Page 61 of Stay Away from Him

Kendall’s expression was more pleasant, if a little hard to place. Her smile was dull, but her eyes were sharp and intense on Melissa, and whenever Melissa caught her gaze, she wondered what was behind those eyes—whether the smile was genuine or a mask. Next to Kendall, Bradley simply studied Melissa and Thomas, not smiling but not frowning either. Just thinking. It looked to Melissa like he was putting something together for the first time, and as Melissa met her son’s eyes, she felt a pang of guilt at not talking to him before they came over, not explaining to him what this evening was. Not knowing what to say was not an excuse for not saying anything, and she resolved to sit him down as soon as they got home, explain exactly how she felt about Thomas, and what it might mean for them.

The other adults at the table seemed to be picking up on the strained atmosphere. Lawrence and Toby, normally gregarious, didn’t seem to have any idea what to say. Even Amelia, normally so put together and sophisticated, seemed completely out of her element when Melissa glanced over at her, wearing the look of poorly concealed social panic people sometimes got when conversation in a group trickled down to silence.

It all felt like a terrible gathering where no one was allowed to talk about the thing that was really going on, but Melissa couldn’t think of anything else to talk about either. Five minutes in, they’d burned through small talk about how good the food smelled, how great a cook Thomas was, how he seasoned the fish, and what was that herb on the potatoes? And then there was nothing more to say. Lawrence and Toby tried their best, mentioning a few goings-on around town—a construction project that would have to start moving quickly if it was going to be done before the snow flew, the upcoming city council and school board elections that had everyone putting signs on their lawns, and yet another pet disappearance in the neighborhood—the mythic coyote striking again. Melissa made a few paltry attempts to ask Thomas’s girls how school was going, but Kendall only shrugged and said “Okay,” and Rhiannon straight-up glared at Melissa with a look so withering she thought she could practically hear the girl snarl.

It was all so terrible that Melissa found herself grabbing for her wineglass over and over again, drinking too much before she’d eaten enough to soak up the alcohol. It went straight to her head, and before she knew it, she was feeling hot and flushed, a little buzzed, and with the beginnings of a headache. At one point she simply closed her eyes and focused on the feel of Thomas’s hand, still resting on her leg as he forked his food one-handed. An anchor, a reassurance. His fingertips playing at the soft skin just inches up from her knee, sending tingles up her thigh.

She opened her eyes and looked at him.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

And his face was so beautiful, so kind. The gray flecks in his blue irises, the soft wrinkles spidering from the corners of his eyes. His perfect smile, the way it cracked his face open into something that shone. Melissa recalled that while it might have been a whilesince they last saw each other, the last time they spoke this man had said he loved her, and she said she loved him back.

“I’m fine,” she said, and meant it. “Perfect.”

He wiped his mouth, then set his napkin down and stood, addressed the whole table.

“How about a walk?”

***

They went out, leaving the leftover food on the table, the sink full of dishes. The evening was perfect, crisp and cooling, the sunlight cracking into shards over bare branches and falling leaves as it sank toward the horizon. They went out the back door of the house, over the deck and down the wood steps to the yard. The woods lay to the right, still and crackling in the quiet of the evening; a half mile’s walk through the tangle of trees and browning underbrush would have brought them to Lawrence’s back door and the entrance to Melissa’s apartment. But they cut left instead, toward the lake. The sight of it reminded Melissa of the night she met Thomas, his flirty suggestion that they escape the dinner party and go skinny-dipping.

“We never took our dip,” Melissa said as they came to the water’s edge and an asphalt path that circled the lake—another route to Lawrence and Toby’s house, to her basement apartment, albeit by a longer, more circuitous route than the woods. She laced her fingers together with Thomas’s, and with her other hand reached across her body to squeeze his forearm through his wool coat, slid her hand up to his bicep.

Thomas grinned. “I’m still game,” he said. “It’s colder than it was then.”

Melissa laughed. She’d put a coat on, and her arms and shoulders were warm—but beneath the hem of her linen dress, she feltthe cooling air prick at her calves. She glanced back at everyone following them: Kendall and Bradley walking side by side, Rhiannon behind them, looking sullen, and Amelia, Lawrence, and Toby bringing up the rear.

“Too many eyes right now.”

“We’ve got all the time in the world,” Thomas said.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah,” Thomas said. “I intend for this to last. Don’t you?”

“I do,” Melissa said. “I’m not sure our kids agree, though. I mean, have you tried to explain anything to them? What have they said?”

“They’ll come around.”

That wasn’t really an answer to Melissa’s question—but maybe it answered the more important question of what Thomas wanted. If he still wantedMelissa, in spite of this strange week and this awkward dinner.

“All right then,” Melissa said. “Skinny-dipping. Next summer when it gets warm again.”

“And every summer after that,” Thomas suggested. “We’ll make it a tradition. On the solstice.”

A laugh bubbled out of her, blending with the sunlight and the smell of dried leaves in the air. “Sure. We’ll dance naked in the moonlight and make sacrifices to the gods of summer.”

Thomas loosed his hand and looped it behind Melissa’s back, grabbed her by the hip and pulled her close as they walked. “My sexy pagan mistress.”

“Mistress?” Melissa asked. “Is that what we’re doing?”

“Oh,” Thomas said, with a smile in his voice. “I think you could be a little more than that. If you wanted to.”

There were others on the path with them, people they didn’t know, out to enjoy the sunshine and lingering warmth before the weather tipped inexorably toward winter. They came toward a parkthat hugged the shoreline, a couple shelter houses, a parking lot. Some distance from the water, by the road, there was a car with a figure inside it at the wheel that pulled at some recognition in Melissa. Her heart rate spiked. But before she could do anything with the feeling, figure out where she’d seen the car and the figure before, she felt Thomas turning her toward the water.

They’d come to a small wooden dock that jutted out into the lake and then spread out in a T, for fishing or just looking at the scenery.

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