Slow Dancing on Price's Pier (6 page)

But days passed. Then a week. Then the bruises faded. And Thea, if she saw, had never said a word.

Because Sue and her husband Ken had held a standing reservation for the corner table at the Dancing Goat on Thursday nights, and because they'd stopped coming when Jonathan moved out, and because Thea couldn't stand the empty spot in the coffee shop where she wanted them to be, and because the babysitter was fine with keeping Irina for an extra hour, Thea was thrilled to comply when her baristas asked if they could hang around a while after the shop had closed.

She and Jules worked prepping drinks while the other baristas pushed the tables together and changed the music to something poppy and fun. She'd always felt that she could tell a lot about people by how they liked their coffee—and her baristas were no exception.

For Claudine, the French ex-pat whose talkative African lover had left her after learning he was eligible for dual citizenship, she brewed a good strong cup of yerba maté, made from a South American shrub.

For Rochelle, a pretty blond freshman who was majoring in biomedical engineering but who had yet to master perfect cappuccino foam, Thea made a raspberry-vanilla latte with mountains of whipped cream.

For Lettie, a hobbyist piano player with arthritic hands who had been working at the Dancing Goat since before Thea was born, she set out a pot of ginger-peach white tea.

Jules had made himself a slushy iced coffee with a drizzle of caramel before he sat down. And for her friend Dani, who was not a barista but who could probably run the place because her regular police beat brought her to the shop three times a day, Thea made a cup of coffee. Splenda and skim.

“So what do you think about my new marketing idea?” Claudine asked, smiling mischievously at Thea. Her eyebrow ring caught the light and gleamed. “We can call it Naughty Lattes.”

Jules laughed. “Robusty Brews.”

“Sexpresso Station,” Rochelle said, her voice dripping with phone-sex cliché. “Gives new meaning to
hot
coffee.”

“I think I'm gonna have to stop walking this patrol,” Dani said, leaning back in her seat and adjusting the high waist of her uniform. “But maybe . . . Café au Lays?”

Thea heard Lettie groan at her side.

“Don't worry,” Thea said. “Nobody's wearing a bikini to sell drinks. We're not that desperate.”

“Really?” Jules's grin was wide. “But a bunch of coffee shops out West are doing it. And I figured we'd put Lettie out at the front of the alley to wave people in.”

“Not if you want them to keep their food down, you won't,” Lettie said, chuckling and pulling her lavender cardigan closed.

The conversation wore on, but no one seemed to be in a hurry to leave. Thea was glad for their company. Lettie had been with her so long she was practically family; Jules had charmed her when he'd showed up on his first day with a glossary of coffee terms; Dani had been Thea's friend since she'd wrestled a guy to the ground for trying to leave without paying; Claudine, in her thrift-store tank tops and thinning bandannas, offered provocative insight that Thea found fascinating; and Rochelle—she was still new, but like all of the baristas that Thea hired, she meant well.

Thea supposed she should have known that filling her shop with such good-hearted people would mean they might be up to something, asking to stay late at work. And it wasn't long before she understood the real reason they had decided to get together. Gradually the conversation came around to Thea, and the hints were clear:
You seem to be working so much
. And
What are your plans for when Irina's away with her dad?
They were worried, all of them, about her.

“All right, let's have it,” Thea said. “Come on. Tell me. What do you want to know?”

For a moment, the little group went quiet.

It was Claudine who broke the stalemate. “Well then, for starters, how did you find out about the affair?” she asked, her accent making the word
affair
sound much more romantic than it was.

“Did you barge in on them?” Jules asked. “Catch them in the act?”

“No. Oh—no. I didn't walk in on them,” Thea said. But already, her brain was building alternate histories, layering them up like scenes of a filmstrip. She hadn't “walked in.” But she could have—maybe. She saw herself naively opening the door to her bedroom, white sheets, naked legs splayed, Jonathan's head lifting in surprise, his mouth shiny, the scramble and fumbling as he said,
Thea! What are you
—

“I did not walk in on anyone.” She pushed the images from her head. Her husband—sleeping with another woman. She was more repulsed than hurt.

“Then how did you find out?” Lettie asked softly.

“He told me.”

“Just like that. He told you.” Dani paused, her coffee in the air.

“Is that so hard to believe? He felt guilty. He's a good man.”

“But he told you because you had a suspicion, no?” Claudine asked.

“No idea at all,” Thea said. “I don't think he'd planned it. It happened so fast.”

“Maybe it's not serious,” Rochelle said gently. A bit of whipped cream had dotted her chin, and Jules motioned for her to wipe it off.

“Ridiculous.” Claudine pursed her lips. “Of course it was serious. It's not worth a man's time to confess a one-night stand.”

“Maybe not to you,” Jules said, and Claudine elbowed him.

“Do
you
think it's serious?” Lettie asked, her hand, cold and papery, pressed for a moment on Thea's arm. “Because my first husband always said it wasn't serious. But every Thursday night when I'd go off to orchestra, he'd have a different girl. And a whole bunch of little ‘not seriouses' end up as one steaming heap of serious in my book.”

Thea shook her head. “He says it didn't mean anything. And I believe him.”

“Why?”

Thea looked down at her hands. “It's hard to explain. But I trust him. Even now. If that makes any sense.”

“Thea.” Lettie's voice was gentle. “Were you unhappy?”

Thea felt them looking at her, waiting.

She picked up her own drink, decaf coffee with a splash of milk and mint. She bought time by taking a sip. She and Jonathan had done everything right as husband and wife. There was a lot to love about the lifestyle they'd built together—a good house, a good income, a beautiful daughter. When Thea got an occasional case of the blues or the what-ifs, she'd written it off as commonplace. What woman didn't doubt her job or her marriage from time to time? “No, I wasn't unhappy. I don't think I was, anyway.”

Rochelle was looking at her, studying. Her cute round face was full of compassion—but a kind of intelligent scrutiny as well. “There's more, isn't there? There's more to this than your husband's affair.”

“Is there someone else?” Claudine asked.

Thea shook her head, appalled. “I've never been unfaithful.”

Claudine's lips curled into a grin. “That doesn't quite answer the question,” she said.

 

 

It hadn't taken much convincing to talk Jonathan into playing hooky from work—he always was easy to persuade—and so on the last Tuesday of the month, they bought tickets for the ferry and decided to spend the day on Block Island, away from the crush of the crowds. Now Garret floated with his brother in a shallow saltwater cove, the tide barely moving their kayaks along the surface of the water. The air tasted of salt and sunshine, and Garret watched as the color began to come back into his brother's face.

“Not bad, eh?” Garret took a big breath, felt his nostrils flare with the effort. Low green reeds edged the glassy water around them. “Worth bailing on work?”

Jonathan laughed. “And then some.”

“Come on!” Garret began to paddle, leading them deeper into the verdant, snaking rivulets of the salt pond as the nose of the kayak cut a path through the water. The sun beat down hot on the back of Garret's neck. Schools of fish darted beneath them, and birds twisted in the air overhead. Garret's arms began to burn, and when Jonathan caught up with him, they were both breathing hard. They spent a few minutes drifting to catch their breath.

“Do you do this a lot?” Jonathan asked.

“Enough,” Garret said. “I try to get out here a few times a month during the summer. At least that.”

Jonathan adjusted the brim of his baseball cap. “We've got to get Irina out here with us next time. She'd love it.”

“Yeah. She's quite an athlete.”

“She gets it from her mother,” Jonathan said, smiling. “That and her stubborn streak.”

As long as that's all she got,
Garret thought. And from the way Jonathan turned his head, he wondered if his brother had heard.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Garret trailed his hand in the cool water, the pressure of the current pushing against his palm. “Shoot.”

“I know you were mad at Thea for marrying me—”

“Water under the bridge,” Garret said, laughing.

Jonathan frowned. “The question is, why weren't you mad at
me
for marrying
her
? Why didn't you stop talking to me too?”

Garret laughed again. “I did stop talking to you.”

“But only for a little while,” Jonathan said.

Garret dug into his lunch bag for a bottle of water. He hadn't brought his brother out here for a heart-to-heart. And yet, he should have seen it coming. He and Jonathan had almost always been on speaking terms, but there was no denying that their relationship had cooled—maybe even frozen—in the years since Jonathan and Thea married. Only the potential for divorce had made an opening for Garret to truly seek out a friendship with his brother again.

“That's all in the past,” Garret said. “Let's just forget it. Upward and onward. We've got a lot of life ahead of us now—to make up for lost time.”

“I guess you're right. I'm just trying to understand.”

Garret screwed down the cap of his water bottle overly tight. He knew exactly what Jonathan was getting at—but the subject was off-limits. Over the years Garret had come to terms with his brother's marriage to Thea. Where Jonathan was concerned, Garret had done what he could to forgive and forget. Jonathan was his brother, after all.

But he would never in his life offer that concession to Thea. Just because she was a good person to Jonathan didn't change the fact that she had
not
been good to him. She'd been cruel and unforgiving. Hateful. As kind as she appeared to others, Garret knew there was a hardness in her, a maliciousness, that only he had ever seen.

Unfortunately, running into her again—in her quiet kitchen, her dark hair mussed and voluminous, her T-shirt falling off one shoulder, her feet bare and small below the hemline of cartoony pants—had made it difficult to cling to his hate.

She didn't look like the demon he'd conjured of her in his dreams. Instead, she was far more terrifying for how beautiful she appeared. He'd wanted to take her face in his hands, to look at her and have her look back, wordless, as if that might make her understand what he couldn't find words to say.

Now, floating among the reeds and salty inlets in bright, revealing sunlight, he knew that instant of tenderness he'd felt for her was only a mirage. He couldn't let his anger at her go. He wouldn't. He and his brother might finally reconnect in a way that was more than just lip service—if only because the woman who had broken both their hearts had united them, finally, as their mutual enemy.

Jonathan leaned back against his seat, his paddle resting on the kayak parallel to the waterline. “Thanks for taking me out here today. I think I needed a change of scenery.”

Garret back-paddled a few strokes. “All good. I'm glad we can do this.”

Jonathan turned his head, his dark eyes shaded by his baseball cap. “So am I.”

 

 

Her sophomore year, Thea's girlfriends had started throwing around the word
love
—not in relation to shoes or movies or food but in relation to men. Sometimes Thea judged her friends to be silly in their love—as if they were trying to feel it by acting like they felt it. As if a person could
think
her way into love.

But then she would find herself in the girls' room between classes, listening to a friend crying in the bathroom stall, and her own heart would crack because she herself knew that pain, knew what it was like—that love was not a spike driven into the heart, but rather, one pulled out of it: a hollow wound.

Garret was one of her best friends. Jonathan too. And so she'd taken care to treat them both exactly the same—never favoring one over the other, never teasing one more than the other, never spending too much time alone with one brother if the other wasn't there. It wasn't until Garret had pulled away from them that the truth became clear.