But instead I take Josh’s hands, gently push them away. “It’s okay. Really, I’m fine.”
He stands back up, looks down at me with a frown.
“It’s just been a really stressful past couple days.” I hold out a hand and he helps me up, and then I look around the kitchen again. “Want some coffee?”
A little while later, after having showered and gotten dressed, I come back into the kitchen to find Josh washing my dishes. He’s put back on his jeans and T-shirt, his white socks with the gold toes, and he’s listening to Good Morning America turned up on the TV in the next room.
“How does my face look?”
He turns, gives me a squint, tilts his head back and forth a couple times. “Pretty good.”
“Liar.”
The story I told him last night was that one of the kids shattered a glass Friday afternoon, and one of the shards hit my cheek and cut it open.
I look around the kitchen, see that Josh has done an amazing job of cleaning it up. For a bartender/musician, he should consider doing housecleaning part time.
I have to leave in ten minutes to beat the traffic into Arlington. During my shower I’ve been thinking about an excuse for my strange behavior, why I’d broken my only rule in allowing him to stay the night, but before I can even open my mouth, he clears his throat.
“Holly?”
“Yeah.”
He wipes his hands on a towel, sets its aside, walks over and pulls out a chair and sits down. When I just stand there, staring at him, he motions for me to sit.
I sit.
He clears his throat again. “About last night …”
“Josh—”
“We can’t do that anymore.”
I close my mouth. Just sit there, silent.
He reaches across the table, takes my hand in his, gives it a quick squeeze. “You know I like you a lot. And, well, as much as I’ve enjoyed our booty calls”—he smiles at the term—“I’ve met someone.”
“You have?”
“Yeah.” Nodding now, staring at me to gauge my reaction. “Her name is Dawn and she plays the bass in this band that we opened for last month and … I think I’m in love.”
I try to smile, I really do, but for some reason my face won’t work, all the muscles have gone on strike, and I just stare back at Josh whose own smile starts to fade.
“I figured you’d understand, right? Because, like, this was never anything serious. You’d told me that before and that’s what I accepted it as. Just two friends, you know, having a good time.”
He’s right, of course. That’s all it ever was. But the nasty truth is our “booty calls” were designed to help free up my tension, get me grounded, and while I hate to admit it, I always assumed Josh would be there whenever I called, always arriving within the hour. Josh having a girlfriend, well, I guess that was something I knew was a possibility, something that would eventually happen, but for some reason I just never worried about it.
Josh squeezes my hand again. “You’re happy for me, right, Holly? It means a lot to me that you get where I’m coming from.”
Still I try to smile and still I fail, just sitting there in my slacks and shirt, my hair pulled back in a ponytail.
“I mean, I wanted to tell you last night, before … well, you know, but I just … I could see you really wanted to do it and I figured I’d tell you later, and I guess it means I cheated on Dawn, but if she knew our arrangement and everything, I think she’d understand, even though I’m not going to tell her, I mean, of course I’m never going to tell her about last night, but if she—”
“Josh,” I say, and I hardly recognize my own voice.
He looks at me, his eyebrow raised.
“It’s fine.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” I pull my hand away, start to stand back up. “Now if you don’t mind, can you lock up when you leave? I have to go to work.”
Fifteen
The Hadden residence is a three-story colonial just outside of Arlington. It sits in a neighborhood with several other three-story homes, many that could be considered mansions, and on a clear autumn day, when the leaves have all fallen, you can stand in the Haddens’ backyard and see the tip of the Washington Monument.
I turn off Arbor Drive into their driveway a few minutes before seven. I park the car and hurry toward the back door. The back door lets into a foyer, the foyer into the kitchen. The moment I open the door, Sylvia, standing at the dishwasher, turns to me and smiles.
“Good morning, Miss Holly.”
“Morning, Sylvia. How are you doing?”
Before Sylvia can answer, David and Casey shout my name in that singsong way of theirs. They’re at the kitchen table with their mother, Marilyn, dressed in one of her smart business suits, skimming the Post while she takes deliberate bite after bite of her Special K.
I smile at Sylvia and touch her arm as I walk past her, the housekeeper going back to her duties, and then I’m at the table and Baron raises his old head off the floor, panting with his tongue lolling from the side of his mouth and slapping his tail on the floor.
I lean down and give Baron a good scratch behind the ears, the hound closing his eyes and groaning with pleasure. Then I pull out the only remaining chair and sit down, smile at Casey beside me as she busily eats her bowl of Cheerios with her Big Bird spoon.
David says, “Holly, what happened to your face?”
Marilyn had nodded to me briefly before, but now she pulls down her newspaper, squints to
