Page 73 of Love in Training
“Oh.” To her credit, Lydia just presses her mouth into a line and nods. “Well, I see you’re carrying your Theo arsenal,” she says, gesturing to my belt bag. “And you’ve got Rufus. And the camera on your door.”
I’m not sure if she’s taking inventory of my armaments to reassure me or herself. I still feel like a soldier going to war with a bag over my head.
“I’ll feel better once I know who it is,” I say. “I just need to hurry up and figure that out.”
Lydia opens her mouth to reply, but is interrupted by a shriek coming from the little playground. I follow her gaze over my shoulder and spot a tiny, pigtailed linebacker screaming toward us across the grass.
“Paloma,wait—” A thirty-something Hispanic woman chases after the little girl, coming to an abrupt stop when she throws herself into Lydia’s lap.
“Dia!” the little girl cries in a helium voice. “You have donuts?”
Lydia laughs, giving her a hug and waving at the mother—her friend, Marisol. “It’s so good to see you! I’m afraid I left my donuts at home today.”
Paloma juts out her lower lip like Lydia stepped on her puppy. But then she spots Rufus and nearly lunges off Lydia’s lap. “Doggie!” she cries, hands outstretched.
I tighten my grip on the leash and look at Lydia, who is holding back the squirming toddler. “I don’t actually know how he is with kids.”
Marisol seems to notice me for the first time, and the way her face falls tells me exactly how thrilled she is. We haven’t seen each other since Lydia’s baby shower nearly a month ago, where we mostly pretended not to know one another.
“Careful, bebé,” she says, scooping her daughter out of Lydia’s lap. “We don’t know this doggie.”
I tell Rufus to sit, and he immediately complies with a light tail wag.
“Doggieeeee!” Paloma whines, still reaching for him.
Lydia and Marisol have some sort of nonverbal exchange while I sit there, unsure what to do, but then Marisol steps forward, letting Rufus sniff her outstretched hand and eventually petting his head. When the dog remains calm and engaged, Marisol instructs her daughter to hold her hand out too.
I watch Rufus carefully, not really sure what to look for. I think about the guy with the frisbee the other day and hold tight to the leash. But he just wags his tail a little harder, and when the little girl gets close enough, he starts intently licking her hands.
“Silly doggie!” Paloma gives a delighted squeal, and all of our shoulders relax.
“Doesn’t hurt that her fingers are sticky with popsicle juice,” Marisol says, offering me a thin smile. “Are you dog sitting or something?”
“No, he’s mine . . . long story.”
A dog starts barking from across the grass and Paloma immediately zeros in on Lydia’s Akita mix, Heartthrob, who’s been sitting with the boys watching us circle the park.
“Harbob!” she cries, grabbing Lydia by the hand. “I can pet him!”
Lydia looks at Marisol and shrugs, letting Paloma lead her away across the grass.
Marisol moves to follow them, but I clear my throat and speak. “Hey, I’m glad to run into you. I actually emailed you a couple days ago.”
“Did you?” she asks in a way that tells me she knows I did.
We have zero in common aside from Lydia—and the fact that Marisol was one of my most informative contacts when I wrote the original married cheaters feature about Unmatched.
“Yeah. I’m not trying to beat a dead horse, but I was hoping to ask you some new questions about Unmatched. I wrote a follow-up?—”
“Oh, I know.” Her tone is chilly, her eyes focused on Lydia, Paloma, and Heartthrob.
I frown. We’ve never had a warm relationship, but this is frosty even by our standards. “Marisol, what?—”
“You need to be careful,” she says, low and matter-of-fact. “I don’t know how many guys were involved with the app. I didn’t even know Vanderpool was one of them until I read your feature.” Her lip curls, but I’m surprised to catch a flash of respect in her eyes. “But I will tell you, if my ex was involved, you don’t want to look at this any closer.”
I frown. Before I wrote the piece that put Unmatched in the public eye, Marisol had been unhappily married to a tech executive named Erik Schneider, who was an obvious ass but seemed about as threatening as a mosquito.
I shift, trying to look her directly in the eye. “Has something changed? Are you okay?”
