Diving In (34 page)

Just sixteen hours. Ansel had been right; she wasn’t over him. How could she be? She’d known Miles for years, loved him for most of it, and the thought of seeing him married to somebody else made her stomach twist like a string mop in a bucket.

How could she be angry with Ansel for leaving, given how she felt about somebody else?

She looked at her phone: 8:35 p.m. They would’ve eloped by now, if Betty’s secret intel was correct.

The backseat of Jaynette’s car smelled like lavender body spray in spite of the large black lab with a studded white leather collar sitting in the middle of it.

“Just shove Sir Chomp out of the way if he hogs the seat,” Jaynette said. “Move it, Chomp. She’s not in the mood for love.”

So true
, Nicki thought, wedging herself between the wall of bristly fur and the vinyl-upholstered door.

Married already. The party tomorrow was just to celebrate. She was going to smile and look ecstatic for their happiness, and he and everyone else, young and old, were going to believe it.

Jaynette peeled away from the curb, dodging between two city buses that didn’t have room for her; the rear vehicle blasted its horn.

Nicki’s hands started shaking violently. She clasped them together over her stomach. The backs of her arms felt as if she’d walked into a storage freezer—but it could be partly from the shock of being back in the Bay Area, not just the fear of being in a car being driven by a lunatic.

Miles was married. Ansel had never come back. She was still afraid of cars and bridges—though not water.

Sir Chomp, whose breath smelled like Parmesan cheese, licked her on the mouth.

She wasn’t too proud to admit it helped her feel better.

* * *

Five o’clock the next evening, using the rearview mirror in her car, Nicki applied a third coat of mascara, a second layer of lipstick, and the first handful of magnesium tablets, which she washed down with tepid chamomile tea in an insulated cup.

Miles’s youth clubhouse was throbbing with pop music as if it were a high school dance. She got out of her car, adjusted her dress—it was a dark rose like an overripe watermelon; rather conservative, but it showed off her legs—and strode over to the doorway, where several kids in their early teens were walking in with their parents. They carried presents as if going to a birthday party.

School dance, kiddie party: not romantic. So far, so good. She could do this.

She’d ordered her own present for the happy couple the good old-fashioned way—through the Internet. Nothing said “personalized gift” like four out of the eight requested wine glasses, clicked on, checked out, shipped, and never seen.

So maybe she wasn’t feeling very celebratory.
 

When she saw a boy half her age—this was possible now that she was old, she thought with a sigh—gawking at her legs, she tugged down her dress.

“You made it,” Lucy said, holding out her hand as she greeted guests at the door. “Thank God. I don’t know why I left Miles in charge of this. Just because he’s the social butterfly, I thought, hey, who better to plan a party. The one time in my life I step back and let somebody else take over, and now I’m dancing to top forty with twelve-year-olds.”

The bride’s hair was swept up into a beautiful russet cloud sparkling with beads, braids, and ribbons. Her dress was sage green, clingy, shimmery, and low-cut, styled to show off a pair of killer heels. She looked like a wood nymph out on the town clubbing.

Nicki let out a sigh. “You look gorgeous.”

“I’m just not into white. I tried. My friend—that’s her over there, Fawn—she does this beauty thing for a living—”

Nicki saw a woman with fashion model proportions and long Barbie-blond hair surrounded by awestruck adolescent males, who lingered in a ring around her, standing about ten feet away, just staring.

“She wanted me to wear a gown at some point during this marriage process,” Lucy continued, “no matter how often I told her I’d rather save my money for the honeymoon. Or a house. Dental work. Tampons.
Anything.
Spending thousands—actual dollars, the kind they have in banks—on a garment you wear once? No thanks. It’s insane. It’s a scam. I don’t understand why women put up with it.”

At thirty, Nicki was an expert on weddings, having watched most of her friends get hitched within the past few years. “It’s even harder if you’re my size. I’d get one second-hand, but not very many women are my height.”

Lucy smiled up at her. She had to crane her head back like one of Nicki’s smaller seventh graders. “I
so
know what you mean.” She touched Nicki’s arm and pointed into the clubhouse. “Get yourself a drink. Making do without the dress gave us an excellent booze budget. We got the good stuff—locked up from the kids—so ask Miles to fix you something.”

The pool and foosball tables had been shoved against the walls, but the boys were using them anyway. There were a few young women, college-aged, who stood around smiling at Miles, taking pictures of him with their phones, laughing and talking. The rest of the guests were the usual array of suited men, women in floral dresses, and children chasing one another in their most uncomfortable clothes.

Nicki thanked Lucy, already starting to feel the pressure build in her chest. She hadn’t let herself look at him yet; though of course she’d felt his presence the second she came through the door. Now she set her sights on the bar, where the largest man in the room, and in most rooms he entered, was pouring sodas into glasses for a few boys in their best hoodies, khakis, and sneakers. Nicki knew the brands well enough to know their outfits cost more than hers did.

As she approached him, her ankle, in unfamiliar heels, wobbled on a patch of worn carpeting. Her heart, like the music, throbbed at cardio training speed. She stretched a smile on her face and sought eye contact with the man she’d once assumed would be hers someday because he was kind and gentle, funny and intelligent, and towered over other men in every way.

He looked up and saw her. “Nicki! You made it!” He had a giddy smile on his face. “I didn’t think you were coming! This is great. What can I get you? I’ve got a few bottles of good wine, red and white, I don’t remember what they’re called, but they’re supposed to be good. Does that sound good? I can get them out if you want to look at the labels. Yeah. I should do that. These guys won’t steal one, will you?” He smiled at the boys, who were pouring more soda into their cups.

Nicki stared at Miles. The sarcastic, subdued man she’d known was gone, killed by this cheerful, chatty bartender. Her grizzly bear had turned into a golden retriever.

She swallowed, thinking, after everything, she’d have trouble speaking. But then she said, “A glass of the white, please,” and walked around the table to give him a hug. As tall as she was, he was almost half a foot taller, another selling point. But now, as she had to go up on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek—which she did because it seemed appropriate, not tempting—she found his head’s distance from hers to be inconvenient. “Congratulations,” she added.

“Did you fly back just for this?” He bent down and tore the lid off a cardboard box. “Haven’t you been in Cancun?”

He didn’t even remember where she’d gone. Nicki scanned her heart for puncture wounds, finding none. “Maui,” she said, laughing. “You didn’t even get the right country.”

She was
laughing
.

“I knew there was sand there,” he said. “Sorry, I’ve been busy. Did you have fun?” He beamed at her, holding out a glass of red wine.

“Lots of fun.” She smiled but didn’t take the glass. “Dude, I asked for white. Would you like me to take over? You seem a little out of it.”

“Hey, I got married. Did you hear?” He put her glass down before pouring another glass, also red. “I’ve got the ball and chain in the car. She lets me take it off to party.”

She laughed again. “Nice of her.”

He held out the second glass of red wine to her. “How was Mexico?”

“Funniest thing,” she said. “They speak English now.”

“All the American tourists,” he said vaguely. He wasn’t looking at her anymore but over her shoulder. “Lucy, look! Nicki made it!”

Lucy joined them with the tall blonde at her side. “Two glasses of the pinot for us, all right, hon?” Then she saw the two glasses of red, sitting untouched on the table. “Who are those for?”

“Nicki.” He held them both out to her.

Nicki accepted them, biting her tongue. “Thanks, Miles. I was really thirsty. These will hit the spot.”

“Need any help back there?” Lucy maneuvered around the table to wrap her arms around Miles’s lower half. He bent down and kissed her.

The blonde chuckled. “Are those really both for you?” she asked Nicki, pointing at the glasses.

“No. He got distracted.”

“I’ll relieve you of one,” the woman said, taking it from her. She had stunning cheekbones, luminous eyes, and the proportions one would expect if humans evolved on a planet with lesser gravity. She held out a hand. “I’m Fawn.”

The model Betty had mentioned. “It’s nice to finally meet you. I’m Nicki.”

Her already big eyes grew enormous. “You’re Phobic Phoebe!”

“Yup.”

“You’ve been in Hawaii!”

Nicki smiled, glowing at the proof this gorgeous creature followed her blog, then flinching at the reminder of what she’d lost after she’d written her last post. Since Ansel had left her, she’d recycled a few extra essays she’d stored up in case of emergency; she hadn’t been able to write anything new. “I’m flattered you remember,” Nicki said.

“Of course I remember. I’m a fan. I even bought the stress balls.”

Miles and Lucy were still kissing, partly because their young guests kept hitting their glasses of soda with whatever metal object they could find. The boys next to the table were drumming a two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew with plastic knives.

Just like the day in Hawaii when she put her face into the water, she looked at Miles as he kissed his beloved, who wasn’t her, and forced herself to keep looking, even after his jaw moved to take her tongue into his mouth and her hand—which had limited access, given her height—twisted in his hair.

She didn’t feel a damn thing. Slight amusement at the inappropriate display—the boys were hooting—and happiness for him, since he’d obviously found a nice woman, but nothing else.

It must be so much easier for them when they’re horizontal
, Nicki thought, watching Miles hunch over Lucy’s petite frame. She put down the red wine. She and Ansel had a slight height difference that was notable only because she, the woman, was the taller one. All in all, they were perfectly matched, the way his hips fit against her pelvis, his mouth was right where she could reach it, his chest against hers—

They
had
been perfectly matched.

She needed a drink. “How about you and I take over the bar?” she asked Fawn. “These guys aren’t up to it.”

“I thought Betty was going to do it.” Fawn looked around as she stepped behind the table, pushing aside Miles and Lucy, who laughed and went out to greet some other guests. “Where
is
that woman?”

“She’s got purple hair now,” Nicki said. “Blends in a little better.” She joined Fawn and poured her own drink, downed it, and had another.

By the time Betty finally showed up to relieve them, Nicki was buzzed and introspective, no longer aware of Miles, the other guests, or much of anything. Music blasting in her ears, she wandered across the clubhouse, delayed a few times by former students, until she was outside gulping foggy, chilly air.

She weaved between the cars to her own and got inside. Pressure building in her chest, she found her phone in her bag under a jacket in the backseat and stared at the screen.

She’d plugged in his number that morning. The act had felt permanent, insanely optimistic; why would she need to record his number into her contacts if she called him only once?

Her head fell back against the seat. It wasn’t the wine that made her dizzy. What if he didn’t answer?

What if he did?

This was why she’d taken the laptop. It was an easy excuse, an icebreaker.

But when she’d taken it, she hadn’t known what she knew right now. She’d wondered, but the myth of Miles had blinded her to the real, hard truth of it.

She loved Ansel. There wasn’t any doubt. In her case, if she told her friends, “I love Ansel,” they’d know it was true because she never, ever talked like that, not even with men she’d dated for over a year. It was always
care
or
want
or
desire
. Even with Miles, she’d called him
soul mate
,
partner
,
Thor
.

So she knew this was real.

Finger shaking over the glowing screen, she tapped Ansel’s name.

Chapter 29

“H
APPY
BIRTHDAY
, D
AD
.” A
NSEL
HANDED
him the present he’d brought, a small, carefully wrapped package with a yellow bow.

Jordan had closed the restaurant for the night. Other than family, his mother had invited fifty people: her father’s closest friends and forty-eight others.

“I wish you’d been able to talk her out of this,” his father said.

“And miss the look on your face?” Rachel patted him on the shoulder. “Never. Open it up, Dad. Let’s see what Ansel thinks you should be reading.”

“How’d you know it was a book?” Ansel asked.

“What else would it be?” she replied. “Look at it.”

Their father, looking trapped, glanced around the crowded restaurant before he pulled the bow and slipped out the book.

“
Power for the Hungry
?” He looked at Ansel from his chair in the corner, the seat closest the rear exit.

“I thought you might like it,” Ansel said. “It’s a how-to book on world domination.”

His father set the book on the table and put his hand over it, a faint smile on his lips. “Nice.” He leaned back in the bench seat and lifted his drink.