Page 1 of The Cruiser
ChapterOne
VANDANA
Every story starts somewhere.
Mine, tragically, begins headfirst in a toilet.
“Jesus, V! How many drinks did you have tonight?” asks Derek, my considerably less-wasted husband. He's been holding my topknot ponytail out of the line of fire like a concerned spouse should, but now that the worst is over, I hear it. The judgment in his voice. The lack of warmth.
Maybe it’s my imagination.
Or the fact I’m hammered and not wearing it well.
I’m panting and lightheaded, hugging the throne dressed in Balmain, half a mil in borrowed rubies, and what’s left of my pride. Thank god Derek got me home in time. If the staff at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills had found me splayed out in their lobby like a Girls Gone Wild hot mess, I’d never live it down.
“I’m sorry, babe.” I prop myself up against our bathroom wall to catch my breath. “I … I don’t know what got into me tonight. I just wanted to celebrate. Guess I went a little overboard.” I muster a smile, but Derek’s face might as well be up there on Mount Rushmore—that’s how stony his expression is.
“Now we know who ate all the caviar,” he mutters, like he hasn’t heard anything I’ve just said. He flushes away the final remnants of my evening and crouches down in front of me. “C’mon, my little drunk. Off to bed.”
In one graceful flourish, because he’s always balanced and even-keeled, Derek hoists me up. This is where we’re supposed to hug, and I say thank you. Thank him for coming to a client launch party. Thank him for being by my side after coming home for the first time in four months. But his moody silence during the limo ride to the event keeps looping in my mind. How he kept checking his phone when he thought I wasn’t looking. The kiss on my cheek in front of a client. There was no feeling behind any of it.
The real issue isn’t how many glasses of champagne I’ve had tonight.
The real issue is why I grabbed every flute that went by on a silver tray in the first place.
As I wobble on bare feet and scour the marble floor for my shoes, I feel the weight of Derek’s gaze. “They’re downstairs,” he says. “You could barely walk straight. Do you want me to unzip you?”
It’s our routine. Me, forever in and out of gowns and cocktail dresses. Derek, always zipping me up and down. Slipping back into familiar territory almost makes me forget he was away for so long. But the look in his steel-blue eyes—usually intense from thinking about schedules and conflicts he has to manage—is far away, and it has been all night.I want to chalk it up to the ‘recalibration period.’ After six years of living with a first assistant director, I’d finally gotten used to Derek being away for weeks and months at a time on film sets. It’s a pattern we’ve managed to work around, although it always takes a few days to get back into the rhythm of our marriage.
But tonight, the distance between us seems greater than when he was halfway around the world in South Africa. We’ve been fighting every day since he came home last Saturday. Stupid arguments over nothing. Me not putting sugar in his coffee. That I didn’t take his car in for an oil change like he’d asked me to. Switching up the brand of toilet paper.
A big no-no, apparently.
Not wanting to make a big deal out of anything else right now, I turn my back and Derek yanks my zipper lower. I wait for the usual boob grope or neck nuzzle. Nothing. Wriggling the beaded Lycra past my shoulders, I pause. Inhale the scent that’s been bothering me all evening.
Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.
“Is that a new cologne?”I ask.
“Yeah,” he says, not meeting my eyes. “I grabbed a random at duty-free.”
“Oh. Hugo Boss will be crushed. You’ve been so devoted.”
“I can have more than one.”
Now’s not the time to dissect his use of a new fragrance. And the longer I look at him, the more fidgety he becomes.
“What?” he asks, bristling again.
“Nothing.”
Or maybe it’s your long walks every morning without replying to any of my texts.
Usually I visit Derek’s film set once or twice, but his grueling schedule and my work commitments made it impossible this last time. The time zone difference didn’t help either. His texts came in when I was asleep. Our Facetimes were short, one of us inevitably having to end the call early. Derek insists it was just one of those jobs, and I’d consider believing him if it wasn’t for his hair.
He’s rocked the same buzzcut for years. The ongoing joke has always been that he likes to stoke my Adam Levine fantasy because with cropped hair Derek does look like him, minus the tattoos and brown eyes. Except he doesn’t look like Adam tonight. Or himself. Bleached strands shoot through his dark brown hair, courtesy of four months in sunbaked Cape Town. It’s longer too, curling past his ears onto his velvet tuxedo collar.
Derek doesn’t like hair touching his ears. Never has.
