Chapter Three
Three
Two hours later, I pull into the driveway of the monstrosity that is Winona’s house.
The four-bedroom, three-and-a-half-bath behemoth nestled in the center of Oak Park has all the trappings of new money: a cream brick facade, a manicured front lawn, and a “Secured by ADT” sign peeking out from the holly bushes.
It’s a home much too big for a two-person household, but despite her complaints about the high property taxes and the neighborhood’s draconian homeowner’s association, Winona hasn’t been able to let it go.
Motion sensor lights click on as we disembark, illuminating the front door just as it swings open.
“Hi, baby,” Winona says to Sophie, who folds into her embrace like she needs it. “How was it?”
Sophie shrugs.
“The cake was gross. I don’t know whose idea it was to cover it with black fondant but it literally tasted like chalk. Thankfully they had cupcakes, so I had one of those instead. And the chicken was, like, super dry, but Dad let me have some of his brisket and that was pretty good.”
Winona’s mouth screws up like she isn’t sure whether to laugh or reprimand her daughter.
“Well, thanks for being a good sport. I know it was important to your dad that you were there.” She looks up at me with shining, haggard eyes. “You got your bag?”
I swing my overnight tote into view.
“Of course,” I say, inviting myself inside.
The living room of the former Pendersen-Evans household is sparse.
Brandon and Winona purchased the home with the intention of having an interior designer outfit it to both of their tastes, but when Brandon met Leila and his interest in his familial home waned, Winona deferred her refurbishing dreams for the three-bedroom condominium that she is still yet to purchase.
What Winona has by way of furniture is a peeling pleather sectional with a matching La-Z-Boy that is in even worse shape and an already aged Persian rug that has made the move from her parents’ attic to the grad school apartment she’d shared with me to the one she’d shared with Brandon before finding its home here.
It is on this rug that Winona and I, after sending Sophie to bed, debrief.
“So…” Winona says. We’ve changed into comfortable jersey pajama sets, and the baggy shirt hangs limply over her thin frame.
“So,” I say.
We laugh in bitter unison.
“Well, I’ve heard Sophie’s opinions,” Winona says. She blows over a mug of Earl Grey. “Where’re yours?”
When your best friend asks you what you thought of her ex-husband’s second wedding, you have a moral obligation to tell her it was shit.
“For one, I got put at the Boys and Babes table,” I start, using our nickname for my interventional cardiology group and their significant others.
“Krause was Krause. One of Brandon’s cousins kept badgering me about how I look like a woman he once worked with until I reminded him that I was familiar because I was Brandon’s ex-wife’s maid of honor.
And Sophie wasn’t kidding about the cake. ”
Winona hums, satisfied. She stretches across her carpet, dropping her head back until her curtain of black curls brushes against the floor.
She is runway pretty, all harsh lines and heavy eyelids.
We used to joke that we were aesthetic opposites, her gaunt, Burton-esque features contrasting with my rounded, lush ones.
“What about the fine-ass man of honor?” she says after a moment.
I take a too big gulp of my chamomile tea.
“What about him?” I say.
“You get a closer look?”
Without warning, I am back on the piano bench, Julian’s face hovering right before mine.
His gaze ticks slowly from my eyes to my lips and back.
This memory of him—because that’s what this has to be, a memory, though I’m not sure Julian had leaned in so close, so long—seems strangely solid.
I can feel the heat of his body radiating close to mine, the final notes of the piano dispersing like smoke.
I resist the urge to reach out and touch him, and as if he can hear my thoughts, he smirks, the corner of his mouth turning up in an expression I’m quite sure I haven’t seen before.
“So…?” The word forms around Julian’s mouth, rounding his lips to an O, but the sound produced isn’t his voice or his intonation. Winona’s, my mind supplies sluggishly, remembering where I am. She’s talking to you.
I wag my head to shake him away, but Julian lingers, seared into an afterimage on the back of my closed eyelids.
“Oh, she got a real close look,” another voice answers for me.
All at once, my vision clears enough to catch my goddaughter peeking through the railings of the stairway. Heat rises to my face. The little snitch.
“I know you know better than to be in grown folks’ business,” I say.
“And you should know better than to lie,” Sophie taunts. “You were about to kiss him. I was there. I saw. Which is really weird because you, like, just met him.”
Oh, I cannot wait to use that line on her in four years or so when she asks her Auntie Sean to cover for her teenage debauchery.
“Bed, Soph,” Winona says with some force, and we endure a few minutes of whining (“I’m not a baby, Mom!”) before Sophie’s bedroom door finally slams shut.
The instant it does, her mother rounds on me.
“You almost kissed him?” Winona hisses. When I don’t immediately deny it, she smacks me with a throw pillow. “Oh my god, Sean! How could you not lead with that?”
“It felt wrong,” I admit, ashamed. “I shouldn’t have even entertained him.”
Winona might claim that me cavorting with her ex-husband’s new wife’s best friend would be the perfect revenge, but I know that a dalliance like that could cause distance between us.
Julian is Leila’s. He’d walked her down the aisle and everything.
How could I have let myself forget that, even for a moment?
“We aren’t twenty-two anymore,” Winona says, interrupting my thoughts. “There aren’t rules of engagement like there used to be.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Winona shrugs.
“You know, that we can’t talk to each other’s exes or be friends with girls I don’t like. All those guidelines we had to follow to demonstrate our loyalty. We’re past that. You know as well as I do that life is too short for all that BS.” Winny grins.
“You’re my soul sister, Sean. And I would very much like for you to have some fun. Even just so I can get the tea later.”
“Winny…” I start.
Winona holds up a hand.
“I don’t want to hear it,” she says. “I do, however, want to hear about this guy. And spare me no details. I want to know name, height, build, ethnicity, and how you ended up all snuggled up.”
I snicker, then indulge her.
Sleep descends upon me that night. One second I am slipping under a pink paisley comforter in Winny’s guest room, and the next I’m immersed in a realm of darkness, trapped in a purgatory of consciousness between wakefulness and slumber.
And then suddenly a snap, a room. It is familiar, bustling, the colors oversaturated and blurred like I’m staring at it through tear-filmed eyes.
I recognize it as Brews and Beans, the coffee shop at my hospital.
There is a man sitting at a window. He is well-built, tall.
His long legs stretch elegantly out under his table, his broad shoulders angled toward the street.
I feel a desire, suddenly, for him to perceive me.
Want more than anything for his eyes to meet mine and hold.
I know what they will look like: amber, burning like hot coals in a sculptural face.
As if he can sense my interest, the man turns and gives me a syrupy smile.
“Dreaming of me, Sean?” Julian says, and I startle awake.