body. Over his shoulder he said to her, “I have to lie down with him until he falls asleep or he'll scream for an hour.”
“You should let him scream,” she said. “Eventually he'll learn to-”
“No,” he said. “Not tonight. I want him to go to sleep quickly tonight.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Me, too.”
“Wait for me in the family room?”
“Okay.”
She was alone in the family room for almost half an hour. Which gave her plenty of time to wander around looking at photos she would rather not have looked at and then to torture herself by studying them minutely-photos of Jason and Denise getting married (she wore a satin slip dress cut on the bias and was gorgeously slim and elegant), photos of a weary but triumphant Denise cuddling a newborn Zack, photos of the whole family on vacation near a beach, Zack just a toddler in his fathers arms-photos, over and over again, of the perfect family, perfectly happy together.
Jason walked in while she was still studying one of the older photos-Denise and Jason in their college graduation gowns, kissing, each of them holding a diploma up to the camera, but otherwise apparently oblivious to its presence.
“Hi,” he said, coming to stand next to her.
“Is he asleep?”
He nodded then gestured at the photos surrounding them.
“So what do you think?”
“There are a lot of them,” she said, carefully placing the one she was holding back among the rest.
“I know. I’d like to get rid of some of them. Or even all of them. There's something sad and creepy about having to look at them all the time, like nothing's changed. But I don't know how Zack would feel about it if they all just disappeared.”
“Yeah, that might be hard on him.”
“It might.” They were both silent for a moment.
Then Sari said, “She's really beautiful.”
“I guess.” He nudged her shoulder with his. “I like the way
“You didn't back in high school.”
“I barely knew you. If I had ever stopped and really talked to you-“
“It wouldn't have made a difference,” she said. “We weren't in the same place back then.”
There was another pause. Then: “How mad was Ellen?”
“Pretty mad. I don't blame her. We were acting like-” She stopped.
“Like what?”
“I don't know. Teenagers, I guess. Getting carried away by our hormones.”
“That's not such a bad thing,” he said, and he grinned suddenly. “Want to do that again?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I do.” But when he reached for her, she suddenly ducked away. “I’m sorry,” she said, twisting her hands together. “It's just a little scary.”
“What?”
She gestured toward a photo of Denise sitting by a pool and laughing. “Well, she is, for one thing. The way she looks… it just makes me wonder how many other beautiful women you've been with.”
“Not that many,” he said. “You'd be surprised.”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “In high school alone, they must have numbered in the dozens. All those cheerleaders.”
He shook his head and reached for her hand. Just the touch of his fingers on hers made her want to jump out of her skin in a good way. “You're nuts. I had two girlfriends in all of high school, and they both ended up dumping me.”
“You were always with some girl or another,” Sari said. “Always. You were like this movie star on the campus. All those girls, all over you-they were always giving you massages on that wall behind the cafeteria and-”
“You gave me a back rub not that long ago,” he said. “That I remember.”
“A back rub?”
“With a hot towel.”
“Oh, right,” she said. “Did you like that?”
“Are you kidding? It was maybe the most erotic two minutes of my life.”
“Don't say that. I was there to work with Zack, not to turn you on.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I did my best to hide it.”
“Anyway, what are you talking about, two minutes? It was a lot longer than that.”
“It was not. You were in and out. Got me all excited and then walked away-telling me to go take Advil. You're a cold, cold woman, Sari Hill.”
“Turn around,” she said and he obeyed her. She pulled up his shirt, put her hands against his warm back.
He shivered. “You really
“They'll warm up,” she said. She slid her hands all the way up under his shirt, to the muscles of his shoulders and let herself really feel how warm and strong he was, then she slipped them down and around his waist to his flat stomach and up again to explore the broad planes of his chest.
“Ah,” he said.
They stood like that for a moment, her hands pinning him against her, front to back. She rested her cheek against the swell of his right shoulder. And then he turned around, so her hands were caught for a moment in his shirt and by the time she had worked them free, his arms were pulling her tight against him, and then his mouth came down on hers and for once-for
9.Yarn Over
I
As the old year gave way to the new one, Kathleen found herself with a lot of free time on her hands.
For one thing, she no longer had a job. After Hawaii, she had never even bothered returning to the office. “You can kiss any references goodbye,” Sam said when he found out she hadn't given two weeks’ notice. It didn't matter: her sisters had asked her to come back to work for them and she had said she would, after a few more weeks of vacation.
So her days weren't busy, but neither were her nights. Although both Lucy and Sari continued to show up faithfully at the Sunday morning knitting circle, once the evening rolled around, they almost always had plans with their new boyfriends. They often invited her to join them, but Kathleen had never much liked being the odd man out, despite-or because of-all her childhood experience in that role.
Getting a boyfriend of her own would have solved that problem, but since the whole Kevin thing Kathleen hadn't felt much like going out to bars and meeting new guys. Sometimes at night she remembered that she might have been married at this moment-
So she spent her days sleeping late, running until she was worn out, napping, grabbing something to eat, then
