The Lost Husband (13 page)

“He was,” I said. “He was the sweetest guy.”

Now her face was squinched up in sympathy. “It was so awful when you had to sell your house.” I looked around for O’Connor then, hoping he might return and break her momentum. “And that day you had the estate sale? How did you stand it?”

“Didn’t you buy something that day?” I remembered seeing her there.

She grinned, delighted with her purchase. “Your wedding china! We had the same pattern!”

Lord, she was mean.

“They weren’t buying my life,” I told her, feeling the need to insist. “Just my things.”

Another sympathetic face.

“Well,” I said, not sure what to say, “life forces you to make choices about what really matters.”

She made her face bright again. “And what really matters is cheese?”

I hated every single thing about this conversation. It was as if the oxygen had been leaching out of the air while we were talking, and suddenly I realized it was all gone. Suddenly I couldn’t stand there another single second. So when I saw O’Connor heading my way with a steaming cup of cider, I did not excuse myself or even glance back at Jessica. I just walked straight toward him so fast, we almost collided.

“Hey,” he said.

“Can you tell me where the bathroom is? Now?”

He pointed toward a building at the back of the parking lot, and I took off without letting myself think about how Jessica would grill him about our relationship when he got back to the booth and figure out that our “cheese making” was only cheese making. I cringed a little at the idea. But none of that mattered as much as the simple act of getting myself the hell away.

When I arrived at the bathroom, though, I didn’t know what to do. Hiding didn’t help. And there wasn’t any more air in there than anywhere else.

I felt emotions that seemed disproportionate even to me: embarrassed and guilty and naked and vulnerable and stupid and, more than anything, as though I had let Danny down. Jessica had somehow undermined any sense I might have had that I was getting better. Lately I’d been feeling just the tiniest bit like I was improving my life, but five minutes with Jessica Boone had utterly convinced me not only that I was not
moving in the right direction—but that such a thing didn’t even exist.

I paced a minute, and then, as I heard some people approaching, I ducked into a stall.

I closed my eyes and did a few neck stretches. I squeezed and unsqueezed my fists. I was afraid to go back out. I didn’t want to see Jessica—or, at this point, even O’Connor—and so I stayed far longer in the bathroom than I’d ever intended.

At last, though, as I reached to unlatch my stall, I heard two women walk in, and realized right then that one of them was Jessica. She was in the middle of a conversation with a friend of hers named Renée, who I’d always kind of liked, and as soon as I heard them I knew just who they were talking about.

“She was in overalls,” Jessica was saying. “I’m not even kidding.”

A giggle from Renée.

“Seriously,” Jessica went on. “She could have been chewing on a stalk of hay. It was like something from
Hee Haw
.”

Another giggle—this one part snort—from Renée.

They went into stalls on either side of me.

“I never liked her,” Renée said.

“Me neither,” Jessica said.

“What is it about her that’s so irritating?”

“I don’t know!” Jessica said. “She just bugs me.”

They peed at the same time, came out of their stalls at the same time, and clanked the doors behind them at the same time. Then they paused—at the mirror, I supposed. Jessica went on: “But here’s the best part. She told me she’s sleeping with the goat cheese guy.”

There was an exaggerated pause. Then Renée said, “She did not.”

“She did!”

“She just announced it to you?”

“Pretty much.”

“Impossible!”

“Apparently not.”

“Why would she even tell you that?” Renée asked.

“Showing off,” Jessica said.

They started to move toward the exit.

“I bet she was lying,” Renée said.

“You think?”

“Don’t you?”

Jessica thought for a second. “You’re right. She was totally lying.”

They were laughing now.

“And now,” Renée went on in a high squeak, “you have to
eat
her
cheese
!”

They stepped out the door, but the last thing I heard was Jessica saying, “That does it. I’m taking it back.”

It was amazing how words could have such a physical effect. The memory of them ricocheted around the walls as I pressed my head against the metal stall door. I hated these women for being so petty and mean. And I hated myself for letting them bother me. And more than anything I hated Danny for leaving me alone with nobody to protect me from a world full of bullshit.

I lingered for another minute, then I stood up straight, unlatched the door, and walked myself back to the market, hoping like crazy that those women were long gone, that O’Connor had sold every last tub of cheese, and that it was time to get the hell out of Houston.

Not quite. As I neared our booth I spotted Jessica and Renée two booths over, still shopping and in no hurry to leave.

I stopped behind the truck, and O’Connor saw me. “Hey!” he said, walking in my direction. I didn’t want him to see my eyes, which, I knew, were verging on tears, so I turned away. But he came right up close. “Where have you been?”

I looked up at him.

Whatever he saw on my face made him frown. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Can we leave?” I asked. “Have we sold everything yet?”

“We haven’t sold everything,” O’Connor said. “But we can leave.”

I turned to peer through the truck window, trying to get a read on Jessica’s location. They were at the next booth over.

“I just need to get out of here,” I said.

“What is it?” he said again.

“Can we just go?” I checked the glass again. Jessica and Renée were headed toward our booth, and in that moment it was clear that I had to tell O’Connor everything in five seconds or less for any hope of escape.

He had followed my glance, but I put my hand on his jaw to turn him back to me. And then I said with all the urgency I could muster, and with absolutely no pauses between words, “I accidentally told that girl right there that you and I were dating and then she came into the bathroom while I was there and she and her friend said horrible things about me, and worst of all was that they thought I was lying about us dating, which is the most humiliating of all because it’s true.”

O’Connor blinked. “You told her we were dating?”

“Yes!”

“Why?”

“Because …” I didn’t know how to explain it. “Because she and all her friends think you’re hot, and she’s always been mean
to me, and she was teasing me about making cheese, and she was so damn smug, and I didn’t want her to crow over her perfect husband and how she has exactly what she always wanted, like she was somehow entitled to all her blessings like nobody else in the world—” I broke off for a second, with all the other things I wanted to say still pulsing in my chest. I could feel Jessica’s eyes on us now, and I dropped my voice to a whisper. “I just didn’t want to let her win.”

O’Connor took this all in. Then he glanced back at our booth, where Jessica and Renée were now waiting.

He seemed to find the whole thing a little funny. “They think I’m hot?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, not finding it funny at all.

His face got serious. “And that’s why you’re about to cry?”

Obviously. “Yes,” I said.

Jessica saw him glance her way. “Excuse me!” she called, nose wrinkled. “I need to return this cheese.”

O’Connor took a step closer to me as he carefully ignored her.

“Excuse me!” Jessica called again.

O’Connor was still looking at me. “I hate people like that,” he said. Then he leaned in closer and whispered into my ear, “I have an idea, but it’s kind of crazy.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding, with no sense at all of what I was agreeing to.

He looked down at my mouth with an expression like he was about to jump off the high dive, and then he leaned in and kissed me.

At first we were both too stunned at what we were doing to enjoy it very much. It was more just assembling the technical requirements of a kiss than anything else.
Lips touching? Check. Hold position
.

But then we shifted into character. Once I realized what the plan was and got on board, and once he found his pretend-kissing groove, it was like we both made the decision at the same time to make it look real. I put my hands behind his neck, and he pressed up against me—his lips warm and cidery—until we both stumbled back against the truck.

I relaxed against him and inhaled the yummy scents of soap, salt, and hot cider. All good scents. All good everything, to be honest. We weren’t French-kissing, exactly, but we made it look like we were. That’s when something shifted. The people around us blurred into the background, and the moment itself—the closeness, the warmth, the tickle of his beard—became the only thing in focus. The kiss transformed into something real, at least for me.

O’Connor braced one arm against the truck and curved the other around my waist, all the while steady, with no hesitation. I had to hand it to him. He went for it. He made it seem like he was starving and I was a feast. And when, for a grand finale, he ran his hand down the side of my body, it was all I could do to keep standing.

When he pulled back a little and opened his eyes, they had a question that I couldn’t quite read.

I was a little breathless as I met his gaze. Still, I pulled it together enough to whisper, “Thank you.”

He stepped back to let me go as I turned toward the women at the booth. I tried not to look too triumphant as I approached them.

“I’m sorry,” I said, only part of my brain giving Jessica its attention, and the rest stubbornly luxuriating in the memory of what just happened. “What was it you needed?”

Both their mouths were still open. Then Jessica, clearly still a
little focused on what had just happened, held up her tub of cheese. “I’m returning this.”

I squinched up my nose in false sympathy. “We don’t take returns.”

“But I just bought it!” she said.

“You bought it half an hour ago,” I said. “Who knows what you’ve been up to since then?”

Jessica didn’t argue. “Fine,” she said in a tone that made it clear she would not be patronizing our booth again.

I watched her walk away, and then I turned to look at O’Connor, who was leaning against the truck now, lost in thought. He looked up when he felt my gaze. “Do we still need to leave?” he asked.

I gave him a grateful smile and shook my head. “Nope.”

“All better, then?” he asked.

I nodded. All better. Way better. Too much better. He had kissed me. Maybe it was for pretend, and maybe he was acting, and maybe he didn’t really mean it. But it had been a good kiss—that much was undeniable. A really, really good kiss.

It had been a rash, unexpected, totally inappropriate thing to do. And it was perfect.

Chapter 11
 

On the drive home, cheese all sold, Jessica Boone behind us, I gave O’Connor the blow-by-blow of the whole debacle with her—though I left out some of the worst things she had said about me, just in case they were true.

O’Connor kept his eyes on the road, one hand solidly on the wheel. We both made sure to remain extra casual with each other.

I’d wanted to ask him about his ring on the drive down, but there had never been a good time. Now I gave up entirely. I suddenly felt afraid of the answer.

“Thanks again,” I said, to fill up the pause. “You’re my new hero.”

He smiled and kept his eyes on the road.

“Did you know they call you the Hot Farmer?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “But the housewives love me. They think I’m dangerous.”

“Are you?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. As much as anyone is, I guess.”

I hadn’t noticed on the way down that O’Connor was the kind of guy who drove with only one hand on the wheel, but on the way home, I fixated on it. I was sure that posture said something about him. I just wasn’t quite sure what it said.

O’Connor made a one-handed turn with the heel of his hand and said, “I don’t think she’s winning, by the way. People that mean lose by definition.”

I hadn’t thought about it that way. “I suppose that’s true,” I said, nodding. “She has to stay with her mean self all day long.”

“That’s right,” he said. “And we get to go home.”

I felt a flicker of recognition at the word. As I thought about Jean’s farm, it did feel a little bit like home. This was the first time I’d been any distance from it since we’d moved there, and the miles gave me a new perspective. Even though I still thought of my real home as the house where I’d lived with Danny, it seemed, in that moment, like maybe I could claim more than one.

I’d been planning, before the disaster with Jessica Boone, to ask if we could just drive by the old house on our way back to the freeway. It wouldn’t have been much of a detour, and the fact that it was so nearby fired me up to see it again. While we’d lived at my mother’s, I had on occasion, after the kids were asleep, driven over in the minivan and parked across the street. I just wanted to see the place. To rest my eyes on it. To know that the house, at least, was still there.