Page 4 of My Dead Wife's Ex Will Do
In a way that should have been wrong—that was wrong—but somehow didn’t feel wrong, then or now.
How do I tell her that he’d reached for me first? But that I crept out of his house an hour later without either of us saying a word, re-dressed in the suit I’d worn to Leah’s funeral, and that I’ve been paying for it ever since.
I can’t say anything about this, so I say nothing and stare at my now lukewarm latte. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Adrienne’s fingers tap the side of her insulated mug. “All right. I don’t need the details.”
She stretches a hand across the table toward me. “But I need to know that the two of you can be in the same place for a week without making our wedding about your unresolved…” she waves that hand in the air. “Whatever it is.”
“We can handle it,” I say. We’re grown men. And it was fifteen years ago. Far too long to be holding out for a man I’ve never had a prayer of being with.
“Good.” She starts gathering her things. “One more thing.” She pauses with her coat half on. “That spreadsheet I mentioned? I’m already worried that Kelsey is going to enjoy planning this wedding more than the actual wedding itself. Don’t make her spend any more time trying to figure out how to have both of you at this event without it being awkward. She deserves better from both of you.”
Jeez, Adrienne, don’t hold back. Tell me how you really feel.
I sigh and stand to kiss her cheek. “I know. We won’t.”
She slings her bag over her shoulder and heads for the door. She pauses with her hand on the doorknob and glances over her shoulder at me. “Jason’s very good at not looking at things, you know.”
And then she’s gone, heels clicking back down the stairs. I take a last sip of my golden milk latte and grimace at the lukewarm sludge that’s settled in the bottom of the cup. I need to finish recording that yoga session. I have a spin session to film this afternoon, a live stream tomorrow morning, and approximately forty-seven other things to do before I leave for Costa Rica in four days.
The hell did Adrienne mean by that? All I've seen, in the rare moments when Jason and I have been in the same room, is a careful, considered, practiced avoidance. Which I've matched, exactly, because the alternative is standing in the middle of a room with that man and trying to look like I'm not the one doing the looking. Like I’m not doing what I've been doing for fifteen years: cataloguing every detail of his face for the next long stretch of time before I see him again.
I've convinced myself, over and over, that the night of Leah's funeral was exactly what it looked like from Jason's side: a moment of desperation, an implosion of grief, the kind of thing that happens in extremis and means nothing on the other side of it. And now I’m facing a week in which I’ve promised Adrienne, not to mention myself—again—that I will keep my distance, respect Jason's choices, focus on Kelsey's happiness, and not do anything that would make this harder for anyone.
I've made this promise before. In the parking lot of Kelsey's college auditorium. Outside the venue at her twenty-fifth birthday. In my own head, quietly, every time I've watched one of Jason’s sextet’s concerts on their YouTube channel at midnight because I miss the sound of his voice. At two of the Saint Sebastian Six’s concerts in person, sitting in the back where Jason wouldn't see me. I told myself it was to hear the music.
Never mind that I would never listen to the kind of music the Saint Sebastian Six sings—sacred classical music, in Latin, no less—on my own.
One week in Costa Rica, spending every day near Jason, and then Kelsey and Adrienne are married and everything goes back to the way it's been for the last fifteen years.
I toss the paper coffee cup in the trash, go back to the studio, press record, and finish filming my classes as if my life is entirely in order.
Three
Jason
I’m exhausted from the flight delays and sweating like a pig from wrangling my rolling suitcase and the bulky garment bag containing my suit for the wedding across the winding, brick-lined paths on the grounds of the resort. I need coffee and a shower, or a raid on the minibar and a nap, and I haven’t decided which yet—or in what order to do any of those things—and my key isn’t unlocking the door to the tiny cabin—casita, in Spanish—that I’ve been assigned.
I let the strap of the garment bag slide from my shoulder and dump the damned thing on the ground, then let go of the suitcase’s telescoping handle. It rolls a foot or so away, but catches on a crack between bricks in the path and stills. I turn back to the door and, with both hands free now, manage to jiggle the key in the special magic way it apparently needs to unlock the fucking door.
Thank you, Jesus. I stick my foot in the door to keep it from swinging shut again, grab the garment bag in one hand, stretch to catch the handle of the suitcase in the other, and wrestle both and myself through the door into a narrow entryway.
As soon as I get through the door, I abandon my luggage against a stucco wall in the small entryway. I’ll unpack and hang the suit up later. A few steps in and the entryway opens to an expansive room, with sunlight streaming through filmy curtains that billow in the breeze from the open balcony doors. There’s a small sofa and a pair of upholstered armchairs grouped around a low coffee table. The set faces the balcony but there’s a large credenza on the wall perpendicular to the balcony doors, which I sincerely hope contains the minibar.
A small round table and a pair of wicker chairs take up the corner near the balcony and a writing desk sits on the other side of the room. Through a half-open door, I glimpse the end of a large bed with a tropical print coverlet. I’m standing in the middle of the suite, my brain sluggishly debating between making a beeline to the bedroom and face-planting into the mattress or finding that minibar and draining it dry first.
And that’s when a man wearing only a towel swathed around his hips appears in the bedroom doorway.
“Isn’t it bad luck to see the bride’s father before the wedding or something?”
I’m dreaming, right? Or I’m so tired that I’m hallucinating, because Victor is standing half-naked in my suite, like he owns the place.
His hair is standing up every which way in wet spikes and water droplets dot his shoulders. There’s another bead of water between his pecs and I can’t tear my eyes from the path it leaves while it slides down his chest, over his abs, and gets soaked up by the towel.
How is he in his late forties and still so ripped?
“The fuck are you doing here?” I address this question to the towel because I cannot lift my eyes from it—or the parts of him the towel is barely covering—and I’m also too embarrassed to look him in the eyes after ogling him like a piece of meat.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m here for our daughter’s wedding.” His tone is amused, like he can tell how flustered I am and is laughing silently at me.
