Chapter 9 #2
Paige finds this behavior odd and looks at her a moment.
“I was asking whoever was thirsty,” Grant says, graciously, taking the outstretched glass and heading to the bar.
“You okay?” Paige asks.
“Yeah. ’Course. Sorry. I think I’m just... It’s a lot with all the Finn stuff. Just trying to keep it together, y’know.”
Paige pulls her mouth into a tight line and gives an empathetic nod. They sit, watching the party awhile.
A woman with a selfie stick takes glossy-eyed photos of herself in front of a giant margarita glass and poses like she’s drinking it.
A group of women create a circle on the dance floor and have discarded all their shoes in the middle of it as they dance overdramatically, in a style that doesn’t match the music.
Lucas Kinney, Paige just notices, is standing in a tux near the stage, a drink in hand, chatting with a couple lawyers she vaguely knows from years of these events.
Cora strains to see him. She cups her hand above her eyes to deflect the glare of the dance-floor lights.
“What?” Paige asks.
“Lucas Kinney is here,” she says.
“How exciting,” Paige says dryly. Cora stands for a better look. “Uh...you can see him any given day, rubbing his BMW with a diaper in his driveway or jogging around the neighborhood with short-shorts on. Why the staring?”
“You think he’s, a bit, I don’t know...”
“What?”
“Off?” Cora asks.
“You’re asking the wrong person. I think everyone in the neighborhood is off. Except you guys, of course,” Paige says, and Grant returns, handing her a full martini.
“Who’s off?” he asks, sitting between them and slurping the foam off a fresh beer.
“Lucas Kinney,” Paige says. “I thought he was gay.”
“He’s married,” Cora says.
“Yeah, before that. He lived there a couple years, and I never saw anyone come and go from his house, so I figured gay.”
“So,” Grant says, “if you never saw anyone go in or out, then you also didn’t see men go in and out. How does that equal gay?”
“Dunno. ’Cause he was hiding it, big judge and all that,” Paige says, all of them peering over at Lucas now.
“So now he’s a closeted gay man just because you don’t see people come in and out. He could have dated a thousand women and stayed at their places,” Grant says.
“A thouuusand? Yes, well, if he dated a thousand women, I probably would have seen one or two walk-of-shame themselves to their cars at least once,” Paige says.
Grant turns his attention to Cora.
“I thought he was great, the once or twice I joined Finn and him for a drink. Why, what’d he do?”
“Nothing, really. A little unfriendly, maybe. Just wondering if it was just me.”
“I think he’s off. He wears chinos that are too short and shoes with no socks,” Paige says.
“You think everyone is off,” Grant says.
“Yes, we covered that while you were gone, thanks.”
“I think that’s stylish now,” Cora says. “On The Bachelorette all the guys have ankle pants with no socks. It’s a thing,” she adds with authority.
“It’s idiotic, and he’s not a twenty-two-year-old reality star.”
“I fear what you two say about me when I’m not around,” Grant says jokingly.
Cora laughs too loud and gives him a playful, dismissive gesture with her hand, but Paige is distracted.
She’s spotted Charbroil following Finn to the bathrooms. Paige noted earlier that the bathrooms that line the main corridor near the kitchen are the unisex, single-stall kind.
Probably for kitchen staff, not patrons, but since food service stopped a while ago and the kitchen is in a frenzy of dishwashing and packing up catering gear, she thinks it might be a private place for lovers to meet.
“Oh, there’s Claire. Haven’t seen her in ages.
I’ll be back,” Paige says. She knows it’s completely out of character for her to pursue social interaction, and this might be interpreted as fishy, but both Grant and Cora want her back to being herself, so they probably won’t bat an eye at her departure.
Paige does her whole pretending-she’s-lost-in-a-text walk, looking down at her phone so she’s never caught spying.
When she reaches the dark hallway leading back to the bathrooms, she sees them talking in the yellow rectangle of light from the open bathroom door.
Char has slid down the wall with her head in her hands and is crying.
God, Paige hates women. Why are they always crying around men?
She ducks back around the corner, against the wall, and stands listening.
She can only hear muffled voices from this far away. Damn. She dares to peek around the corner to see what’s going on. Finn tries to guide Char up by her shoulders. She lets him for a minute. He tries to hug her, but she pushes him.
“Always gonna be like this!” is the only thing Paige hears as Char turns toward her and comes barreling down the hall, away from him. She quickly turns and walks a few steps away. She holds her phone up to her ear and pretends to be on a call as Char huffs past.
“Oh, yeah. We’re getting ready to leave. No, no. Yeah, yeah.” Paige has no idea what she’s doing—no real backup plan, but Char pays no attention to her. She just breaks into an emotional sprint back to the banquet room.
There’s an unexpected opportunity; she has to decide what to do in a matter of seconds. She has a very drunk Finn on her hands. Maybe a just-broken-up-with Finn. Vulnerable? Check. Would it be morally wrong to take her shot? Yes. It would.
She waits a minute, expecting him to appear, but he doesn’t, so she turns down the hall and sees him leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette. When he sees her, he drops it and crushes it out with his foot in an instant.
“God, you scared me. I thought you were...”
“Who?” Paige asks.
“No, I—don’t—What are you doing over here?”
“You smoke?” She changes the subject.
“Not usually. Someone gave it to me, and I don’t know. It seemed like a good idea.”
“Nobody smokes anymore,” she says. Acting coy last time didn’t work, so why not be herself?
“Very true,” he says.
“I’m here because, if you’re not aware, the line to the women’s bathroom is thirty people deep. I saw the guy’s line. There was none. No idea what your secret is. Urinals, maybe. But the insiders know about these bathrooms. So if you’ll excuse me,” she says and pushes past Finn into the bathroom.
She runs the tap and dots some cold water under her eyes, then applies blush-colored lip gloss and presses her lips together a few times.
She doesn’t know what to expect when she opens the door.
She’s fairly sure he’ll be gone, back whining to Cora that they have to go.
Or maybe he’ll still be there. She’s suddenly not sure which one she hopes for. Her nerves are taking over.
When she opens the door, he’s still there. She’d be embarrassed for him if she didn’t feel about him the way she did. He looked sort of pathetic, leaning on the wall, no drink, no phone. No reason to be there.
“Sorry about the other night,” he says. “I just wanted to say that. I was stupid. I’m sorry.”
“No need to be sorry,” she says, ready to walk past him.
“You said, ‘Offer’s open,’” he says. Then, they just look at each other.
“I did,” she finally says, and he grabs the sides of her face and kisses her, almost violently.
They stumble through the bathroom door and lock it behind them.
He unbuttons the first few buttons on his shirt and reaches for his back collar, pulling the shirt off in a practiced sweep.
He unzips her dress. She thinks this would be much easier without so many layers of fancy clothes, but she helps him pull her tight skirt up over her hips, and he picks her up and places her onto the sink counter.
It’s not a passionate, romantic encounter, and she doesn’t take the photos she promised.
She lets him take down his pants and push into her, desperately.
She hates him for so easily betraying Cora, but she pushes this thought away.
Her legs wrapped around him, her back pushed against the vanity mirror, one hand in the sink.
The blitz of satisfaction feels like an electric current running through her in that moment, and it doesn’t allow room for any other feelings, like remorse or shame.
She hushes his grunts and moans, and the whole thing is over rather quickly.
“We’ve been gone too long,” she says, as she hurriedly retrieves a fallen earring from the tiled floor and they check their hair and smooth out the wrinkles in their clothes.
“Go first,” she says, pushing him out. “We can’t go together.”
“Okay, yeah,” he says, rushing out the bathroom door while she waits a few minutes to leave.
They don’t have time to process or talk about what just happened, but she knows one thing for sure, and she mumbles it under her breath. “He’s mine now.”