I shook my head, taking another sip of wine, hardly able to quell my curiosity. “So I guess you’re not friends with her anymore?”
“Huh?” Vera looked up.
“Your neighbor,” I said. “Rachel. You guys had a falling-out or something?”
“Oh,” Vera said as John glanced down at his hands. “I don’t walk to the other side of the street if I pass her in Woodstock,” she said. “But friendships change, you know. People disappoint you.” She dug again in her pocket, quickly looking away. “Shit,” she said. “I forgot to grab the weed.”
I jumped up, eager to make up for prying. “I can get it. I have to go to the bathroom anyway.”
John stood, too. “I’ll come with. You’ll never find it in the catastrophe that is our junk drawer.”
Vera held up her glass so the wine sloshed inside it. “Bring back some more—there’s another bottle on the counter.”
John and I walked off together, and as the crickets buzzed, my body did, too.
SIX
I swear, my wife is obsessed with you,” John said as he shut the door behind us.
The wine went to my head, and I reached for the wall, my hackles instantly rising. “What?”
John only grinned like a schoolboy, bashful, and I immediately felt foolish. “Oh, I only mean she likes you a lot,” he said. “I can tell already.”
I steadied myself on the chair rail, then forced a smirk, trying to lighten the mood. “You said ‘obsessed’ a second ago. Why’d you have to downgrade me so quickly?”
There was that deep laugh again. “Fine. I will adjust it back to obsession level. But only because you asked.”
I ambled to the counter, strewn with unrinsed dishes. The chaos made me feel like I didn’t have to be so perfect, like we were all good and messed up. I looked at John, who I just knew would never spend his time coming up with creative ways to screw with me, who knew loss as well as I did, and the thought struck me quick and foolish and entirely inappropriate—What if all this were ours?
I felt my cheeks redden. I had given up on properly judging men long ago, and besides, he was married. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I managed. Avoiding his eyes, I stumbled down the hallway and into the first door on the right.
In the scalloped mirror, I took myself in. My hair was a wreck, the curls sticking up straight, and my lips were dyed purple from the wine, but my bruise remained covered. I teetered over to the toilet. I had the feeling I used to have before Davis, that anything can happen feeling. Brooklyn magic, bars open till four a.m., later if you tipped the bartenders well, people bouncing from street to avenue, all thrumming with possibility. It was a feeling I hadn’t had in a long, long time, one I certainly shouldn’t have with my new, married neighbors, one I shouldn’t have with anyone, really, not in my current state. The sort of feeling that got you in trouble, that led to drunken moments recorded for posterity, but it lured me all the same. Fish, meet hook. I washed my hands, then used a little of the water to scrub the wine off my lips and tame my curls. A knock on the door made me jump.
“You okay in there?” John asked.
“Fine,” I called. “Be out in a sec.”
He was there when I opened the door, big and strong in his button-down, a Brawny man or Mr. Clean with more hair, or one of the myriad grocery-item mascots that told us what we should look for in a man. I felt myself wobble, and John reached out to steady me, grabbing my elbow. “You really sure you’re okay?” he asked.
I nodded, shrinking away from his grasp—no man had touched me since Davis.
Besides, I shouldn’t have let myself get so drunk, not when I was just beginning my new life, when I still didn’t know who in the world I could trust.
“You know,” John said, weight shifting from foot to foot, obviously picking up on the change in my demeanor, “I didn’t mean to freak you out or anything, saying my wife is obsessed with you. I guess it sounds a little nuts . . . but like she said, she’s been eager to meet someone new. She’s been really upset since everything changed.”
Rachel. The photos flashed into my mind, pushing my other thoughts aside. They’d seemed so intimate, I’d thought the guy in the pictures must have been the boyfriend of the woman who’d lived in the cottage before me. What’s more, Vera’s eyes had turned to John almost every time she’d spoken about her former friend.
It couldn’t be, I thought. Even in one night, I could see that John and Vera were in love with each other. It practically oozed off of them.
“Did something . . . happen between them?” I asked. “I mean, between all of you?”
John sighed. “You know, Vera can be very black-and-white in the way she sees the world.”
“What do you mean?”
He opened what must’ve been the junk drawer, rifling through spare keys, Ziplocs full of screws, and loose batteries until his hands grasped a baggie of weed. He answered without looking at me: “I mean that she thinks there are good people and bad people. Period.”
So something had happened, I realized, the thought sobering me up. Something that perhaps was more forgivable to him than it was to her. I found myself hating this Rachel woman, for whatever she had done.
But it couldn’t be that, I told myself. If these two—both of them gorgeous, smart, and downright enchanting—couldn’t find a way to make it work, who could?
I raised an eyebrow. “And you don’t?”
“I think people are products of their circumstances. We react to what life throws our way. Know what I mean?”
I held his gaze. I knew what he meant, better than he could ever imagine.
“What I’m saying is, I’m a bit quicker to forgive than V. It’s the Midwest in me.” He paused, reaching for a fresh bottle of wine. “Anyway,” he went on, steering us back to safe territory. “My wife is my everything,” John said. “I only want to see her happy. I’m always on her side.”
* * *
• • •
By the time we got back to the gazebo, I’d mostly regained my composure. John topped off our glasses as Vera crumbled the weed into the vaporizer. When it was ready, she sucked deep, then paused, finally blowing out a huge plume of misty smoke like she was Gandalf. “Have some?” she asked.
Against my better judgment, I took the vaporizer from her. I was being paranoid, I realized, and I couldn’t let myself live like this. Afraid of every single person I met. This was my new life, after all. I was allowed to have some goddamn weed.
I took a draw, coughing a few times, then leaned forward, passing it to John. By the time I leaned back, I was tingly all over, my body itching with awareness—every hair, every inch of skin. When Davis and I got edibles, we had such good sex. Crazy good, where time slowed down and it’s all there around you and inside you, so lovely you don’t want it ever to stop.