Page 5 of Back for Seconds

“You ok, sweetheart?”

Suddenly, the hall light blinked to life and everything was illuminated by the dabbled too-hot, too-yellow light of a chandelier.

I turned toward the voice. Magdalena Torrez.

“Miss Torrez.” I forced myself to smile, eyes still adjusting to the sudden burst of light. “So good to see you!”

She gave me a curt smile, yanking at the lapels of her candy-apple red blazer. “You didn’t say hi to me earlier.”

“Oh, I was just—you know, head in the clouds.”

“How are you feeling, honey?” Oh no. Not this. “Holding up ok?”

“Holding up, holding on,” I chirped. “Feeling fabulous.” Why the fuck was I suddenly talking like Tim Gunn? I’d never said the word fabulous before in my life.

Magdalena tilted her head in the extremely familiar way older women had begun tilting their heads at me. It was just the right angle that said, you poor thing. “That’s great. You look wonderful.”

“Ah, thanks—any chance you know where the restroom is?”

Magdalena pointed at the door directly behind me. “June, before you go—I just have to tell you.” She laid a French-manicured hand on my forearm, a series of charm bracelets sliding out from her sleeve. “I heard something about Brian just now, from Colleen Gallagher.”

I fucking hated hearing his name. It was just the most benign two-syllable word on earth, and yet every time, it was immediate rug burn on my heart. “Oh?” I tried to keep my voice even, my expression neutral.

“He and that woman—the one from Pittsburgh—” That detail was a real sticking point for everyone in Evergreen who knew what had happened between Brian and me. My ex wasn’t from Evergreen, but he was from the area. He was supposed to know better—to know that nothing was greater than his allegiance to the state of New Jersey. Loving a woman from Pittsburgh was as good as getting I hate pizza and the beach tattooed across his chest.

I knew Magdalena was referring to the woman Brian had left me for by her hometown on purpose, to show that this was friendly fire.

“What about her?” I forced the question out, even though I could already feel my lips trembling, could feel hot, prickling sweat gathering in my armpits. I hated that I still reacted this way, all these months later.

The woman chewed at her lip for a moment, pulling away a patch of cheap lipstick. I wanted to reach out, shake her, and scream: WHAT ABOUT HER?

“Well…they’re having a baby, June. And I think they’ll be in town for the holidays. All three of them.”

Chapter 2 June

I broke loose from the house, a gasp ripping from my chest, like I’d just resurfaced from the ocean. Stumbling down the steps, I yanked on my teddy bear coat and tossed my purse over my shoulder.

Magdalena’s words had fired into me like lead bullets at a point-blank range.

A baby.

A baby?

Those took forever to cook.

We’d only been separated and divorced for a year. Every moment I’d spent carefully sorting through and crying over everything we shared, he’d already been gone.

He’d wasted no time.

Of course he hadn’t. He was a cheater.

What the fuck had I been doing? Other than working eighty hours a week and rattling around my empty house, my mind equally as hollow. A fucking shell of myself. And for what? For why?

I took the cement steps that led from Joanne’s back porch down to her yard at a dangerous speed, black ice be damned, breaths ripping from my chest in ragged gulps. Suddenly, I was extremely grateful for the cold snap that had plummeted the shore into freezing temperatures—for how good the frigid wind coming off the bay felt on my boiling hot cheeks. For the way the ocean saturated the air, weighed it down, and pushed at me from all angles, like the fierce embrace of a friend. I paused to pull my long waves up into a messy bun, desperate to feel the blade-like wind on as much of my body as possible.

Once down the steps, I fumbled my way around the house, tripping over my own feet, cursing under my breath. I seemed to be winding my way through a never-ending maze of inflatable lawn decorations, carving a path through the most hellish Christmas-scape in hopes of eventually reaching the sidewalk. Every time I managed to punch my way past a snow globe or a big undulating Santa, there was another blank-eyed, slack-jawed elf chirping something deranged like, “HAVE YOU BEEN NAUGHTY?” They were multiplying, asexually replicating at an unfathomable speed.

Or maybe I was actually going insane.