Chapter 36
MAGGIE
The water comes out cold. It always does for the first thirty seconds — the boiler's old, the pipe runs are long, and there's nothing to be done about it — and I stand there and let it be cold, with my hands flat on the tiles and my forehead pressed against the wall.
Finally the water turns warm and I sigh as the mud sluices off in dark threads down the drain.
My hand keeps going to my mouth.
That kiss. I shiver just thinking about it.
I've kissed women I was in love with and it didn't feel like that.
It was a kiss of pure longing and she felt it too.
I could tell by how she pulled me down and how her hips lifted to meet mine.
If that damn helicopter hadn't landed, I don't know if we'd have stopped, so maybe it was for the best.
The other thing I keep coming back to is Sita's entrance.
The look she had when she came down the drive — the white, the sunglasses, the pristine purse, the casual I'd shake your hand but — and the moment when I understood.
They're from the same world. Sloane and I might as well be from different planets.
I lather soap onto my arms and scrub harder than I need to.
I had her under me and her mouth against mine and I didn't have a single thought in my head about whether this was a sensible thing to do. It can't happen again and now I have to figure out how to look at her on Monday.
Sloane will spend her weekend with people who charter helicopters without a second thought.
She'll shower in a bathroom that doesn't need its boiler explained, sleep on Egyptian cotton sheets, and somewhere between the champagne and the designer dress and the man who slides up next to her at the bar, she'll wonder what on earth she was doing kissing a sanctuary owner in Duster.
A woman, no less. She might even laugh about the whole ridiculous interlude. That's the truth I have to face.
The next truth, which is harder, is that that thought hurts a little.
I've been lonely for years, in a low, manageable way that I've learned to live with.
The dating apps with the same six faces, the dinners my friend sets up with women who are not for me, the second dates I go on out of courtesy and the third dates I go on out of stubbornness.
None of it has touched me in a long time.
None of it has come anywhere near to how I felt today.
The lid is off and I'm not sure how to put it back on.
I let the water beat on the back of my neck while I shampoo my hair.
I find a bruise on my hip. I don't know how it got there — falling on her, probably. There's another one on my elbow. I run my thumb over the edge of it and wonder if Sloane has any bruises.
What was I thinking?
I wasn't, I guess. With Sloane, I seem to operate on an entirely different level.
Sita's helicopter. Sita's babe. Sita's hand coming up to wave away the muddy hug as if Sloane were a slightly unsanitary object.
The ease of it. The volume of money it takes to do that without thinking — the kind of money you don't notice having, because you've never had less of it. Sloane has that money.
The anger that suddenly rises surprises me.
It comes up from somewhere I don't usually have access to and it takes me a minute to identify the emotion.
I'm angry with her for arriving in my life in a Porsche, drunk, and crashing through my property.
I'm angry with her for being nice and charming, but mostly, I'm angry with myself for falling for her.
If only she'd behaved like the awful spoiled brat I thought she was I would have easily gotten through the eight weeks and never thought about her again.
What I did was not only stupid, but unprofessional.
I'm supervising her court-ordered service and my name is on the signed sheet that goes to her probation officer.
It's a twisted power dynamic I would have spotted in any other context but walked straight into with eyes wide open.
Even though I'm not her probation officer and I doubt a judge would care what we got up to, it's wrong.
I rinse my hair out and turn off the water, then dry myself off and wrap my hair in a towel. I put on the T-shirt and sleep shorts I keep on the back of the door for nights when I can't be bothered dressing properly and head downstairs to make dinner.
My phone is on the kitchen counter where I left it. When I see her name, my stomach drops and I hate that my body has decided Sloane Archer's name on a screen is a thing worth reacting to.
I pick it up.
Sorry for leaving like that. Felt strange. Can we talk Monday? — S X
After reading it twice, I read it a third time. I want it to say something different and it doesn't.
Of course she wants to talk. She wants to do it kindly, in person, on a Monday morning.
Sloane is a polite woman and doesn't write off a kiss in a text message.
She'll tell me it was a mistake and it shouldn't have happened.
I can already picture it. The sweet tone, the slight distance.
Maybe a hand on my arm at the end of it.
Even though she's the one with the sentence, it feels like the tables have turned and I'm in the wrong now.
Replying is the only sensible thing to do. Don't worry about it and enjoy your weekend. Monday works. — M. I hit send before I can second-guess it and put the phone face down on the counter.
I open the fridge and stare into it without seeing anything. I'm not hungry anymore.