along the leaves of the succulent. And—she’s blushing.
Torrance Hale is blushing.
“Amazing, huh?”
“Against all odds, yes. Even if part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“And . . . you haven’t been seeing anyone else?” I ask, thinking back to when I saw her at brunch. If we’re intruding on some other relationship, I have to know.
“A couple dates here and there,” she says, dismissing this with a wave of her hand, and the relief is immediate. “Nothing serious.”
“Seth has seemed . . . less antagonistic lately. Maybe it’s because you two have been spending so much time together.”
“Huh. I didn’t know you two were close.” She lets go of the plant and reaches for another bottle of wine. “Anyway. I don’t want to get too sappy because it doesn’t go with my brand, but this is fun. Thank you. Even if it’s the least wild girls’ night in the history of girls’ nights.”
Against all odds, Torrance Hale and I might be becoming something I never anticipated.
We might be something like friends.
* * *
? ? ?
“I WANT TO tell you a secret,” Torrance says from the armchair, legs dangling off one side of it. From where I’m sprawled across her couch, decorative pillows in a heap on the floor, I can’t see her face. I thought drunk Torrance was weird, but happy-drunk Torrance is even weirder. “Did you know”—hiccup—“my last name isn’t really Hale?”
“What? What is it?”