“Well…we…” I looked at Joe.
“You have to say yes,” she said. “We’re just starting to get to know each other and we can’t stop now. It’ll be fun. We can watch the sunset, have some nice wine. Please don’t say no.” She was still holding my arm, smiling at me as if she was desperate for a new friend.
“Sure, why not,” Joe said.
I smiled. She almost stopped my blood from flowing the way she tightened her grip on my arm. Brad looked less excited, but he smiled and took a step closer to Maggie. I hoped he would warm up to us. I had the feeling he didn’t really like Joe, but I couldn’t say why. Maybe I was just being paranoid.
2
Brad
We stood outside the Beachside Bistro talking to the couple we’d just met. Skye was chatting up Maggie and the two of them were giggling like high school girls. One part of me was annoyed that Maggie had been so quick to invite strangers to our place, to clutter up our time alone, our too-short vacation, with these two, but another part of me was happy to see her relaxing for the first time in quite a while.
Lately, she’d seemed almost sad when I glanced at her without her noticing. She insisted nothing was wrong, but she felt so far away; I’d been looking forward to having her all to myself, to reconnecting, clichéd as that sounds.
Yielding to the inevitable, I pulled out my phone and asked Joe for his number. I texted the address to him. Next, I brought up a map so I could explain some of the trickier aspects of getting to the secluded house. It was right on the water and the private road was hard to find if you weren’t familiar with the area.
As I shoved my phone back into my pocket, the door to the restaurant swung open. A couple in their twenties, laughing and running their hands all over each other stumbled out. They released the door which started to swing back right into the face of the woman directly behind them. She was leaning on a cane and looked up with an expression of panic.
Before I could move, Skye lunged for the door. The older woman shrieked as the door swung toward her, knocking the cane out of her grip. Before it could smack into the woman, Skye grabbed the handle.
The drunk couple stopped walking. The guy pulled the girl closer, grabbed her ass, and started kissing her like they hadn’t seen each other in two years. I felt a stab of something awful—lust and something close to grief, as I tried to remember the last time Maggie and I had groped each other with that desperate hunger. It was a memory I couldn’t pull up.
While I was lost in my disappointment, Skye bent and picked up the cane. She held out her arm and let the woman lean on her until she cleared the doorway. The woman’s eyes were teary as she looked at Skye, thanking her with a firm, clear voice that contradicted the frail condition of her body. Skye handed back the cane and a moment later, a younger woman came out the door, taking the woman’s other arm.
Skye explained what had happened and the younger woman thanked her, giving Skye a gentle hug with her unencumbered arm. The two women moved off toward the parking lot.
Skye stepped around me and walked to where the lovers were still going at it. She poked the guy’s shoulder. He took a step away, ignoring her.
“Hey!” She stabbed her finger at the woman’s upper arm—quite hard, from my perspective.
The couple pulled apart.
“Next time,” Skye said, “watch where you’re going. You almost knocked that woman over.”
They shrugged and started across the parking lot.
Skye called after them. “You should be nicer. If you can’t be nice because it’s the right thing to do, don’t forget that someday, you’ll be old!”
When the four of us were standing together again, Skye smiled and gave Maggie a hug. “You’re so generous. Thank you so much for inviting us. What can we bring?”
I’d expected Skye to complain about the rudeness, the near accident, but she said nothing, as if she’d done her job, set the world right, and there was no point dwelling on anything negative. She was a hard person to read. All that long, wavy blond hair, her wide-eyed look, her curvy body had elicited a stereotypical reaction from me—nice to look at, but young, naïve, and most likely, superficial. Now, a small part of me admired her. Maybe she wasn’t as shallow as she’d seemed at first.
“We have everything. We did major shopping as soon as we got here,” Maggie said. “Just bring yourselves.”
“How about something for dessert?” Skye asked.
Maggie shook her head. “Everything’s taken care of. I promise.”
We parted ways. In the car, Maggie took out her phone and started tapping away, chatting her way through Facebook, I assumed. “She’s so sweet,” she said.
“Yep.”
“And he seems nice.”
“Kind of a rich kid background, I guess. He seems a little entitled.”
“I think you misread him.”
“Maybe. I’m not sure we have a lot in common.”
“They like to travel. Besides, it’s good to socialize with people who aren’t exactly like us.”
I laughed, aware that it didn’t sound entirely genuine. “We haven’t traveled in four years.” I changed my tone to something more conciliatory. “Maybe we’ve gotten into a rut, coming here every summer.”
She laughed. “Well, we’ve talked about traveling more, so that’s good.”
We didn’t say any more.
3
Maggie
Half an hour after Brad and I arrived at the house, our new friends pulled up in a charcoal gray Mercedes van with Florida license plates. When Skye told me they’d driven across the country, I pictured a fast car, possibly a convertible, but I suppose if you wanted the freedom to pull over on a muggy afternoon for a picnic under a magnolia tree and an afternoon nap, a van was a good choice.
Brad gave them a tour of the house we’d rented for the week. The lakeside house felt like our own home because we reserved the same house every summer since we’d bought the boat. I tagged along, listening to Skye gush over the views and the hardwood floors, glad they were diverting Brad’s attention away from me.
It was a huge place for just the two of us—three downstairs bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a beautiful master suite occupying the entire second floor. The hallway to the downstairs bedrooms, two of the bathrooms, and a game room could be closed off, so it didn’t feel like we were rattling around in vacant space. Since we wanted a house with water access and a dock for our boat, there was no chance of finding a place with only one or two bedrooms. All the lakeside rental homes were sprawling beauties of natural wood and glass.
Skye seemed to love the house as much as I did. She couldn’t stop talking about how nice it was. They both loved that it was situated so that the living room, dining room and two of the downstairs bedrooms featured spectacular views of the surrounding woods and, of course, the lake.
We went outside and walked down to the dock, showing them the boat, which made Skye so giddy I wanted to laugh—in a nice way. For people who obviously had quite a lot of money, they were extremely unpretentious, which made me like them, especially Skye, even more. Something about her made me feel light and free, as if all the concerns I’d brought with me to Lake Tahoe were being brushed away, leaving a fresh, clean feeling inside my mind.