Chapter Five
When she first made a splash in the world, she rippled out of her comfort zone in small waves. When the world made a splash in her life, she discovered in her possession a tidal wave of sparks with which to splash back.
—The Temptress of Pecan Lane, by Mae Daniels
Friday night, Anna climbed off the stage at Taps, hot and sweaty and laughing after a rusty rendition of “Summer Nights.” She sucked as Sandy, but Rodney was worse as Danny. And he’d reveled in his badness for every last horrific second.
They made their way through the crowd to their table. Brad jumped up on his chair and gave a whistle. “More! More!”
Jules yanked at his belt loops. “God, how can you still hear after that? Get down.”
“You kidding, babe? That was like angels. Angels. If I’d been up there—”
“My eardrums would still work,” Jules said.
He hopped down and bumped into their waitress. Her tray flew out of her hands. Full soda cups went flying. People at the next table skittered for cover. Anna shrieked and ducked, but she got splattered with half a Sprite.
“Smooth, bro.” Rodney held out a fist, and Brad bumped it. “You okay, Anna?”
Jules handed her a wad of napkins. They disintegrated on the sugary liquid on Anna’s arms. “Just wet,” she said.
“So to speak,” Rodney and Brad said together. They shared another fist bump and a “Giggidy.”
“Could you quit acting like Neanderthals?” Jules said.
“Sorry, babe.” Brad grinned at her like, well, a Neanderthal. He and Rodney went down on all fours to help the waitress, and he gave her a grin too. “Sorry, ma’am. You can add ’em to my tab.”
Jules rubbed her forehead. “He is such a doofus. But he’s my doofus.”
“I’ll let you have him.” Anna gestured toward the ladies’ room. Jules followed her.
Anna had dressed for a night in a bar. Jeans, sparkly top, and boots that made squeaky noises on the restroom floor once the noise of the bar and karaoke were shut out by the door. “Rodney’s totally checking you out,” Jules said.
Anna went straight for the sink. “Technically still married here.”
“Don’t be like that.” Jules leaned into the mirror and checked her mascara.
“Like what?”
“Bitter about me getting the better brother.”
Anna was up to her elbows in pink bathroom soap and chlorine water, with jeans that were stuck to her legs, and she was laughing for the second time in five minutes. “No offense, Jules, but I wouldn’t have picked either of them.”
“Yeah, well, look what you pick—erm, what you’re missing out on.” Jules pulled a lipstick out of her back pocket.
Look what you picked. Right. But Jules using her verbal filter for once made up for the near insult. “Yeah, can you picture the in-law Christmases? Imagine the toys Rodney and I could come up with to give you in front of their parents.”
Jules gave her a withering look. “Dude. Did I tell you what he gave us for the wedding?”
Soapy hands or not, Anna clamped her hands over her ears. “La la la, not listening.”
“Exactly,” Jules said with a smirk. “You’d totally tame him. Nothing else with spikes for us.”
Anna shuddered. Sex was great exactly the way it was meant to be. With two bodies, on a bed, in the dark. Maybe next to the bed, but that had to be planned in advance in case things got messy.
Jules fussed with her hair while Anna finished cleaning up as best she could. “Ready?” she asked Jules a minute later. She reached for the door. Jules grabbed her arm.
“Hey, listen. Rodney’s not really into commitment, but I’ve never heard a complaint about his skills from any of his girlfriends, so if you wanted to” —Jules cleared her throat— “with him, to, you know, get experience with someone else, maybe take the edge off, I’m cool with that.”
Good thing they were in the restroom, because Anna wanted to wash her hands again. Maybe a few other parts too. Moving on was one thing. A pity screw with Rodney—no. Just no.
“Or not.” Jules shrugged. “Your call. Thought you should know he’d be up for that.” She tilted her head. “So to speak.”
The restroom door opened, and two drunk coeds staggered in. Jules’s eyebrows went wonky. “But then, that might be more his speed. God, I am the best sister-in-law ever.”
If she said so. They left the restroom. “You gonna sing tonight?” Anna asked. Brad and Rodney had fresh drinks at the table.
“There isn’t enough alcohol on the planet,” Jules replied.
She slid into the seat beside Brad, who put his arm around her shoulders and tipped a bottle into her mouth.
Anna took her own seat and averted her gaze.
“Disgusting, isn’t it?” Rodney said. He dropped his arm over the back of her chair. A familiar scent overcame the lingering Sprite on her clothes.
Rodney used the same body wash Neil had.
Anna crossed her legs. She leaned left, far enough to get the odor out of her nose, which, unfortunately, put her closer to Brad and Jules, who were now rubbing noses and doing something borderline obscene with their tongues.
She tried to smile at Rodney. “Like watching my parents make out.”
He guffawed. His eyes dropped to her chest. His tongue darted out of his mouth. “I like funny girls.”
She caught sight of the two coeds and nodded toward them. “The redhead over there was in the bathroom telling blonde jokes.”
His eyebrows looked like two fuzzy caterpillars hooding his eyes. He contorted one in his giggidy pose, but never once looked toward the redhead. “You’re a funny girl.”
She instinctively reached for her ring. Long gone, but she could still feel it there. Rodney, apparently, couldn’t. “I’m technically still married,” she said.
The other eyebrow went all giggidy too. “Got an idea to help with that.”
He leaned in closer. Anna lunged for her iced tea. “So. Another song?”
“I got a song for you, baby.” His lids were half-lowered. “Wanna see the eighth wonder of the world? Give you a hint. It put the Rod in Rodney.”
Anna’s facial muscles contorted. She took a big gulp of tea to hide the worst of the twitches, but the tea hit her stomach like a one-two punch of reality.
Men actually said things like that to single women.
He slipped the tea out of her grasp and put it back on the table.
No more shield. Lots more body wash odor.
“I’m trying not to think about it, but I’m headed off to war next week.
Never know if you’re coming back or not.
Got to take every last opportunity to live to the fullest, you know?
Do things I’ve never done before, with people I’ve never done them with. ”
“Technically still married,” she squeaked again.
That only upped the giggidy in his eyebrows. “Never done that before. Come on, baby. Grease my lightning.”
He was so close she could see every blond follicle on his chin and cheeks.
“Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what you can do to service your country’s servicemen.” His tongue rolled over his bottom lip. “Us Marines are better at everything than those Air Force weenies. Ooh-rah, baby.”
His lips loomed in her face like two gigantic garden slugs. There was definite movement in the Rodney, Jr. area.
Her heart triple-timed it. Adrenaline pinged through her veins. Her thighs clamped shut on their own, and her lungs felt as if they were filled with cement.
Sex was totally out of the question. As for the garden slugs, she hadn’t kissed anyone but Neil in over eight years. It was inevitable she’d kiss someone eventually, but she didn’t know where Rodney’s lips had been.
An involuntary whimper slipped out of her frozen mouth. She lunged for her drink. Her clumsy fingers connected with the glass. Tea went everywhere. All over the table, all over her jeans, all over her broken life. She jumped to her feet with a shriek.
Rodney jumped up too. “Dude. Really?”
She opened her mouth to apologize, but her throat was thick with tears.
He got the panicked expression of a guy who’d rather park his car over fire ants than deal with a soggy female. He gestured helplessly at Brad, who was probably only acting stoic for Jules’s sake.
Jules heaved a sigh and disentangled herself from her husband. “More napkins?”
Anna waved a hand to the door, but then tucked it into her soggy pocket when she remembered what that hand was capable of. “Paper towels. In my car. I’ll be okay. Thanks. Fun times.”
Jules cut her eyes to Rodney, then back at Anna. “Need a ride?”
“No!” Anna fumbled with her purse, also dripping. She’d had a tea and fries. Easy math. “No. Thanks. I’m okay.”
Brad gave her foot a nudge. “We got you, Anna.”
“No, really, I can pay for myself.” She slipped a ten out of her wallet and set it on the table. She could barely make eye contact with Jules. “See you Monday. I need to go. Get cleaned up. You know.”
But as soon as she was out the door, safely headed to her car, she dug into her purse for a phone number.
And two minutes later, she headed to her first officers’ ex-wives club meeting.
“Sugar, whose ass do I have to kick?” Kaci asked as soon as she opened the door.
She lived in a neighborhood like Anna used to. Oversize cookie-cutter houses, high ceilings, bedrooms as big as Anna’s whole apartment, twenty-five-minute commute to base, ten-minute ride to James Robert, five to Taps.
Anna had wanted to go home, but she was soaked, her hands shook so bad she could hardly steer, and she was so, so tired of feeling lonely.
The ominous sounds of quiet from inside the house didn’t bode well for her choice in how to deal with her humdinger of a mess of life. “Did I miss the party?”
Kaci’s nose twitched. “Oh, no, it’s a small one tonight.” Her smile was part hesitant, part hopeful. “Really, it’s just me. Sarah’s kids got sick, so her new friend cancelled too. But I got what it takes to be a club all by myself. You get on in here and relax. I’ll go open up a bottle.”