“Why are you here, Jack?”
“I love Vegas.”
“You hate Vegas,” she counters.
Not true, although it’s not my favorite place.
“People change.” I shrug. “You did, so why can’t I?”
Of all the ways I’ve planned this meeting, line dancing wasn’t one of the steps. I’d expected our reunion to be awkward, but surprisingly it isn’t. It’s more like running into someone from college that you used to spend time with. They’re part of your past and you can’t help but pick over the memories, reliving the fun ones, the parts that you enjoyed. But we’ve both moved on. And if I’m being honest, we’d both moved on long before we got around to filing for divorce. We’re not the same people we were when we got married, and I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.
I study Molly while I flag down a bartender and order drinks. She looks different. Gorgeous. Stunningly beautiful in a quiet Madonna way. But that’s not new. It’s something about the way she holds herself or maybe in how she watched the rest of us. As corny as it is, she knows who she is and what she wants. Which is a cowboy, my brain reminds me. Your replacement.
Out on the dance floor, Evan is valiantly trying to teach Hazel the two-step. She’s game and laughing, but her results are subpar. It must be driving her crazy.
“So.” I hand Molly her drink. “A cowboy?”
“So,” she counters. “You and Hazel?”
“We’re just friends.”
She shrugs. “If you say so.”
That’s not what she means.
“I never cheated on you. And certainly not with Hazel.”
“I know that.” Molly takes a sip of her wine. “You were always fair.”
Divorce has not granted me the super mind-reading powers that I lacked during our marriage. I still have no idea what Molly is thinking. It’s beyond frustrating. I scrub my hand over my head, looking for the words I know I won’t find.
“Why did we break up?”
“Because we were happy together until we weren’t. Because we didn’t work anymore. Because people change. Because we each made choices about what we’d do with our lives or who our friends would be or what we’d share.”
Or not share, I think. But I don’t say anything and Molly finishes her thought.
“And I couldn’t fix us but I could fix me. I didn’t handle the end well.” She puts her glass down and meets my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you happy?”
I’m talking about feelings. Shoot me.
“Yes.” A smile curves her mouth.
“With a cowboy?”
She nods. Her eyes watch that cowboy. For a moment, I remember when she used to look at me that way, but then I let it go.
Evan’s given up trying to teach Hazel the moves and is now attempting to limit the swathe of destruction she’s carving through the neat, orderly line of dancers. He’s grinning, though. My Zee has that effect on people.
I review what I’ve learned tonight, starting with the sad truth that apparently I’m an enormous jackass. Okay. I can live with that. I’m still running a full background check on Evan as if he’s a candidate I’m thinking about bringing in and pitching to the board.
The management team makes or breaks a company. Sure, you need great people everywhere, and you should never overlook the guy or gal who’s making the widgets or cleaning the kitchen. Those people count and shit doesn’t get done without them. But you also need leaders, and sometimes people get so busy name-calling and screaming about the compensation package that they don’t see what a CEO can bring to the table. Football games don’t get won without a quarterback. You need everyone in that stadium—the people who buy the tickets, the guy hawking hot dogs, the engineer who makes the scoreboard run—but it’s the quarterback who brings everyone together. The focus. The lightning rod. The guy reacting and putting years of training and practice into play. You can’t cut corners on that guy—so I’m going to make sure Evan’s everything he should be.
“There’s nothing wrong with being friends,” Molly says quietly as Zee and Evan abandon the dance floor and head toward us. “But there’s nothing wrong with taking a chance on being more, Jack.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HAZEL’S UNCHARACTERISTICALLY QUIET after we leave Evan and Molly. It’s not immediately obvious—even at three in the morning, the Strip is a loud place—but I know better than to expect silence from her. Hazel always has something to say. I take her hand, pulling her into my side. The sidewalks are still crowded despite the late hour. Couples stroll past us, arms around each other, but the annoying hawkers have disappeared for the night. No one offers girls or lap dances or a dozen other sexual services. Discarded nudie cards spill over the sidewalks and streets.
We’re on the wrong side of Las Vegas Boulevard for our hotel, so I steer us toward the nearest crosswalk. The light’s not in our favor, so we wait with dozens of other revelers. It’s a noisy, half-drunk, cheerful crowd that jostles carelessly, everyone either judging their chances if they jaywalk, or jockeying for the best position to surge across the street when we get the green light. There’s an older, blue-jeans-and-matching-shirt-wearing couple, somewhere in their midsixties, in the vanguard. The guy’s rock solid, his feet planted. He throws an arm around his lady, anchoring her.
“Six o’clock,” I say, nudging Hazel with my shoulder. “Tell me a story.”
“Jack. Not tonight.”
“Why not?” I brush a kiss over the top of her head. “Tired?”
“You’re an idiot.”
“What’s wrong?” I run through the night searching for issues, but too much has happened. The likeliest candidate for her upset is the way I handled things with Molly and her cowboy, but I need specifics before I can come up with a plan to fix things. Hazel looks up at me, but I can’t interpret the look on her face. Since nothing tonight has gone as planned, this
