3. Ophelia
Ophelia
PLUCK
“Ow.”
PLUCK
“Ow.”
PLUCK
“Dammit, I think I’m bleeding,” I say to the mirror, checking my reflection for blood.
“Are you talking to me?” Claudia calls from my closet.
“I’m talking to my chin.”
She pops her head into my bathroom, a scowl marring her pretty face. “Have you gone completely loo-loo, Ophelia?”
I hold up the tweezers. “Look at this hair I just plucked from my chin. It’s got a root on it the size of an onion bulb.”
She walks toward me, squinting her hazel eyes at my tweezers. “Wow. That’s impressive. I think you’re entering your lumberjack era.”
Rubbing my fingertips across my chin, I feel for any more offending hairs. “Very funny. I can’t wait till you hit perimenopause and start growing a grill brush from your face.”
Her mocha-skinned face scrunches. “A grill brush?”
I set down my tweezers and face the magnifying mirror again, inspecting myself.
“You know those brushes with the metal bristles you use to clean off a barbecue grill? That’s the approximate texture of the hairs that have suddenly decided to sprout from my chin.
They’re super wiry, and they grow like weeds.
I just plucked last week, and they’re already back. ”
Claudia sniffs indignantly. “I’ve decided to skip all that menopause shit. Hot flashes, mood changes, weight gain…” She slashes a hand through the air, making a whistling sound through her teeth. “Nope, I rebuke all of that.”
I smirk at her reflection as she picks up my hand lotion and sniffs. “I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works, Claudia. You can’t just say you rebuke something and expect it not to happen.”
She shrugs and squirts a small dollop onto her hands, rubbing it in. “It’s my only hope. There’s no way the universe could be so cruel as to give me a toddler and menopause at the same time.”
“Where is Jayden this afternoon, by the way?” I ask. Claudia has been raising her three-year old grandson for the past year.
She sighs and sinks onto the ivory brocade bench seat against one wall of my bathroom. “Ronnie is in town for a visit, so I told him he needs to spend time with his son. I mean, is that really something that he needs to be told?”
I sit beside her. “How many times has Ronnie seen him since he moved?”
“This is only the second time. He calls once a week to talk to Jay, if we’re lucky.
” She shakes her head, and her soft, black curls flounce around her ears.
“I’m just not sure where we went wrong with that boy.
His father was a good man, always helped around the house and spent time with Ronnie.
So where is my son getting the idea that this is what fatherhood looks like? ”
My lips turn down at the corners. “Do you think maybe he hasn’t dealt with losing his wife after the baby was born?”
Claudia inhales and exhales a long breath. “Hell if I know. He refuses to talk about it. I’ve suggested therapy, but he says music is his therapy.”
“But moving all the way to Nashville to pursue a music career and leaving his son to be raised by his grandmother? I’m sorry, but that’s just selfish, Claudia.”
“I’ve told him that, but he argues that he can’t take care of another person until he can take care of himself.
And being the drummer for a house band at a honky tonk is apparently how he ‘takes care of himself,’” she says, doing air quotes, and I don’t miss the hint of bitterness in her tone.
She holds out one of her spiral curls. “Meanwhile, I’m getting gray hair from being divorced, having my only son move away, and gaining a new little person to take care of just when I thought I was skidding toward a nice, easy life of retirement.
All within the span of a couple years. Not to mention, I’m still reeling from Sharlene’s death as well.
She was more than just a daughter-in-law to me. ”
I drape an arm around Claudia’s shoulders, pulling her toward me until she rests her head on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I wish there was something I could do to help.”
Her sniffle breaks my heart, and I reach for a tissue on a small marble table.
She dabs her nose. “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m just having a pity party today.
I’m really lucky I have Jayden in my life.
As wild as he is, he makes me so happy. It’s like seeing a little version of Sharlene running around, so in a way, that’s therapeutic. ”
“True. He does look just like her. Maybe that’s hard on Ronnie too.” I give her a squeeze. “Not that I’m excusing his behavior. Sure, he has to go on without his wife, but that poor baby has to live without his actual mother.”
She lifts her head and offers a weak smile. “Okay, enough about me. Let’s circle back to your menopause symptoms.”
I let out a hearty laugh. “Other than the rogue facial hair and a few hot flashes, I’m doing pretty good.”
“Any lack of, um, desires?” she asks, dropping her voice to a whisper on the final word.
Hesitating for a second, I admit, “Actually, I’ve experienced a bit of an uptick in that department for the past few days.”
Claudia’s perfect eyebrows rise slowly. “Is there a particular man behind this uptick?”
An annoyed noise escapes from my throat.
“Why do you know me so well?” She crosses her arms over her ample chest and gives me an eyebrow lift that says she has no intention of answering my rhetorical question.
I relent. “Fine, I had dinner with a very nice gentleman a couple days ago, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him since then. ”
“Just dinner?” Claudia asks in her cross-examination voice. “No extracurricular activities of the bedroom variety?”
I lift one hand in the air. “Objection. Leading the witness, Your Honor,” I call, and my friend smirks. She may have retired from being a county prosecutor when her daughter-in-law died in order to help her son with the new baby, but she’s still got that lawyerly vibe when she’s feeling nosy.
“Sorry, Your Honor, but the witness is unresponsive. May I treat her as a hostile witness?” she asks, playing along. Then she glares at me. “The judge said answer the damn question, Ophelia Oakley-Hale.”
“It was only dinner,” I admit, “but I felt a definite spark.”
“Where did you meet this sparky man?” she asked.
“He’s…” I mumble the rest of my sentence.
Claudia’s mouth drops open. “Excuse me, madam. Did you say he’s your son’s driver and personal security?”
“I forgot you have supersonic hearing,” I lament.
She waves away my complaint with one hand. “He’s the big guy with the Irish accent, right?”
“Yes.”
“Hot damn. An accent and a beard? Yes ma’am, you should be all over that.”
“He’s younger than me by seven years,” I protest.
“So am I,” my friend retorts. “And yet we get along like there’s no age difference whatsoever.”
I tap the small space between my nose and my mouth. “That’s true. I didn’t think of it like that.”
Claudia preens. “That’s what I’m here for. To be the voice of reason for all things.” She gives me a nudge in the ribs. “Why don’t you just back the hell off and let me have the bodyguard? I look more like Whitney Houston than you anyway.”
I laugh at her reference to the movie starring the singer and Kevin Costner. “You do actually look a lot like her.”
She sighs. “If only I could sing like she could.”
“To be fair, great singers may come and go, but there will never be another Whitney.”
“Facts,” she says before turning the subject back to Antonio. “Now, what are we going to do about you and your Irishman?”
Worry floods my system, and my shoulders droop. “Nothing, I guess.”
“Oh, that sounded convincing.”
I meet her soft eyes. “It feels wrong to date someone who is Remi’s employee.”
“Your son’s a billionaire who owns a considerable amount of property and runs one of the largest businesses in Texas.
Half of the people in Houston are probably employees of his in one aspect or another.
” She quirks a brow. “Do you really want that to be a factor in who you can or can’t date?
Because honey, that will severely limit your dating pool. ”
My teeth work the corner of my lip. “I am very attracted to Antonio, and I think the feeling was mutual.”
“Then go for it, Ophelia. Damn, woman. You’ve been single for over two decades.” She shrugs. “Or at least have a little fun with a hot man.”
“I have his suit at my house. Maybe that could be—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa…” Claudia says, waggling both hands at me. “Back the hell up. He left clothing at your house? Like a screwvenir?”
I burst into laughter. Claudia is the friend who got me addicted to Urban Dictionary, as she used it when Ronnie was a teen and she had no idea what he was saying half the time.
“Not at all. I already told you there was no screwing involved. Antonio drove me home as a favor to Remi, and there was a busted water pipe. His clothes got wet when he helped me out, so I had it dry cleaned for him.”
“Well, okay then. We can work with this. You just call and ask him to come pick it up. Then, when he arrives, you answer the door in some sluttified lingerie.”
I smack her arm indignantly. “I most certainly will not!”
“Why not? You’re a hot babe. All your body parts are still in the same place they were twenty years ago since you do yoga and pilates several times a week. You look good, Ophelia, and not just for a woman in her fifties. You could hold your own with most twenty year olds.”
“Okay, that might be pushing it,” I scoff. “Nevertheless, I’m not answering the door in… what did you call it?”
“Sluttified lingerie,” she replies with confidence.
“Yeah, that. But maybe I could offer to cook for him again. He seemed to like my lasagna because he ate half the pan.”
Claudia’s smirk curls her rosy lips up at the corners. “Oh honey. We do love a man who likes to eat our… lasagna.”
She’s so ridiculous, though the idea of that beast of a man eating me is now implanted in my brain as we formulate a plan… one that includes only some mild flirting, much to Claudia’s dismay.
And absolutely no lingerie of any kind.