She, Myself & I (5 page)

Zack just shrugged in response, and then looked out my window at the view of downtown Austin and the tree-dotted grounds of the state capitol building. He was silent for a few beats and then glanced back over at me and said, “Would you like to have dinner with me?”

“Dinner?” I repeated. “Why?”

Zack smiled, and I flushed, realizing how ridiculous I must sound.

“It’s just that we don’t really know one another,” I said.

“Sophie said you weren’t seeing anyone, and I thought . . . well, she seemed to think you’d be open to the idea of going out with me,” Zack said.

I should have known. Sophie was up to her old tricks, even after I’d explicitly told her to butt out. I opened my mouth to say
No, thank you, I’m not interested.
But something stopped me. After all, wasn’t Zack exactly the kind of man Owen had urged me to have a fling with?

The thought made me swallow hard. The whole idea had just been a lark, something to laugh about with Owen . . . hadn’t it? One-night stands were not—and had never been—my thing. Life was easiest when you stayed on a routine—eating the same things, working the same hours, watching the same kinds of shows on television. There was an ordered calmness to it all, and it was a sort of happiness to always know what was just around the corner. Love affairs, even if only physical, can wreak havoc on all that.

But then, wasn’t that supposed to be the whole point of the no-strings fling? You get to indulge in the physical pleasure without the baggage. And if I didn’t take the plunge now, when would I? Would the weak-chinned, beady-eyed tax lawyer who’d asked me to lunch last week, for whom I felt nothing but a mild revulsion, really be a better candidate?

“Sure. Dinner sounds . . . okay, why not,” I said, and tried to shrug off the alarm bells that were going off inside my head.

It’s just dinner, I lectured myself. If I can’t go through with the strings-free sex, I just won’t. I don’t have to decide that now.

“Enthusiasm. I like that,” Zack said, and when I opened up my mouth, gaping like a fish, he said, “Kidding. I was just kidding.”

“Oh,” I said, and felt absurdly stupid. This was why I hate being teased, I always end up feeling like everyone’s laughing at me. Why was I letting myself be put in this position?

“Maybe this isn’t . . . ,” I started to say, but Zack just shook his head.

“No backing out now. A deal’s a deal. Is five o’clock too early to pick you up? We’re going to need a little extra time to get to where we’re going,” Zack said.

I stared at him, fairly sure that I’d just been outmaneuvered. It didn’t happen often.

Chapter Five

“This should be an interesting evening,” I muttered to myself, as I rushed into my apartment at 4:50 p.m.

I’d been planning to leave work even earlier—which was something I never did, and felt like a juvenile delinquent as I slipped out the back door of our office, looking over my shoulder guiltily while I waited for the elevator—but I hadn’t been able to get off the phone with a teary client who was convinced that her estranged husband was going to get his hands on her doll collection. Now I had to hurry to change, swapping out the gray suit for a pair of boot-cut khakis and a sleek black boat-neck top.

The phone rang, and I clicked the on button, then tucked it between my ear and shoulder so I could keep my hands free for applying eyeliner and mascara.

“Hello,” I said, leaning toward the mirror as I carefully smudged a black charcoal pencil along my upper lash line.

“Hey, it’s me. Have you talked to Mom recently?” my sister Mickey asked.

“Where are you?”

“Where do you think? I’m at school,” Mickey said. She was in her senior year at Princeton and had already been accepted into Brown Medical School. Mickey was nauseatingly successful at everything, balancing her schoolwork and a nonstop social schedule with an effortless, offbeat charm. She was the person I wanted to be when I grew up.

“Can I call you back? I’m going out,” I said.

“Ooh, hot date?”

“No. Not really. I wouldn’t call it a date.”

“I thought you swore off dating.”

“Who told you that?”

“Mom. And Sophie. So, tell, tell. Who’s your new guy?”

“No one. Really.”

“So I know him?”

“No! And he’s not my guy. He’s just a guy. And it’s not really a date, because I don’t plan on ever seeing him again after tonight,” I said.

“Then why won’t you tell me who he is?”

“Okay, I’ll tell you, but you have to promise you won’t tell Sophie,” I said.

“Why?”

“Promise.”

“I promise. Soph is kind of scary these days, anyway. I called her a few days ago—Nick and I were going to see the new John Cusack movie, and I knew she’d just seen it, so I wanted to hear a review—and she yelled at me and told me to never, ever interrupt her when she’s watching
Survivor
. So who is he?” Mickey asked.

“You don’t know him. He’s Sophie’s contractor,” I said.

“The hot one?”

“She told you about him?”

“Yeah! His name’s Zack, right? He’s pretty much all she would talk about, once she stopped freaking out that I was bothering her during her precious show. I think she has a crush on him. Is that why you’re not telling her that you’re going out with him?” Mickey asked.

I put down the mascara wand and swished a MAC brush into a container of blush and then swept it onto my cheekbones.

“Of course not. And Sophie doesn’t really have a crush on Zack, she’s just a little hormonal right now.”

“Then why don’t you want her to know you’re dating him?”

“First of all, I’m not dating him. We’re just going out this one time, and it’s not even technically a date. And second, I am going to tell Sophie, I’m just going to wait until after our . . . non-date thing. Anyway, I have to go, I’m running late. I’ll talk to you later.”

“Wait! The reason why I called: Have you talked to Mom lately?”

I frowned. “Mmm, I can’t remember. I think we talked a few days ago. Why?”

“Because I’m getting a weird vibe from her. And when I called her yesterday, Dad was over at her house,” Mickey said.

I dropped my MAC brush.

“What?” I asked. “But she and Dad hate each other.”

Our parents’ divorce had not been amicable. They’d never gotten along, bickering constantly while we were growing up, and then one day, my mother had announced that if she had to cook my father one more dinner or iron one more of his shirts, she’d—and this is a direct quote—“lose her fucking mind,” and then had gone on a strike. She spent her days sitting on the couch reading astrological charts while the laundry piled up, the refrigerator overflowed with containers of stale take-out, and an aggressive mold took over the grout on the tub. A month later my father moved out, hired a cleaning lady for his new apartment, and immediately started dating one of his graduate students. This shot across my mother’s bow marked the official commencement of hostilities. She turned around and sold off my father’s golf clubs, his beloved collection of toy trains, and all of the clothes he left behind in an impromptu garage sale. My father retaliated by closing their joint credit card accounts. My mother changed the locks on the house. My father refused to pay for the garbage pickup. And on and on it went.

Soph and I were already out of the house by that point—I was in law school, Soph was in college—so we were spared the worst of it. But Mickey was only twelve when they separated, and so she became yet one more thing that they argued endlessly about, first directly and then through their lawyers. It was truly a miracle that Mickey was now as happy and well adjusted as she was, and I always felt a tug of guilt that I hadn’t been around more to help protect her from the chaos.

“I don’t think they do anymore. I know they’ve been talking for the past few months. Mom tried to hide it from me, but she kept slipping and mentioning things that Dad had told her,” Mickey said.

“That’s just so weird. Maybe it was a business thing? Something to do with the house?”

“I don’t think so. Mom said she was going out to dinner, and although she didn’t say who she was going with, I could hear Dad talking in the background. You don’t think it was a date, do you?”

The very thought gave me shivers. After everything they’d put all of us through with the Divorce from Hell, if they even considered getting back together, I’d have to kill them both.

“Not possible,” I said.

“I swear, I heard him. He was telling her to hurry up because he wanted to beat the crowds,” Mickey said.

This did sound suspiciously like Dad. “Beating the crowds” had been a recurring theme of our childhood. He’d prefer eating dinner out at five in the evening at one of the least popular restaurants in town rather than risk having to wait ten minutes for a table.

“What did she say when you asked her?”

“I didn’t have a chance. She just said she’d talk to me later and hung up,” Mickey said. I could hear the sharp edges of panic in her voice, and it worried me.

“Try not to think about it, Mick. I’m sure it’s nothing—this is
them
we’re talking about—and you’ve got enough to deal with up there. I’ll talk to Sophie and see if she’s heard anything,” I said. “Besides, Mom already told me that she’s seeing someone else.”

“That’s a relief. Who is he?”

“Actually . . . I’m not sure. She wouldn’t say,” I said, remembering how mysterious Mom had been about her new boyfriend.

“It’s Dad!” Mickey wailed.

“No, I’m sure it’s not Dad. Really, Mick, you know how they feel about each other,” I said.

“What should I say when Mom calls me tomorrow?”

“How do you know she will?”

“She calls me every day.”

“She does? Since when?”

“Since forever.”

I closed my eyes and shook my head.
Typical.
Mickey, my parents’ surprise baby—they’d gone on a second honeymoon to Hawaii, and nine months later Mickey had arrived—had always been Mom’s favorite. I fought off the jealousy by reminding myself just how insane it would make me if Mom were calling me every day.

My door buzzer sounded. “Crap. He’s here, and I’m not ready. Mick, honey, I’ve got to run. I’ll call you later.”

Chapter Six

Zack held out his hand to help me jump down out of his bright red 1955 Chevrolet pickup truck (I knew the year only because Zack had told me, his face beaming with unmistakable pride). The truck was pretty cool in a retro kind of a way, which was a very popular aesthetic in Austin, along with vintage clothing, VW vans, and record stores that still sold vinyl LPs.

We’d taken Route 2222, a lovely drive that winds through the limestone cliffs and densely wooded areas west of Austin, toward Lake Travis, and had pulled into the parking lot for the Travis County Marina. I wasn’t familiar with the area, but it didn’t look like there was a restaurant anywhere in the vicinity.

“What are we doing here?” I asked.

“Having dinner, like I promised,” Zack said, and when he smiled at me, I briefly considered ripping off my bra and throwing it at him.

Somehow, over the course of the scenic drive, I’d fallen seriously in lust with this guy. Maybe it was because I’d already halfway made the decision to sleep with him, or maybe it was because Sophie was right—Zack was a “hottie.” He was just so solidly masculine. Zack had a thick chest, sexy hips, and long, muscular legs. And he had the nicest hands—they were large and square, and when he held out his hand to help me out of the truck, I noticed they felt soft, which struck me as odd for a carpenter. I’d have expected them to be rough and calloused.

“But where?”

“That’s the surprise. I brought dinner with us,” Zack said, and pulled a blue cooler from the bed of the pickup.

I looked around. “Are there tables out here? Overlooking the lake?”

I had to give him points for originality. And it was a gorgeous October evening, the perfect weather for a picnic. It was warm enough that I was comfortable in elbow-length sleeves, and yet the heavy damp humidity that marked the long, uncomfortable summer had mercifully chosen not to linger.

“I thought we could eat out on the lake. On my boat,” Zack suggested.