Chapter 4
BABS
It’s been three days since I last texted him.
He responded with a simple smiling emoji.
The thing has taunted me ever since I crossed a line I can’t uncross.
Letting boredom, fantasy, and a bit of wondering what it feels like to have a younger man interested in me.
Curious what my ex has been experiencing for years.
And the appeal, I’m beginning to understand it.
Hollister Morgan Harrington III is trouble.
Said as much and meant every word. His reply was simple, cocky, confident, and deliberate.
I’ll be all those things
And more
I haven’t answered, not because I didn’t want to. But because I didn’t know what would happen if I did. I thought ignoring him would kill the current. It hasn’t.
If anything, it’s only grown louder, buzzing in the back of my mind every time my phone lights up. Every time I walk past a mirror, I remember the way his eyes dragged over me. Not with disrespect but with hunger, curiosity, and heat.
The way his fingertips danced across my skin, leaving it blazing in the quiet room long after his departure.
I miss the way that felt. Miss being desired so purely and primally that nothing else matters.
The force of my ex-husband and me was one to be reconciled with back in the day.
Two love-sick kids, barely old enough to know anything of life, are having a baby of their own. The most challenging one at that.
Sure, I’ve dated since the divorce. Very quietly, a dinner here, an opera or ballet there, but nothing that resulted in me feeling the heat I did the night of the charity gala.
The night I wept out of anger, hurt, and disgust for the charade of my ex and his young woman, coupled with the sting from my bitter son.
The pairing was too much. I never expected comfort from his friend, not the lust in his eyes that met mine when he downed his whiskey.
“Game, Babs,” Leslie calls, tossing me a winning smile as the ball grazes past me untouched.
I blink, drag my focus back to the court. We’re at the club. Early spring sun warms the clay. Linen umbrellas cast lazy shadows over courtside tables where we usually lunch. My friends are dressed in matching shades of generational wealth.
White, beige, and pale blue. I’ve played tennis with them for years, gossiped with them, traveled with them, and buried myself in their routines to survive the last few years of my marriage, and the after.
But today, I can barely make it through a match. Ladies’ doubles. The club’s annual charity tournament is in two weeks. The four of us are signed up again, with the same partners, dresses, and stories.
I force a smile, walking off the court behind the other ladies. We finish the last set with a loss and three increasingly suspicious glances cast my way. They know I’m off. They just can’t name it. And I’m not about to hand them a headline.
“You okay?” Elise catches my elbow when I toss my racket in the chair, ready to enjoy the freshly served iced tea.
“Fine,” I lie, moving further into the shade of the umbrella.
“You seem distracted.”
I take a long sip and shrug.
“Just didn’t sleep well.”
They all exchange a look I don’t bother interpreting. They’ve known me long enough to smell smoke even when there’s no fire. And there’s definitely fire. Hormonal fire.
“Should we order the usual?” I deflect, sitting down with a groan after moving my racket to my bag.
“Actually,” Leslie says, adjusting her visor, “I need to duck out, I’ve got a board meeting at three.”
“Do we have to go to lunch?” Vanessa, the oldest of our group, groans, wiping sweat from her brow. “I’m beat and just want to hit the sauna. Then a massage with Sven.”
Her smile is all too knowing, even if she stumbled a few times during the match and could probably use some aftercare.
Sven is her favorite for aftercare, despite her claiming that she’s happily married.
The fact that she doesn’t keep it a secret like most at the club is shocking.
Even the owners are aware of it and turn a blind eye.
Then again, her husband battled prostate cancer many moons ago and is unable to complete his husbandly duties, according to her. He just wants her to be happy again.
“Sounds terrible for you, Vanessa,” Elise chides, always the first to give everyone a hard time. “I can’t stay either. I’m meeting my decorator downtown. He’s impossibly late with my wallpaper samples.”
Within five minutes, they packed their bags, put on their sunglasses, and vanished behind polite excuses and a commitment for another practice round later in the week.
Leaving me alone at our shaded lunch table, still damp from the game and riddled with the kind of nervous energy I hate admitting to.
I pull my handbag into my lap, reapply my lipstick, and move it to an empty chair along with my racket. I snatch up my drink, ponder ordering lunch and eating here alone, or head home to see what the Chef can prepare.
That’s when I see him.
Walking up the path to the courts. Loose white T-shirt. Tennis bag slung over one shoulder. Sunglasses low on his nose, scanning the space until his eyes land on me.
Oh my.
My pulse stutters. My hand covers the pearls at my neck, nervously picking at the strand. Of all the clubs. Of all the courts. Of all the days. He sees me. Of course he does. And unlike me, he doesn’t look surprised. He looks like he planned this.
Maybe he did. I can’t recall coming across him before at this place. Then again, the Harringtons have open membership most everywhere. I’ve yet to see any of them sweat in public during tennis or golf. Sweat from public scandal or other things, yes, but not from physical exertion.
I sit straighter. Cross one leg over the other. Smooth my skirt. Hide the shaking in my hand behind another sip of tea while still clutching my pearls. He heads straight for my table, slow and sure.
This is bad, I tell myself. So why does it feel so good to have his sudden attention?
He doesn’t break stride, walking straight to my table like it’s his seat, waiting for him. Like I’m just another part of the afternoon he’s planned out. No hesitation. No glance around for witnesses and certainly no shame.
He stops beside my chair. His eyes, impossibly dark, unfazed by the sunlight, drop to my hand still clutching the pearls at my throat. His warm fingers wrap gently around mine, loosening them from the strand. I should flinch. I don’t. I allow it.
He lifts my hand, slowly, deliberately, and presses a kiss to the top. A single breath of heat, just enough to make my skin hum.
“Pearls suit you.”
Releasing my hand with a heat radiating into my skin. His lips are a permanent imprint on my flesh when they drop to my lap.
“That wasn’t discreet or careful,” I comment, watching him slip into the empty chair beside mine and stretching back as if he has all day. He pushes his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose before resting his forearms on the chair’s arms.
“I know.”
He flashes me a half smile, my reflection in his glasses a bit distracting. I set my tea down and pick up my composure.
“I’m surprised to see you here.”
“You didn’t text back.”
“That doesn’t usually warrant a club appearance,” I say, lifting a brow. “I’d ask if you were a member, but I believe there is a building around here with your family name or crest on it.”
I jest, expecting him to counter when he shrugs a shoulder, letting my comment fall flat.
“I was in the neighborhood and heard this club, your club, has excellent . . . iced tea.”
What I mistook for possibly offending him is lobbed back to me with a flirtatious comment. I glance at the glass in front of me, and he grins. His hand goes up in the air with the confidence of someone who’s never been told no. A server darts over.
“I’ll have what she’s having.”
I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling.
Although I’ve seen him many times over the years, I can’t recall him being this forward and honestly fun.
Then again, I never paid too much attention to my son’s friends, or really, the lack thereof.
My children and I remind me of a solar system, orbiting around each other without much interaction.
When we did, it would be a cosmic starburst of hurt feelings and unmet expectations.
“I was going to reply,” I offer, even though I don’t owe him anything.
He shakes his head, like he already knows.
“No, you weren’t.”
I open my mouth to object and swiftly close it.
Polite society doesn’t reward such bluntness, another thing I find refreshing about him.
He grew up in this. Same as I did, with far more expectations placed on him than on me.
Cut from the same cloth, yet emerging into two radically different patterns.
“Fine. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure what to say. Or if I should say anything.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t make a habit of flirting with younger men who are my son’s friend.”
His smile twitches. Head tilts.
“You weren’t flirting?” he teases, calling me out in a way that’s dangerous.
“I said I don’t make a habit of it. Not that it didn’t happen.”
The server drops off his iced tea. Hollister doesn’t take a sip. He just leans forward, finally lowering his sunglasses onto the table with a soft clink. His eyes meet mine, full force.
“There are a lot of things I don’t usually do, and flirting with my best friend’s mom is usually not one of them. Yet here we are.”
He rests his arms on the table. A big no-no in etiquette. Something I’m sure he knows and yet intentionally violates.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about you since that night.”
I exhale slowly, reaching for my glass again.
“I was upset. It was an emotional moment.”
“You were breathtaking. Even with mascara on your cheeks and your hands trembling.”
“Charming,” I murmur, but the word falls apart in my throat.