“Are you free for dinner tonight?” a woman said.
Amy swiveled her head and saw two slender women chatting behind her, their brown hair pulled back into competing hairstyles. Black athletic tights and brightly colored tops hugged their curves. Amy wore a similar gym uniform, except the women standing nearby were younger and thinner.
“No. I’ve been so busy.” The one wearing a hot-pink headband tipped her head back and sighed. “I traveled for work all last week and tonight I have a PTO meeting at Riley’s school. I’m also the president of our neighborhood homeowners’ association, and somehow that meeting got scheduled for tonight too.”
The other woman shook her limp ponytail. “It never stops, does it? Is Riley still doing travel soccer?”
“Yeah. She loves it. We drive her all over the place every weekend, plus practices.”
The ponytailed woman bent to unzip her bag. “How’s work going for you, anyway?”
The woman with the headband took a gulp from her water bottle. “Really well. I got promoted at the hospital. I’m doing more research now. Less with patients, so it’s more in my wheelhouse.”
Amy gritted her teeth as the familiar sense of failure dug into her. How could these women’s lives be so full and busy, while she spent hours alone struggling to fill her days? She’d failed at everything, even staying involved in her daughter’s life. Sometimes even taking a breath felt like a Herculean task. Envy squeezed in her chest. Before the divorce, she’d been able to let others’ accomplishments roll off her more easily, finding the strength to be happy for her neighbors and acquaintances. Now each notch in someone else’s belt—every advanced degree, job promotion, board position, PTO meeting, travel team, and dinner date—seemed like a personal insult, even from these women who she didn’t know. Her shoulders sagged, the pride she’d felt only moments earlier from her completed workout fizzling out.
Even with her new part-time job at the high school, the question nagged at her, pestering her like a mosquito that refused to be slapped away. Why hadn’t she pursued her own career instead of supporting Scott’s dream? It was the one thing she regretted the most. She’d loved studying sociology. She would have made an excellent social worker. It was something she could have been passionate about, so much more so than keeping the books for the apartment rentals. Now, she was forty-nine. It was too late to go back for her master’s degree. Scott had left her and the kids alone and with only ten percent of the business. She’d gotten to keep the house, but that would be little consolation five years from now when the alimony stopped and she wouldn’t be able to make the mortgage payments. She’d be forced to sell her home and buy something smaller. She could barely keep on top of the bills as it was, especially once she added in the expenses from the nursing home.
The women behind Amy giggled. She stole a glance over her shoulder, taking in the wood-paneled lockers and the orderly stacks of towels. She controlled the inexplicable urge to knock the towels over, to watch them flutter through the air, and scatter across the floor. Instead, she sipped from her water bottle, the lukewarm liquid pooling in her mouth. A frosted-glass door across from her announced the entrance to the spa. She longed for a massage, a way to ease the tension in her neck and back. That kind of luxury was beyond her budget now, but her membership to the athletic club wasn’t something she could give up. Exercise was known to lift one’s spirits. Scott argued the club was an extravagance, not a need. He refused to cover the expense, but she held her ground, determined to find a way around him. She’d figure out a way to cut back in other places, borrow from here and there. He couldn’t make her cancel the membership, no matter how much some of the people here got under her skin. She slung her workout bag over her shoulder and headed to the cafe for a raspberry smoothie.
A few minutes later, Amy motored down Fourth Street, making a last-second decision to turn left at the light. Her gym bag rolled from the passenger seat onto the floor as she careened around the turn. It wasn’t the fastest route home, but it was the only way to satisfy the itch she needed to scratch. Amy knew she shouldn’t abuse herself like this, yet she couldn’t resist the urge to drive past the Pearly Whites Dental Office, to pull into the parking lot and peer through the blinds to glimpse Cece Langston, the woman who had destroyed her marriage. Somehow, it helped ease her pain to spy on Scott’s girlfriend, to see that she was made of flesh and blood, not some otherworldly superwoman who was immune to painful feelings and bad hair days. Cece and Scott had sneaked around behind Amy’s back for months, so she refused to feel guilty about her occasional spy missions. She regained a tiny piece of her power every time she observed from the shadows.
Now that Cece wasn’t a secret, Amy knew everything about her. The woman was forty years old, divorced with no kids. She drove a white Mercedes sedan, which Amy now spotted in the far corner of the parking lot. She rolled her eyes at the vanity license plate affixed to the rear of the Mercedes: FLOSS EM. Of course, Cece needed to let everyone on the road know she was a successful dentist. Scott’s girlfriend was one of three partners at Pearly Whites. That’s how Cece and Scott had met. By the cruelty of the universe, Scott’s insurance had changed eighteen months earlier, forcing him to switch dentists. Amy spent more sleepless nights than she’d like to admit envisioning the bitter details of how it had gone down. Was it love at first sight? Or did they bond over X-rays, plaque scraping, and novocaine injections?
The hollowness in Amy’s chest expanded at the busy parking lot, almost all the spaces filled. She’d secretly hoped to find the lot empty, the office desperate for patients with an Out of Business sign posted in the window. Amy slid lower in her seat and idled behind the parked cars, peering past the blinds and into the lobby where shadowy outlines skittered back and forth.
The front door opened, its frosted glass obscuring the emerging figure. Amy squeezed her fingers around the steering wheel, heartbeat accelerating. A skinny man wearing jeans and a flannel shirt moped down the front steps, rubbing his jaw as the door swung closed behind him. She exhaled and inched her car forward.
Cece was probably in one of the back rooms filling a cavity or performing a root canal. Whatever she was doing, it was something skilled and professional. The woman was capable. Her independence had drawn Scott to her. Cece didn’t need to rely on him the way Amy had. Scott had told her as much during one of their shouting matches. He’d left out the part about Cece being younger, thinner, and prettier, but Amy wasn’t blind or stupid.
It wasn’t fair that this woman had claimed all the benefits of Amy’s family without having done any of the work. She hadn’t changed their diapers and given them baths and packed their lunches and gotten up in the middle of the night with screaming kids. Yet now Cece got to spend every other weekend with Amy’s children. She got to be the “fun” one who lived in Scott’s penthouse condo on Main Street.
Still, the love between Scott and Cece was new. They were only in the honeymoon stage. Things wouldn’t always be so rosy. Cece’s day would come. Amy only wished karma didn’t take so long.
A car pulled up behind her and Amy’s foot pressed on the accelerator, pulling off to the side to let it pass. She bent forward to retrieve the contents of her gym bag from the floor. Securing the bag on the seat next to her, she gulped back the distaste in her throat and drove home.