Mike, Mike & Me (20 page)

But nobody has.

Everybody, including Mike when he called earlier from the office, and my boys when I kissed them goodbye, has been urging me to have fun and not worry about anything.

So here I am, all dressed up with someplace to go, almost wishing I were back home in my mommy clothes.

I gaze at myself in the mirror in the ladies’ lounge, taking in the makeup, the clothes, the hair.

I look great.

Dammit.

My skin is sun-kissed from all day yesterday on the beach, but not burnt; my green eyes look bigger and wider set than usual thanks to dark liner and mascara. The coral-colored sleeveless summer shift accentuates my long, bare, newly tanned arms and legs and minimizes the hint of post-baby bulge beneath my belly button. My normally straight brown hair, streaked a little lighter from the sun and chlorine, is hanging loose down my back in waves courtesy of the soft water at my in-laws’ house.

Basically, I don’t look anything like my mommy self.

No, I look like a woman who might be up to something.

Something…

Naughty.

I frown into the woman’s eyes, telling her that she’d better behave. She frowns back at me, but only for a moment.

Then she checks her watch, reaches into her purse to turn off her cell phone and turns her back on the mirror.

Tramp.

It’s all I can do to force myself to walk, not run, out of the bathroom.

Part of me wants to scurry back out to my father-in-law’s Caprice Classic, but the rest of me wants to make a mad dash for the grand staircase and hurtle myself into Mike’s arms.

“Can I help you find something, ma’am?” asks yet another solicitous, overly friendly staff member.

“Yes, you can.” I smile back at him.

Ask him how to get back to valet parking.

“Can you please tell me where I can find…”

Valet parking.

Say it.

Say it!

“…the grand staircase?”

I know, but I can’t help it.

I want to see him.

I
need
to see him.

Seeing him will put to rest any doubt I ever had that I made the right choice.

Yes, I’m doing this for my husband’s sake. For my marriage’s sake.

Really.

I might have been a giddy, weak-willed young girl the last time I saw Mike, but I’m a grown-up woman now.

Never mind that I’m so jittery with anticipation I feel like a giddy, weak-willed young girl.

As I stroll toward the grand staircase, I remind myself sternly that my future will contain no hurtling into anybody’s arms unless they’re my husband’s, at the airport back in New York.

I’ll have a quick, congenial lunch with an old pal and then I’ll hop in my big white old-man-mobile and go back to the retirement community from whence I came. Period.

There will be no flirting. No touching. No wine, no appetizers, no dessert. Nothing that will prolong this…this…
reunion.

I round the corner, and there it is.

The fabled grand staircase.

It takes me a moment to realize that the attractive middle-aged man standing at the foot of it is Mike.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my
God.

It’s really him.

And he hasn’t spotted me yet, meaning I can gawk without inhibition.

He looks good.

Really good.

Really good in a middle-aged way, like Richard Gere and Harrison Ford look really good in a middle-aged way; as opposed to having looked really good when they were fifteen years younger.

To my surprise, I’m…well, surprised. Surprised that he’s aged.

I guess I forgot, momentarily, that the Mike I’m meeting today isn’t the Mike from my past. Somehow I forgot that he, too, has grown older. Somehow, that makes him seem safer.

I find myself relaxing, just a bit, as I look him over.

There’s gray in Mike’s dark hair, but he’s got a full head of it. He’s tanned and clean-shaven and in good shape, with only the slightest hint of paunch sticking out beneath his pink—yes, pink—Ralph Lauren polo shirt above the belt of his khaki pants.

So much has happened to him since we last met. He’s been married, divorced; employed, unemployed. Yet he certainly doesn’t look any the worse for wear. In fact, he looks more relaxed and far better dressed than you’d expect of somebody who’s jobless.

I force my legs to move, carrying me toward him.

He turns his head and spots me. “Beau?”

“Hi.”

“Oh, my God.”

He’s walking, and I’m walking, and we’re walking…straight into each other’s arms.

I don’t hurtle myself, exactly.

No, but I do put my arms around his neck and squeeze, and I do notice that he smells great—like salt air and limes.

“I can’t believe you’re really here,” he says, his voice close to my ear. Then he pulls back and holds me at arm’s length, saying, “Let me look at you.”

I do, and it gives me another chance to look at him, up close this time. I can see a faint network of wrinkles around his eyes and the corners of his mouth, from the sun or from laughing or maybe just from age.

I decide that I like those wrinkles. He wears them well.

“You look gorgeous,” he says, shaking his head. “Three kids and fifteen years, and you look even better than you did the last time I saw you. How is that possible?”

I laugh. It isn’t my laugh, but an unfamiliar, giddy one—more of a giggle, really. I can’t help it. The years have fallen away and I am a giddy, giggly girl.

“I was getting really worried while I was waiting for you,” he confides, leading the way to wherever it is that we’re going. It doesn’t matter to me. It should, but it doesn’t. He could be bringing me to his lair to have his way with me for all I care.

“Why were you worried?” I ask. “I wasn’t late, was I?”

“No, I was early. And you were right on time. But I convinced myself that you weren’t going to show up.”

“Why wouldn’t I show up?” I ask, and laugh. At what, I don’t know. But there’s that giddiness again, spilling out of me with reckless abandon that should set off warning signals in my brain, but doesn’t.

“Because you’re married with three kids,” Mike says simply, and the giddiness evaporates just like that.

“Oh…I…well, of course I’m married with three kids, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have lunch.”

We are just here for lunch, aren’t we?

I don’t say it aloud, but I must have conveyed the question in my gaze because he touches my arm and says pointedly, “I know we can have lunch, Beau. I just wasn’t sure you’d want to have lunch with me after all…after everything.”

“You mean everything that happened when we broke up?” Might as well get it out there for discussion.

We’re still walking, but more slowly.

He nods. “That was ugly, wasn’t it?”

“It was. And it was my fault. I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

We stare at each other.

Then he says, “How about a drink?”

“You read my mind,” I say with a laugh. Not a giddy laugh this time, but a nervous one.

Moments later, we’re in the Maritana Grill, the Don CeSar’s legendary four-diamond restaurant. Mike doesn’t tell me that it’s legendary or four diamond; I read that on the Internet. So I’m impressed when the congenial maître d’ greets him by name and even more impressed that Mike made a reservation…and that we’re given the best table in the room.

I’ve already violated my no-flirting and no-touching rules, so when he immediately orders a bottle of wine from the extensive list, I don’t protest.

As I watch him swirl it in his glass, taste it, and offer his approval, I realize he seems somewhat accustomed to the good life. Can he possibly be wealthy?

“What is it that you did, exactly, before you lost your job?” I ask him when we’re alone again, with full glasses poised for a toast.

“I didn’t lose my job.”

“Oh! I thought you did.”

“No.”

“Didn’t you say you were unemployed?”

“By choice,” he says simply.

“Oh!” I say again, wondering exactly how wealthy he is. I can’t think of a polite way to inquire, so I ask instead, “What are we drinking to?”

“To getting reacquainted.”

“To getting reacquainted,” I echo, and clink my glass against his.

I sip the wine. I can feel it going straight to my head.

My stomach is empty; I didn’t dare eat the shredded wheat and whole-grain toast my mother-in-law put out for breakfast again this morning.

I ate it yesterday, along with a cup of coffee, and regretted it shortly afterward when I found myself doubled over with cramps and rushing to find a bathroom on the beach.

My in-laws, who ingest all that fiber along with prune juice and Metamucil every morning to keep themselves “regular,” were actually worried that I might have picked up some kind of “bug” on the plane.

“Are you okay?” Mike asks, watching me.

“I’m fine. Why?”

“You looked like you were thinking about something.”

“I was, but…”

But it was poop, and you’re not one of my mommy friends, so I’m not going to bring it up.

At least that thought momentarily killed the romantic ambience. For me, anyway.

I tell myself that if I find myself getting too caught up in the moment at any time during lunch, I’ll just force myself to think about poop.

“I can’t believe you drove all the way over here just to meet me for lunch and you just have to turn around and drive all the way back,” I tell him.

“I don’t.”

“You don’t?” I repeat. “You don’t what?”

“Have to turn around and drive all the way back. I got a room.”

At last, the alarm bells are going off in my head, and it’s about damn time.

“You got a
room?
” I echo.

“Well, not a room, exactly. It’s more of a suite.”

“A suite?” I’ve become Polly the Parrot, dammit, but I can’t help it. I’m flabbergasted. By everything. The place, seeing him, learning that for him this is more than just lunch.

But I already knew that, didn’t I? Lunch, for me, is polishing off somebody’s peanut-butter-and-grape-jelly-on-white-bread. On a good day, it’s the kids sitting still long enough for me to order and eat a turkey wrap and iced tea at the IHOP. It isn’t…

Valet parking, reservations, fine wine.

And it sure as hell doesn’t lead to a suite in the most elegant hotel I’ve ever seen.

“It’s my favorite suite in the place,” Mike goes on conversationally after a sip of wine. “The presidential one. I didn’t think it would be available on such short notice, but they’d had a cancellation.”

“The presidential suite?” I ask weakly, because he’s waiting for me to say something and I have yet to find words of my own.

“Yes. You should see it. It’s really something.”

No, I shouldn’t. I should definitely not see his suite.

I should see myself to valet parking, that’s what I should—

“Have you decided on appetizers yet, folks?” the waiter asks.

Mike looks at me.

I glance helplessly at the menu in my hand. I haven’t even glimpsed anything that’s on it yet.

“Would you like me to order for us?” Mike asks.

“Oh…sure.”

Without further ado, he rattles off a list that begins with seared ahi and ends with beluga caviar. This, from a man who once refused to try sushi.

When the amiably chatty waiter has collected our menus and disappeared again, I say, “Everyone is so friendly here.”

“Looks like you’re not in New York anymore, Dorothy.”

“New Yorkers are friendly,” I protest.

He just gives me a look.

“What? They are,” I insist.

“Southerners are friendlier.”

“Is that why you’re here?”

“Partly.”

Now that I’ve opened that door, I can’t help asking, “So what did you do, exactly, before you quit working?”

“I was in business with a few other guys, but we sold it,” he says vaguely. “Tell me about your life.”

I nearly spit out my wine. “Tell you about my
life?
You mean…all of it?”

“Just the last fifteen years. You married Mike…when?”

“Um…” Almost fifteen years ago. Not long after the Mike I’m having lunch with and I had our explosive last night together and went our separate ways.

But I don’t want to talk about that, so I say, “Wait, you forgot to tell me about your job.”

“You don’t want to hear about that.”

“Sure I do.”

“No, you don’t, any more than I want to hear about you marrying somebody else.”

Taken aback, I look into his eyes. In them, I see someone who was deeply hurt and maybe never got over it.

“Let’s save all that for later and talk about something else now,” he suggests.

“Like what?”

“Like those fish.” He gestures at the enormous aquarium nearby.

I laugh.

But he’s serious. We talk about the fish. Then we talk about the food. Then we talk about Florida.

It sounds crazy, but it’s a good conversation. We laugh a lot, just like the old days.

Too soon, the waiter arrives to clear away the remains of my profiterole with chocolate gelato and chilled white Godiva liqueur and Mike’s chocolate mascarpone tower with cinnamon cream.

“Oh, my God,” I say with a groan as we stand to make our way out of the restaurant. “I’ve never eaten so much in my life.”

“Yes, you have.”

I look at him, startled first by his tone, and then by the fondly reminiscing expression on his face.

“You always had a huge appetite,” he tells me. “I never met another woman who could eat the way you did.”

“What about your wife?” I blurt, because I have to say something to jar him out of the past.

That certainly does the trick. A shadow slides across his features. “I don’t really want to talk about her.”

“How long have you been divorced?”

“A year.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m better off, and so is she. Come on, let’s go for a walk on the beach.”

A walk on the beach?

I thought we were done. I thought lunch was it. I thought I was about to head home.

Caught off guard, I can only allow myself to be led out onto one of the wide piazzas. The humid August heat radiates in shimmering ribbons off the wooden boardwalk and the powdery white sand crowded with midday sunbathers.