Rolling in the Deep (15 page)

As soon as the car is parked, the girls unbuckle their seat belts and run squealing into the house. All the way up from the city, they’ve been hatching a detailed plan involving fairies, knights, and the dusty old attic of their aunt Holly’s new house. I believe Holly’s puppy is featured, too, in some sort of dragon capacity. It’s hard to keep up sometimes, with Ana and Sofia.

A year ago, my brother was a cook at a diner in Queens. Now he’s living in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, practically moved in with a woman who might soon be his wife. It doesn’t hurt that they won the lottery together six months ago and are now filthy rich. Their whole, perfect lives are spread out before them.

And I’m happy for them. I really am.

It’s just that sometimes I have a little trouble adjusting. Once upon a time, I was the success story, striving like hell for the life my parents wanted for me. The life my mother left Mexico for, that my father worked double shifts in construction for. That he eventually died for.

I had that life for a while—a wife, two kids, a nice home, a thriving business. Until it all started crumbling, and I couldn’t react fast enough to keep the pieces together.

Ana comes bounding out of the house now, the dog at her heels, shrieking delightedly. Sofia soon follows with a water sprayer, soaking wet and out for vengeance. I look at my watch and chuckle. It took about five minutes for trouble to find them.

I know I should go in, but I’m not quite ready to face Ray and Holly. Or Holly’s friend, for that matter, who might already be here.

I met Beth only once, six months ago, and once was almost more than I could handle. It was just a few weeks after my divorce was finalized. Ray and Holly invited us both out to dinner to celebrate their lottery win.

She was wearing a red dress, and the reason I remember that is because of the way it hugged her skin—the lush shape of her, the curve and weight. I’d say it was shallow of me to notice her body, but honestly, I didn’t choose to notice. It was like some previously silent homing device woke up in my gut and started shivering.

When Ray introduced us, she reached out and shook my hand. Her fingers wrapped around mine—firm and warm—and I’m ashamed to say my first thought was how those fingers would feel on my dick.

I wouldn’t call myself uptight, but I’m not usually the kind of person who veers off the road like that, mentally. I took my seat at the table, kept my head down, and said as little as possible while Ray and Holly talked animatedly about their plans for the restaurant.

Beth cracked deadpan jokes and tried to include me in the conversation. She might even have been flirting with me, but I was so shell-shocked, I had no idea how to respond. She was too beautiful, and I was too broken.

On the whole, it was not my finest hour.

I peer through the windshield at the front windows of Holly’s house. It’s past time I went in and faced everyone. I take a deep breath and reach for the door handle.

And my phone buzzes in my jacket pocket.

I fumble it out, glancing guiltily at the house.

Ray and Holly give me grief about accepting work calls up here. They complain that I work too much, but that’s easy for them to say when combined, they’re worth more than a hundred million dollars. I answer the phone.

“Hey, Jackie. Everything okay?”

A Stevie Wonder song filters down the line, which is no surprise. My head store manager favors a certain seventies Pandora station, and she’s not shy about dancing to it.

“Oh yeah, all good, boss. Quiet. Just wanted to see if I should maybe close early like we did last week.”

Like we’ve done for the past several weeks, she’s too polite to say. When it was Saturday night and the store was so dead it wasn’t worth the electricity to keep it open.

“How quiet are we talking?” I ask her.

She hesitates, and Stevie fills in the silence with that song he wrote for his daughter. I breathe deeply so as not to listen too hard, because that song always puts a lump in my throat.

“Like, maybe two or three people in the last two hours.”

I sigh heavily.

The neighborhood where the store is located used to be diverse and working-class, and it was no mystery how to provide for that population. The previous owner was Greek; I was Mexican and Italian. We both came from working families, and we knew the people who lived around us. We sold household merchandise out of a double storefront, and like all the other businesses on the block, we offered reasonable prices. Our neighbors were an old-school butcher who’d been there for several decades and a cobbler who could turn an ancient pair of boots into a work of art. I worked there as a teenager for extra cash, and ten years and a business degree later, when the owner was ready to retire, I bought the place and took it over.

It was relatively simple until the neighborhood population changed. Since then, we’ve all been fighting to adjust, and some of us are failing. The butcher closed up shop three years ago—replaced by a chain store—and the cobbler is already planning his retirement. He can sell the store for seven figures now and move out to Long Island with his grandchildren.

If I had been less distracted by the disintegration of my marriage, I might have come up with a plan of my own sooner—a strategy for reconfiguring the business, for acclimating to the shifting neighborhood. But by the time I had my head on straight, we were already sinking. For the last six months, I’ve been fighting like hell to rescue us, and every minute I’m not there I feel like I’m letting my employees down. They need their jobs as much as I need mine, and it’s not looking good for us at the moment.

I take another deep breath. “Go ahead and close up at six, okay, Jackie? Make sure you set the alarm.”

“Sure.” She pauses. “You okay, Tony?”

Which is a question that kills me. Jackie’s been with the store for fifteen years—longer than I have. It would devastate her family to lose the work, and yet it’s me she’s worried about.

And Ray wonders why I put so many hours in.

He had to push hard to get me to leave work and come up here this weekend. In the end he reminded me that my daughters need me too, and need their extended family. It was a low blow, but it worked. I took the day off and bundled the girls into the car. Their utter delight at the unexpected trip shamed me. They stared rapt at the changing leaves on the trees, and I tried and failed to remember the last time I’d taken them anywhere.

“Yeah, Jackie, I’m good. Thanks. You go, and have a good weekend.”

“You too, Tony. Take care, okay?”

“Will do.”

I hang up and stare at the front of the house. The girls have probably already taken over all the toys of Holly’s son, Drew, and he’s probably let them, sweet kid that he is. I’m just bracing myself to head inside when another car pulls in to the driveway.

I’ve parked under a tree at the side of the house in order to make room for the other cars. In this shaded spot, with the sun at full shine, I’m probably not visible to the driver. I wonder briefly if I should get out of the car and make myself known, but when I see who it is, I lean back quickly into the shadows.

It’s her.

Beth.

A few weeks after I met her at dinner, Ray told me she was pregnant. I remembered, belatedly, how little she’d eaten at dinner. Some bread, maybe, and a glass of ginger ale. If she was anything like my ex-wife in pregnancy, she must have been just entering the throes of morning sickness. I was grateful I’d had the sense to keep my inappropriate thoughts to myself.

Alice comes tearing out from behind the house to greet Beth, and when she rolls down her window to scratch the dog’s ears, I pull back and sneak a look in the rearview mirror. I haven’t had a haircut for months. It’s the sort of thing I always forget now that I’m single. I raced out of the house without shaving too, and now here I am, hiding in my truck, looking like somebody who slept on the street.

I’m thinking my unattractive state is probably for the best when she steps out of her car, and then for a moment I’m not thinking at all. Just, again, reacting.

She’s wearing black leggings and a white tank top, with a long caramel-colored cardigan over it, and knee-length boots. Her dark hair is braided loosely down her back, and she pushes a few strands out of her eyes as she shuts the car door. There is an immediate physicality about her that makes me go utterly still. A presence, and a center of gravity that pulls everything toward her.

She is fuller now than before, naturally. Rounded in her belly, and swollen—like a ripe peach is swollen, like a teardrop on the edge of a lash. I exhale and realize I’ve been holding my breath. She pulls open the back door to retrieve something from the seat, and when she bends over, I have to close my eyes entirely.

What. The hell. Is wrong with me.

It must be that it’s been a while—that’s all. Alexa and I were on ice for a long time before we actually separated. Once the divorce was final, I slogged through a dozen or so dinners with women I met on dating sites, and they were nice enough. But nothing clicked so much that I wanted to take it past a second or third date. And for better or worse, I’m not a one-night-stand type of guy.

At the moment I’m wishing I was, since maybe it would have taken the edge off seeing Beth again. Three minutes in, and I’m already right back where I was that first night: tongue-tied, hard as a rock, and embarrassed at myself.

Beth shuts the car door and heads into the house, carrying a large red bowl.

I shake my head to clear it.

It’s not her problem that I’ve suddenly developed a deep and abiding sexual fetish for pregnant women that I’ll probably never shake. It’s not her problem that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with my life.

I open my car door with resolve and head across the driveway.

And right around to the backyard, where I know Ray will be grilling.

Alone.

I’ll go into the house once I get my head on straight.