5:00 p.m.
Jack typed furiously. One last email and he could leave the office. Thanks to the cancellation of his three o’clock conference call, he’d managed to finish everything up in the last couple of hours. Maybe he’d make it to Cecil’s before six after all. He grinned and pictured Stefan already there, warming a chair and saving a table. Jack shut down his computer and glanced at the clock. He could almost feel his fingers wrapped around a dart.
“Suzie, I’m leaving.” He paused by the secretary’s desk and scanned the three message slips she handed him.
Nothing important
, he decided.
“Have fun tonight.” She winked and laced slim fingers beneath her chin.
“I will. Be good to those kids of yours.”
Jack headed for the elevators. Outside, he was surprised to find that the wind hadn’t died down much. Rain pelted the back of his neck, and he bent his chin as he waited for a cab.
“Cecil’s Pub. Over on Sudbury.”
The cabbie grunted and wove the vehicle through rush-hour traffic, narrowly missing a bus and a minivan. Jack tried not to flinch. Brushing the rain from his hair, he calculated the distance between the bar and his apartment. Though he’d moved most of his things into Paige’s townhouse last month after the proposal, he’d kept his own place on the other side of the city. His tuxedo was one of the few pieces of clothing still hanging in that closet.
“Why don’t you let the lease run out?” she’d asked one morning over coffee.
“I will,” he’d promised.
But he kept forgetting to call and give notice.
Truth was, Jack didn’t really mind keeping the apartment he’d called home for six years. Affording the rent wasn’t a problem. Plus, it gave him a place to crash after a late night at the office or when Paige needed some sleep without him snoring beside her. He ignored the tickle in the back of his mind that suggested maybe there was another reason he hadn’t yet given it up.
It’ll take me an hour or so
, he thought,
to get in a shower and make it to the Hotel Victoria by seven
. That left him about fifty minutes for darts and beer.
Never enough time
.
Not for the stuff you really want to do
.
Up ahead, the bar’s blue sign flickered, with its second C missing. The cabbie veered across two lanes of traffic and braked at the corner. Jack felt his stomach meet his throat and was glad he hadn’t eaten much for lunch. Tossing a ten over the seat, he muttered a thank-you and pushed open the door.
The minute he stepped inside, Cecil’s Pub wrapped its blue-collar appeal around him. A few guys clad in work boots and jeans hunched up at the bar, sleeves pushed way back. They watched the replays from last night’s game and pounded their fists against the smooth, scarred strip of wood. Whistles punctured the air. Two college-aged waitresses wound their way between the tables, carrying trays above their heads with beer mugs and baskets of chips. Red Sox and Celtics paraphernalia hung on every wall. Jack breathed in the aroma of the place, a mix of the kitchen’s deep fryer and sweet, spilled lager running down the drain behind the bar. A fixture in the neighborhood since the early forties, Cecil’s attracted the city’s laborers as well as its college professors and upper-management execs.
My kind of place
, he thought, as he always did when he had the time to stop by.
Jack looked around. There. In the back. From a corner table, Stefan raised a frosty mug. Long ash-blond hair flopped into his eyes, leftover from his San Diego boyhood though he’d lived on the East Coast since college. Long legs stretched out beneath the table as he tried to adjust his six-foot two-inch frame. From the grin on Stefan’s face, Jack suspected his college buddy had been there awhile.
“Good to see you, man.” He clasped Stefan’s hand.
“Likewise.” Stefan reached for the pitcher and filled a second mug. “You made it out of the office before six.”
“Yeah. Can’t believe it.” Jack settled himself into the opposite chair. “Been here long?”
Stefan shook his head. “Twenty minutes, maybe.” He crossed one ankle over the other and sent the third chair at their table flying. “Oops.”
Jack grinned. Grace and coordination had never been Stefan’s top qualities. Didn’t seem to matter much with the women, though, as he recalled.
“So where’s Paige? Still working?”
“Of course.” The dark beer slid down Jack’s throat, warming him in the right places. It pushed away the nerves of the day and the eternal night stretching out ahead of him. Thank God. “She’s got a big case.”
Stefan grinned. “When doesn’t she? Every other week, I open the newspaper and see her quoted in there.” He winked. “If I’m really lucky, they publish a picture, too.” Behind them, the door creaked open again, and his next words were almost lost in the sound of stools scraping up to the bar. “I figure you’re one of the luckiest guys in Boston, snagging a bombshell like that. Still can’t believe she agreed to marry you.”
Jack heard
luckiest guy
and
bombshell
and shook his head. He supposed most of Boston would agree with his friend.
Stefan rested knobby elbows on the table. “What’s with you? Trouble in paradise?”
“’Course not.” Jack stood and headed for the dartboard in the bar’s back corner. “C’mon. You owe me a game.”
“What, so I can beat you into humiliation again?” Stefan rose and knocked his head into a hanging light. “Thought you had enough last time.” He flagged down a waitress, a cute, curvaceous thing of nineteen or twenty, and spent a few obvious moments admiring the package while he tried to decide between shots of tequila and Jagermeister.
Jack grinned, entertained. Ten years out of school, and Stefan hadn’t changed in the least.
Two different guys, from two totally different worlds
.
Only thing that brought us together in college was a couple of business classes
. Yet they’d managed to remain friends, even after all this time. You couldn’t help but like the guy, he thought, like a big dopey dog that made you grin even as you tripped your way around him.
They’d gone in different directions after school, though, and only hooked up again a couple of years ago. While Jack climbed the corporate ladder, Stefan managed to find himself a mid-level insurance job that paid the bills but left him enough time to chase women and make every Red Sox home game. He drove an SUV that had seen better days and rented an apartment from a ninety-year old widow in the suburbs. And he made it clear to every woman he met that he had no intentions of settling down anytime soon.
Poor Stefan
, Paige and her friends whispered behind his back.
He’s going to be forty and alone
.
Jack doubted that. So far, Stef seemed to be having the time of his life. And what was so wrong with being a bachelor at forty, anyway? Some people spent their entire lives searching for the right person. It was better than settling down with the wrong one. He took a quick drink and tried to ignore the dart just left of center that Stefan had thrown on his first attempt.
“So when’s the big day?”
The question caught Jack off guard, and his hand jerked and spilled his beer a little.
Stefan laughed. “Sorry.”
“Sure you are.” Jack shook his head at the waitress, refusing the shot that she’d brought back. “All for him,” he said, pointing at his friend.
“Aw, come on. Let loose a little.” Stefan tipped back his head and downed the tequila. “For old times’ sake.” He aimed at the board and took his next shot. Dead on.
Those old times I could stand to forget
, Jack thought. A few too many nights in college had started like this one. At thirty-two years old, he could no longer afford the morning-after consequences. “I’ll pass.” He checked his watch. “I can only stay a little longer, anyway.”
Without even looking, Stefan let loose his final dart. It kissed the edge of the first. “You’re kidding.”
“Sorry. We’re going to this charity thing tonight.”
“The Deveau Ball?”
“That’s the one.”
“Fancy.” Stefan raised the second shot in a toast to his friend. “Have a good time.” Jack said nothing, staring instead at the board and the throws he had to make to save face. There. First one square in the center.
“Nice.” Stefan nodded. “So am I gettin’ an invitation to your wedding or what? You still haven’t told me when it is.”
Jack aimed a second time. “October. The fourteenth, I think. Maybe the fifteenth. It’s a Saturday, I know that much.” He grimaced as his next throw arced wide.
Stefan chuckled and rubbed a hand over a grizzled chin that hadn’t seen a razor in a couple of days. “Man, you’re supposed to be happy about this. Semi-involved. You don’t even know the day you’re walking down the aisle?”
“Actually, I have it on authority that the less I say, the better. I think as long as I show up, I’m in the clear.” Jack looked over. “But speaking of the wedding, I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
“Sure, I’ll be your best man.”
“Groomsman, actually. Had to promise Taz he could do the best man honors. But thanks. That’s one more thing I can check off Paige’s list.”
Stefan leaned against the wall, hands wrapped around his beer mug. “Jack?”
“Yeah?”
“I gotta tell you, I thought you’d be more excited about this. About marrying one of the hottest women in the city. Not to mention one of the richest, I’m guessing.”
Jack took his final shot, already knowing he’d lost again. “I’m excited.”
“Sure you are.”
The two sat back down. Jack checked his watch again.
I should get going
, he started to say.
I’ve got to head home, take a shower, get dressed
. But something else came out instead.
“Sometimes I think maybe I should have waited.”
Stefan raised his eyebrows as he split the last of the pitcher between them. “To get married? Why?”
Jack was instantly sorry he’d said anything. “It’s a big step, you know?”
“Don’t you love her?”
“Sure. Of course.” He made himself think of Paige when she wasn’t working, when she wasn’t all tensed up. When she slept in on the occasional Sunday morning, curling that warm, sleek body around his. Or when they went to a ball game and she tucked her hand inside his. In those moments, he could recall the woman he’d fallen in love with.
There you are
, he’d think, and feel the rush of attraction that had started it all. Plus, he supposed he did like the idea of starting a family, of playing catch with his son or videotaping his daughter’s ballet recital.
It’s a package
, Jack told himself.
You take it all, the up and downs, the amazing moments that steal your breath away and the ones that punch you right in the gut. Even the nights you roll over and wonder who you’re lying next to. Even those are part of the package
.
He only wished he could count those nights on one hand instead of two.
“Well, she sure waited long enough for you to ask her,” Stefan went on. “Most women would have left after a couple of years. You two have been together—what? Three years?”
“Almost five.” Jack finished his beer. “Yeah, I know. I just didn’t realize how crazy women got about weddings. Everything has to be perfect. She worries about stuff I’d never even think of. Favors and flowers and the color of envelopes…”
Stef grinned. “Come on. All women are like that. It’s like some kind of feminine ritual. All you gotta do is stand it for a few months. Then you’re married and you’ve got security and regular sex for the rest of your life.”
Jack laughed.
“Unless you’re still not over the other one.”
“What?” His chin snapped up.
“You heard me.” Stef’s gaze followed the waitress as she sauntered by their table.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Okay. Suit yourself.” Stef looked back at Jack. “But don’t forget that I was there. I was the one who held your head when you were puking into a bucket trying to forget her. I was the one who made excuses to your parents about why you looked like shit at graduation. And the one who heard you say you’d never get married. Ever.”
“I was twenty-two. Gimme a break.”
“You still think about her?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
Jack shrugged. “So what if I do? I’m still marrying Paige. It doesn’t have anything to do with her.”
“If you say so.” Stef finished his beer and circled the empty mug around the table, leaving rings of wetness on the warped wood. “You know Paige is made for you, right? I mean, the two of you…you’re like the Kennedys or something. Your wedding’s probably gonna be featured in the
Globe,
for Christ’s sake.”
Jack didn’t say anything.
I know she is
.
I know we make a good couple, the right kind of couple
. Paige was terrific, tailor-made for him. So why did he have to work so hard sometimes to convince himself of that?
He reached for his coat. Outside, twilight had descended on the city, and the wind tossed raindrops into the haze of the streetlights. He slapped his friend on the back and tossed a twenty onto the table. “Thanks. We’ll have to do it again. And I’ll call you about the wedding stuff. When we’re getting fitted for the tuxes and all that.”