Page 38 of Starlight & Dark Nights

"What can I get you?" Bill asks Jeanie as they choose seats at the long table that's populated with their closest coworkers.

For Bill, that's Vance Majors, Ed Maxwell, and Jay Donovan, and for Jeanie, that's Rebecca, a fellow engineer who is newly married to a pilot, a man named Eric, who is also there with them. Rebecca has been more than clear that she's happy to be married and ready to settle in to motherhood, and that she'll stop working the minute she gets pregnant.

"Could I get a Paloma, please?" Jeanie looks up at him as she slides into a chair next to Rebecca's.

Bill returns from the bar with a whiskey for himself and the Paloma for Jeanie, and they end up sitting directly across the table from one another as Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman" comes on the jukebox. Bill can't help but make fleeting eye contact with Jeanie every time she lifts her drink and takes a sip, and as she does, he notices the flush to her cheeks, the way her hair rests against her bare shoulders, and the glint of the gold medallion that rests in the hollow of her collarbone. He feels a thrill every time their eyes meet, and a glimmer of hope and emotion burns in his chest as he remembers what it felt like to stand on those stairs with her the night of the accident. What it felt like to hold her, to kiss her, to feel the warmth of her skin.

"I take it you're a married man, Booker," Eric, Rebecca's husband, says, nodding at the ring on his finger and effectively dumping a bucket of cold water over Bill's head. Eric and Rebecca are sitting so close together that he has his arm looped around her shoulders easily. It's a loving, protective move, and one designed to let the world know that he's sitting next to his chosen person. Bill can't even remember the last time he and Jo touched each other in public, much less sat so close that she could rest her head on his shoulder. "Any advice for a guy who just took the plunge?"

Bill takes a sip of his whiskey, holds it, and then swallows before answering. He sets his glass on the table and gives Eric a long, hard look. "Make sure you remember who wears the pants in the family," he says. With a quick tip of his glass, he knocks back the rest of his drink and stands up. His head is buzzing from the fast intake of alcohol.

Eric looks at first as though he assumes that he's the one who wears the pants in the family, but as Bill glances pointedly at his watch and then picks up his wallet from the table, realization dawns over the newlywed man.

"The boss expecting you home for dinner?" Eric asks knowingly.

Bill winks at him. "Look at you, learning already. You two are going to be just fine." He gives Jeanie a small, impersonal salute, and then waves at the rest of his coworkers before beating a hasty retreat. He needs to get the hell out of there--fast.

Bill and Jeanie Florence are cut out for a lot of things, but as he'd watched the golden evening sunlight draping itself across her soft skin, he'd realized that being “just friends” is not one of those things.

He drives home with the top of his Corvette down like he's trying to race against the clock.

CHAPTER17

Jude

She's humming.Legitimately humming. Jude has woken up for the past few days with a feeling of dancing butterflies in her stomach that have nothing to do with anticipating or desiring a drink, and for the first time in years, she feels...excitement. Curiosity about where life might take her instead of dread. She feels hopeful and alive and fully present.

"Mom?" Hope is standing on the grass, looking up at Jude as she hangs a damp bedsheet on the line with clothespins. "Are we going to Kate's house today?"

Jude nods at her daughter instead of answering, as she has two clothespins clamped between her lips. Once she removes them and clips them to the line, she speaks. "We are. Mr. and Mrs. Booker have invited us for dinner, and we're going to take potato salad and a cake with us."

"And your wine?" Hope asks innocently.

The words send a chill through Jude's limbs. She'd taken to telling the girls that her drink--wherever she'd set it down--was called her "wine," and lately she hasn't been drinking in front of them at all, which makes it even more curious that Hope has mentioned it now.

"No, sweetheart," Jude says, sinking down onto the grass as her daughter sits down next to her. Behind them, the sheet hangs heavily, barely moving in the slight breeze. Hopefully by the time they get home from dinner, it will be dried and ready to iron. "Mommy's not taking any wine over there."

"But you like it, right?" Hope squints one eye tightly as she picks at the blades of grass beneath her legs.

Jude isn't even sure how to address this. She knows she must, but she hasn't expected her eight-year-old daughter to grill her over her consumption of alcohol on a Friday afternoon.

"Well," Jude begins. "I have enjoyed it in the past, and I think that sometimes we enjoy things so much that we let them become too important in our lives. So when that happens, it's a good idea to step back from that thing and decide whether it's something we really need, or if we just enjoy it out of habit."

Hope is busy piling the grass on her bare knees and she doesn't meet Jude's eye. "If you enjoy being a mom too much, will you stop doing that?"

Jude nearly laughs at the preposterousness of this question, but the sadness in it stops her cold. "Honey," she says. "No. Absolutely not." Jude reaches for her little girl's hand and takes it in her own. The piles of grass stay on Hope's knees. "I love being your mother more than anything in the world." She looks up at the few clouds that dot the blue sky and thinks of a better way to explain. "It's more like, when you do something that changes who you are, it's not always a good thing. But you start to count on that thing to make you feel like yourself. I think you come to believe that you areonlyyourself when you're doing that thing. And I know you don't understand how wine works, but it makes you feel stronger, and like the world is less scary."

Hope is watching her mother intently. She looks like she's trying to follow.

"I don't want that anymore, baby," Jude says, squeezing Hope's hand in hers. "I don't want to think that I can only handle the world with a glass of wine in my hand." Jude hates herself now for ever calling it wine; for the rest of her girls' lives, they'll associate wine, which can be very acceptable in small doses, with their mother roaming around the house drunk and being unavailable to them.

"You don't want to fall in the pool again?" Hope's eyes are big and she looks frightened at the possibility of such a thing happening.

A sob catches in Jude's throat and she puts her hand to her lips, covering her mouth. She shakes her head, but can't speak.

"Mommy?" Hope says, still holding Jude's hand. "It's okay. Mr. Smithers saw you and he pulled you out so you didn't die. You're okay."

Jude's head is still shaking back and forth; she cannot believe she put her girls through such a thing. She can’t even imagine how that must make them feel, and there is no part of her that ever wants to repeat that.

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