Chapter 7
YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT I HEARD
“She said he was buying store brand.”
Deborah sets her mimosa down with both hands like she needs to anchor herself to deliver this information. Her eyes are wide and bright and her mouth is doing the thing it does when she’s holding back a smile that could light the whole patio on fire.
“Store brand what?”
“Everything. Cereal. Paper towels. She said he had a coupon organizer. A coupon organizer, Ginny. Clarence Ellis, the man who once sent back a bottle of wine because the vintage was one year off his preference—clipping coupons at King Soopers on a Tuesday afternoon.”
The laugh hits me before I can stop it. It comes up from somewhere deep and warm and shakes my shoulders and I press my napkin to my mouth because we are on a restaurant patio in Cherry Creek and two women at the next table are already glancing over.
“Lisa told you this?”
“Lisa told me everything.” Deborah leans forward. Elbows on the table, bracelets clicking. “She ran into him at King Soopers last week. Said he looked ten years older. Gray at the temples—and not the sexy kind. The tired kind. Dark circles, wrinkled polo, cart full of frozen meals and diapers.”
“Diapers.”
“The baby came in August. A girl.”
Something shifts in my chest—a small, involuntary tug.
Not sadness. Not longing. Something closer to the feeling you get when you pass a house you used to live in and notice the new owners painted it a color you’d never choose.
It was yours once. It isn’t anymore. And somehow the distance doesn’t hurt like you thought it would.
“How’s Annabelle handling motherhood?”
“Funny you should ask.” Deborah picks a strawberry off her plate and bites it in half.
“Lisa didn’t see Annabelle. She saw Clarence.
Alone. At a grocery store at two in the afternoon on a weekday, which means he’s either working weird hours or not working much at all.
And he told Lisa—unprompted, by the way, nobody asked—that they’re in a two-bedroom apartment off Colorado Boulevard. ”
“Really?”
“The part near the tire shops.”
I take a sip of my coffee. The sun is warm on my bare arms and the patio smells like French toast and fresh basil and somewhere behind me a toddler is laughing in that full-body way kids laugh when they haven’t learned to hold any of it back yet.
“He told Lisa the apartment was temporary,” Deborah continues. “Said they’re looking for something bigger once things settle down. And then—and this is the part that made Lisa text me at eleven at night—he said, and I quote, Annabelle’s adjusting to a different lifestyle.”
“Adjusting.”
“Adjusting. As in: the lifestyle she had—the yoga retreats, the rooftop cocktails, the designer everything—was funded by the father she no longer speaks to. Daddy’s credit card got canceled.
The trust fund disbursements stopped. And the charming boyfriend she blew up two lives for turns out to be a man whose biggest skill is performing generosity with other people’s money. ”
The coffee is perfect. Strong, a little bitter, exactly right.
I hold the mug with both hands and let the warmth soak into my palms and I don’t feel guilty for enjoying this.
I tried. I tried to feel guilty about three weeks ago, lying in bed at two in the morning, turning it over—Clarence in a small apartment, a baby he probably holds the way he held everything, like it was something that happened to him instead of something he chose.
I tried to find the version of me that would ache for him.
She’s gone. He killed her with four words on an iPad screen, and the woman who replaced her drinks her coffee in the sun and doesn’t flinch.
“So let me get this straight.” Deborah ticks points on her fingers.
“Trust fund: gone. Daddy’s apartment: gone.
Instagram lifestyle: gone. And the exciting new boyfriend turns out to be a man who peaked at dinner parties.
Meanwhile, you—” She jabs a strawberry stem at me.
“You signed two new commercial clients last month, you’re renovating a Victorian on Capitol Hill that’s going to be in a magazine, and you are glowing in a way that has nothing to do with bronzer. ” She narrows her eyes. “Who is he?”
“Who’s who?”
“Don’t.” She points the strawberry stem like a weapon.
“You’ve been dodgy for weeks. You canceled on me twice—you never cancel.
And you’re sitting here in a sundress I’ve never seen with your hair down, which you only do when you’re trying to impress somebody, and you’re smiling like you’ve got a secret that’s making your whole body hum. So. Who.”
The heat rises up my neck before I can stop it. I take another sip of coffee. The mug is shaking, just slightly, in my hands.
“Patrick.”
Deborah blinks. The strawberry stem drops to her plate.
“Patrick. Patrick Collier. Annabelle’s father. That Patrick?”
“That Patrick.”
Her mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. She presses both hands flat on the table and leans back in her chair and stares at me with an expression I’ve never seen on her face before—something between shock and admiration and the kind of delight that makes her dangerous.
“You are sleeping with that woman’s father.”
“We’ve been seeing each other for four months.”
“You—Ginny—“ She grabs her mimosa. Takes a long swallow. Sets it down. “You are telling me that Annabelle Collier stole your husband, and you responded by dating her dad. The hot dad. The silver fox with the jawline and the real estate empire and the—Ginny. Ginny.”
“It wasn’t planned.”
“I don’t care if it was planned! This is the greatest thing that has ever happened to anyone I know.
” She’s laughing now—loud, bright, the kind of laugh that turns heads.
The women at the next table are fully watching.
“Is this a revenge thing? Tell me this is a revenge thing, because if it is, it’s the most elegant revenge in the history of—”
“It’s not revenge.”
She stops. Studies my face. The laughter softens into something more careful.
“Then what is it?”
The sun catches my coffee and throws a warm gold circle on the tablecloth. The toddler behind me shrieks with laughter again. My chest is full—not tight, not aching, not braced for impact. Full.
“I’m having fun,” I say. “Real fun. The kind where I laugh and it doesn’t feel like performing. The kind where someone asks about my day and actually listens to the answer. And right now that’s enough. That’s more than enough.”
Deborah watches me. Her expression shifts—the amusement settling into something deeper, something that looks like relief. Like she’s been holding her breath for me since the night I called her from the couch with an iPad in my hands, and she’s finally letting it out.
“You look happy, Gin.”
“I am.”
She picks up her mimosa. Holds it out across the table.
“To store-brand cereal.”
I clink my mug against her glass. “And coupon organizers.”
“And the ex-girlfriend’s father.” She grins. “God, I love you.”
My jacket is on his coatrack next to his.
My shoes are on his shoe tray—the flats I wear to site visits lined up beside his loafers.
My toothbrush is in his bathroom. My shampoo.
My robe on the back of his bedroom door, the silk one I bought myself the week the divorce was finalized, the first thing I purchased that belonged entirely to this version of my life.
We came home from dinner twenty minutes ago.
A place on Larimer—small, candlelit, the kind of restaurant where the chef comes out and the waiter knows Patrick by name.
He ordered for us because he knows what I like, and the knowing doesn’t feel like control.
It feels like attention. The particular, steady attention of a man who listens when I talk and remembers what I say.
His apartment is warm. The lights in the living room are low and the city glows through the floor-to-ceiling windows and I’m standing in his kitchen doorway watching him pour two glasses of wine, and the sight of his hands—unhurried, deliberate, the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled to the elbow—does something to the bottom of my stomach that I’m done pretending isn’t happening.
“You’re staring,” he says without looking up.
“You have nice forearms.”
He laughs. Low, quiet, a sound that rumbles through the kitchen and settles somewhere behind my ribs. He picks up both glasses and crosses the kitchen and stops in front of me. Close. His cologne—the clean, woodsy one that smells nothing like Tom Ford—fills my next breath.
“You have a nice everything.” He hands me a glass. His fingers brush mine and hold. “But I’m biased.”
“Extremely biased.”
“Guilty.” His eyes drop to my mouth. They stay there. “Are you going to drink that, or can I take it back?”
I set the glass on the counter behind me without looking.
His follows. His hands find my waist and his mouth finds mine and the kiss starts slow—warm, searching, his thumb tracing a circle on my hip through the fabric of my dress—and then my fingers curl into the front of his shirt and pull and everything becomes more urgent.
His hands slide down to my thighs and lift.
My legs wrap around his waist and my back hits the hallway wall and his mouth drags from my lips to my jaw to the spot below my ear that makes my breath catch, and he knows it makes my breath catch because he’s learned me.
He’s spent four months paying attention to the way my body responds to his, mapping every sensitive place with the patience of a man who has nowhere else to be.
“Bedroom,” I manage.
“Demanding.” His teeth graze my neck. “I like it.”