“So, this is what you do all day?” Jack’s voice says behind me. “Pour me a glass?”
I turn around to face Jack but all I can see is Oliver. I know I’m blushing, and I have no idea how Jack reads that. I get nervous and drink the glass of ginger lemonade that I’m supposed to photograph. Jack tilts his head at me.
“Let’s go inside,” I say and hurry Jack out of the garden.
“What about your camera?” he asks as I’m pushing him up the stairs.
I don’t really want him to come to my office. I want him to go back out into the street and go away. I feel like I’m going to blurt out what I did and how fantastic it felt—even if I did end up a teary wreck. I need the florescent lights of an office, the whir of the printer, and the low mumble of voices to distract me so I don’t spill my guts.
Inside my office, Jack walks around the room. He picks up a knickknack here and there and turns over an award I got last year for a sushi book. Why couldn’t they assign me another one of those? There are only so many lemons one person can stand.
“Did I go to this?” he asks, holding out the award to me.
“No,” I say. “You were at that conference in Atlanta.”
He nods. I don’t think he was in Atlanta. I think he was with Ashley. Jack sets the award down and wrinkles his face. I want to hate him. I want to rant about “for better or for worse,” but our vows didn’t actually say anything about “for sex or for no sex” so I may have to let him off on one of those technicalities. Sure, I had a valid issue with it, as my therapist said, but psychological cause or not, Jack needed physical affirmation from me that he was loved and worthy and I couldn’t give it to him. So he got it from his receptionist, Ashley, and his boss’s assistant, Sarah, and that so-cute-you-want-to-punch-her hippie chick from the dry cleaners.
Ok, maybe Lola has a point too.
“So, what’s Ray been up to?” Jack asks nonchalantly like the answer to that isn’t usually “jail time” or “I don’t know, no one has heard from him in years.”
“What are you doing here, Jack?” I ask. My voice sounds cruel though I don’t mean it to. “Where’s Cassie?”
He sighs and comes closer to me. He smells nice, and I hate that I notice.
“She’s at home,” he says. “Your place. I think she just wanted to prove a point by calling me. I don’t know what that point was. If you’re going to be at your mom’s for a while, I can drive her back over there.”
“No,” I say. “I’ll get my stuff after work and go home. I want her to be comfortable. I think she just wants to be where things are familiar.”
“I think she’d have to go back in time for that,” Jack says, and smirks wistfully. “Look, Nina, can’t we try this again? That apartment I rented is crap.”
“I thought you were at Bruce’s,” I say.
“They’re coming back soon, and I can’t have all my stuff over there getting in their way,” he says. “Besides, it’s lonely. I miss having someone around.”
“Someone,” I say. “But not me?”
“I meant you,” he says. “Of course you, Nina. You and Cassie. I hate this.” He raises and lowers his arms in a frustrated huff.
“Being alone?” I ask. “I hated it, too. I was alone, and you were right there.”
“Yeah,” he says, his eyes hard and his brow furrowed. “Ditto.”
I feel the same old argument coming, and I know the best way to shut him down.
“I’m sort of seeing someone,” I say, shocked at myself. It’s not true, really, but it could be.
“Yeah, you told me,” Jack says, deflating my attempt to stick it to him. “You kissed some kid in the parking lot at the old folks’ home. Don’t be ridiculous. Is this about the divorce? I gave you everything you wanted.”
“Really?” I ask. It’s a low blow.
“Nina, I know the whole baby thing has been hard, and I’ve tried to be supportive, but I’m tired of it all. I just am. I’m sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I say and look away from him. “Like I said, I’m moving on.”
I forgot that I told him about kissing Oliver in the parking lot. Jack had called me once I was in the car and I felt so silly and ashamed that I had blurted it out. Like I needed to confess it to him even though we were through.
“Is this about the baby stuff?” he asks. “I didn’t mean it.”
“Don’t,” I say, and that’s all I can manage on the subject. I know we’re both recalling the same conversation. I know he didn’t mean what he said.
“I didn’t mean it was all for the best,” he says anyway. “I said that. But that’s not what I meant.”
I sit at my desk and focus on memos and paper clips, the phone, my empty coffee cup. Anything.
“We could try again,” he says.
“You know there’s no need to,” I whisper.
“We could adopt.” He comes back to me, sits on the edge of the desk. “Cassie would be thrilled, I sure. Or at least, she’d try to be. I can get the money together, and we can get a little Guatemalan baby. You can be like one of those celebrities who adopt a bunch of kids. We’ll adopt ten of them. Give those Hollywood types a run for their money.”
“I think we’d lose that race,” I say and almost smile.
“Are you sure?” Jack asks.
“It’s too late for that,” I say. “For us.”
“Is it? Nina, not having another baby isn’t the end of the world. We haven’t even tried to be ‘us’ in forever. We have Cassie, and she’s more than enough, isn’t she? I really don’t know what happened. I don’t understand.”
“You slept with other women,” I say.
He
