Page 17 of Throwing Shade
I closed the vintage white curtains with their cherry print, the soft spotlights bouncing off the cream walls imbuing the space with a snugness. I’d already made it through half a bottle of a robust Malbec, and was a bit fuzzy on which of us required the booze more tonight, me or my ex. As I dredged chicken breasts for the chicken piccata to get Eli in a receptive mood, I sorted through various approaches to ease him into this strange new world. Forty-five minutes later, it was all systems go on the dinner front, not so much on my brainstorming.
The sauce was thickening, the final handful of parmesan had gone into the zucchini risotto, and I was shaking my hips to “Disco Inferno,” because disco made everything better, when Detective Eli Chu of the Vancouver Police Department let himself into my side of the duplex. We’d bought it when we’d decided that co-parenting Sadie was our priority while we worked through the wreckage of our marriage.
“It smells amazing in here.” Eli gyrated into the kitchen and placed a bottle of Riesling in the fridge to chill. He must have stopped at home first because he was no longer wearing his badge, gun, tie, or suit jacket.
“I aim to please.”
Twerking across the room, he pretended to spank me to the beat. His biceps shifted under his button-down shirt, his thigh muscles rippling in his suit trousers. He’d bulked up since our marriage, not really my type anymore. That shy boy who’d fallen in love with me had been relegated to a bittersweet memory, made easier to bear because it no longer fit this version of him.
No use pining for things I could no longer have, though I missed having a romantic partner, someone to curl up with at the end of the day, or those heated looks and quick brushes across my lower back that were a promise of more to come. It felt like forever since I’d had that anticipatory flutter because someone desired me.
I shook off my musings and poured the sauce over the chicken on the platter, the two of us still grooving to the music.
Sadie arrived a few minutes later. She’d changed into a cute cat top complete with ears on a hood and skinny jeans, looking young and fresh-faced, until she rolled her eyes. “Why can’t you two hate each other like normal divorced people?”
Eli grabbed her hand and spun her in a double turn. “Because we live to traumatize you in new and interesting ways. Now wash up and set the table, spawn.”
“Be nice or I’ll get Ah Ma to beat you.” Sadie nudged me away from the sink and squirted dish soap into her hands.
Eli said something to her in Cantonese and she laughed. His parents had immigrated to Canada almost fifty years ago from Hong Kong, and like a lot of first generation kids, Eli hadn’t learned English until he went to kindergarten. Sadie couldn’t speak it, but since her grandmother talked to her and her cousins in a mix of Cantonese and English, she understood enough.
I was a firm proponent of Sadie knowing another language, especially one connected to her heritage, but sometimes, like today when my nerves were raw, I felt like the outsider on the playground watching the cool kids make their inside jokes. They’d explain it to me if I asked, but with all my other preoccupations right now, I didn’t have the energy to request that they fill me in.
Eli dropped an arm over my shoulder. “How was your day?”
“Fine.” With a meaningful glance at our daughter, I shook my head and mouthed, “later.”
Eli held out his arms. “Come here.” He wrapped me up in a huge hug and I tried not to flinch because of my sore neck and shoulder, my cheek resting against his staggeringly well-defined pecs. It had taken a lot of therapy and time, but while I’d lost Eli as a husband, I’d kept him as a friend. Our relationship was unconventional, but it worked.
Would it be the same after tonight? I broke out of his embrace. “Wine?”
Dinner was a light-hearted affair. Sadie shared her grandmother and friends’ recent trip to Vegas—or as my kid called it, “the mahjong cabal’s visit to Sin City”—and Eli told us about a recent homicide case that he and his partner had solved.
I smiled in all the right places and kept our glasses filled, because the alcohol took the edge off my pain as I mulled over how best to broach my topic. We polished off the berries with whipped cream, which tasted as good as they looked, but I still hadn’t found the best opening line.
Once we were stuffed to our eyeballs, Eli offered to scrub the pots.
Sadie dumped the food scraps into the countertop composter, then stacked the dirty dishes in the dishwasher. “Did you tell Jude to play her Scrabble hand?”
Blessed as I was to have an astute daughter, it also reinforced the fact that I wasn’t the only one to notice Jude’s radio silence.
“Sorry, I forgot,” I lied-without-really-lying. I’d find Jude before Sadie had to be told anything.
“To make up for it, you should let me sleep at Nessa’s,” Sadie said.
I dried off the saucepot that Eli handed me. “You have a chem test to study for.”
“She’s in my class and we can study together. Please?”
It might be better to have Sadie out of the way, depending on how badly Eli lost his shit after our talk. I fit the pan into the cupboard with great precision because one wrong move and the pots and lids would tumble out like a Jenga game. “Fine.”
“I’m going to grab my stuff and tell Ness to pick me up.” She shoved a pod in the dishwasher, hit start, and raced upstairs.
Once the kitchen was clean, I shook the last drops of Malbec into my glass, swirling them around like I had a fortune telling technique that would reveal the best way to go about this.
“You have on your serious face.” Eli rinsed out the sink. “What’s up?”
“Remember how you blew up our marriage because you like men and taking it up the ass?”
