Woodlawn Cemetery’s Brookside Garden had a beautiful rushing stream and meandering pastoral paths. It was tranquil and idyllic. When a two year old wasn’t running around and around in circles, shrieking and babbling with delight.
Though Olivia lived with us most of the time, we’d worked out a visitation arrangement with Valerie that gave her time with her granddaughter and us a little break, now and then. Because Valerie still worked and had a life of her own, and because Olivia was still very young, we’d decided that a week every two months was just about right. Sometimes, we flew to London for the hand-off. When Valerie was in New York, we met in the cemetery.
Neil and Valerie and I tried our best to incorporate Emma and Michael into as much of Olivia’s life as we could. We’d started bringing her to visit their grave, a large rock on the bank of the stream with a bronze medallion set into it, as soon as the weather had warmed up. Valerie often remarked that it was good to bring her, so that Emma and Michael could see their daughter playing. I wasn’t sure Neil was so keen on those remarks; he had a rather dim view of spirituality, especially these days. He tolerated them, though, because they helped Valerie get by. That was really all any of us could do so far. We’d only been waiting about ten minutes when Valerie arrived, but Olivia was already red-faced and sweaty, her wispy blonde curls stuck to her head. She spotted her grandmother at once and ran, chubby little hands extended in front of her.
Valerie stooped and spread her arms wide. “Come to Grandma,” she cooed, and lifted Olivia into her arms. “Oh, I’ve missed you.”
“Hello, Valerie,” Neil said, rising from the bench he’d been sitting on. He held out a hand to shake hers. When Emma was still alive, he would have hugged Valerie and air-kissed her beside her cheek. Now, he was stiff and formal about everything. I didn’t know why, and considering our past difficulties, I didn’t really want to discuss Valerie any more than strictly necessary. The result of his unusually cool demeanor, however, was that I overcompensated by being way warmer than I ever would have to her under different circumstances.
I gave her a big smile and approached her for a hug I didn’t want to give and she probably didn’t want to receive. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Valerie. In any other life, I would probably have admired her. She’d done the single mom thing like my mom had, albeit with the financial benefit of a huge company with her name right in the title. She and Neil had started Elwood & Stern together and kept it going while co-parenting their daughter. He’d once described the arrangement as “less of a custody battle with each other than a battle of wills with Emma”.
She had been an awful lot like her mother.
“Any big plans during your week off?” Valerie asked, looking between the two of us expectantly.
“Not stepping on any toys,” I joked. “We have an old friend coming for a visit. What are you and Olivia going to do?”
Valerie adjusted Olivia on her hip and swung her auburn hair out of her face. She’d ditched the radical blonde highlights she’d gotten the year before but kept the same asymmetrical bob. “We’ll probably do a bit of shopping. Maybe go to the zoo. Would you like that, Olivia? Would you like to go see the penguins?”
“And you’ve replaced that baby gate at the top of the landing?” Neil asked. I almost elbowed him to correct his sharp tone.
She took it in stride, probably through years of having to deal with him. “No. No, I just had them dig a large pit in the center of the staircase. Then, I filled the pit with vipers.”
“Well, if that doesn’t teach her not to crawl up the stairs, then she can’t be taught,” I said, giving Neil a sideways look.
He ignored me and addressed her. “If you need a good contractor for baby proofing—”
“She will be fine, Neil,” Valerie said with a roll of her eyes. “I swear, sometimes, it’s the nineties all over again.”
“Well, pegged jeans are coming back.” I felt like I was the child here, trying to please two battling parents.
“Well, we don’t want to rush away,” Neil said, casting a glance around the space. “But you’ll want time alone with her here, I’m sure.”
“Yes, I—” She turned toward the car. “I brought a picnic for Olivia and me. I would ask you to join us, but I doubt you’d be interested in splitting a juice box three ways.”
“We’ll just say goodbye, then.” My heart sped up a little in anticipation of missing Olivia. Neil assured me it would get easier as she got older, but I couldn’t see how. Two people I loved dearly had entrusted me with the care of their only child. I would never stop being nervous at handing her off. I leaned over and kissed her sweaty little head. “You be a good girl for Grandma. You’re going to have so much fun!”
Neil took Olivia’s hand and kissed it, adding, “Afi and Sophie will miss you terribly. We’ll have a surprise for you when you come home.”
I shot him a look. “We will?”
“I’m sure there’s something left in New York that he hasn’t bought her,” Valerie quipped.
“And if there isn’t, I can access many other fine countries.” His hand lingered on Olivia’s back, so I tugged at his sleeve.
“Come on,” I said quietly. If it was difficult for me to leave Olivia, it was about ten thousand times worse for Neil. But he’d done this before with Valerie. He should have had a little bit more trust.
Olivia resumed her shrieking circle run as Neil and I headed back to the car. She stopped and held out a hand, opening and closing it and calling “Go bye-bye!” so she was clearly not traumatized at the prospect of our leaving. Tony waited, the door of the Maybach held open.
“Thanks, Tony,” I said as I got in.
“Still visiting the foundation, Mr. Elwood?” It was so weird to hear Tony call him “Mr. Elwood” on the clock and “Neil” the rest of the time.
“Um…” Neil glanced to me then away, again, as if he were ashamed. “No. I think…best not, today.”
Though it wasn’t unexpected, my heart still ached. His greatest achievement, the Elwood Rape Crisis Resource Center, had been realized the night Emma and Michael had died. The guilt Neil carried over the fact that the accident had occurred on their way to the gala had prevented him from returning to the building at all. Now that he was more or less back on his feet mentally, he’d been sitting in on board meetings via video calls, but he still couldn’t bring himself to return to the place physically.
I wouldn’t talk about it with him today. It was something he would deal with in his own time, and our conversations on the subject had reached the same exhausted conclusion. Instead, I focused on our interaction with Valerie.
“So, are you just tired of the peace and you don’t want to keep it?” I asked when Tony closed our door. I grimaced at the awkwardness. But one hill to climb at a time.
“Why would you say that?” Neil asked as he buckled his seatbelt.
“Your crack about the baby safety contractor,” I reminded him.
His eyes widened. “What on earth do you mean, crack? I was simply suggesting—”
“That Valerie’s house isn’t safe or that she doesn’t do as good a job at keeping Olivia safe as we do.” I wasn’t going to let him get away with that innocent act. “If she’d said something like that to you—”
“I would have been rightly offended,” he insisted. “But she’s the one who let Olivia roll down the stairs because she neglected to gate them off.”
“She rolled down like four steps, and she was fine. Kids are resilient. Toddler bones are stronger than concrete.” I shook my head. “I love you, baby, but you can’t turn every custody-related thing into a passive-aggressive battle.”
“It isn’t a custody-related thing. We have sole custody. We let Valerie take her for visits.” He’d mentioned that a few times before, and it never sat well with me.
It didn’t sit much better, this time, either. “Is it good for Olivia to see you speak to her grandmother that way?”
Neil made an annoyed noise and looked out the window.
I would not be deterred. “She’s a baby, now, but she won’t be forever. She’s going to notice the friction. And honestly, I can’t believe we’re at a point in our lives where I’m the one defending Valerie.”
Before Emma and Michael’s deaths, Valerie and I could barely stand to be in a room together. Part of it had to do with the fact that I’d done some shady stuff when I’d worked for Porteras, which she ran, now, but most of it had been rooted in unresolved and unrequited feelings for Neil. We’d had a full-on shouting match once, in a public restroom. Not my finest moment. But since Olivia had become the focus of our world—and since Valerie had fallen in love with her current fiancé—there hadn’t been a lot of room for hate in my heart where she was concerned.
“You spent years wanting me to dislike Valerie,” Neil said, an accusation and a reminder at the same time. “Now, I’m not being as warm toward her as you’d prefer?”
“You’re too smart to not know that there’s a difference between our past situation and our current one. Yes, I didn’t like it when Valerie was, like, aggressively trying to sabotage us. But she’s not a hundred percent bad. She’s been there for me when I’ve really needed her. We’re never going to be best friends, but I’m not going to let you treat her like she’s unworthy of spending time with her own granddaughter.”
Now, he looked hurt. “Do you really think that’s how I feel about her?”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” I said with a shrug. “It matters how you treat her.”
He considered. “I suppose if you’re defending Valerie, perhaps there’s some truth there.”
“I would never steer you wrong.” I cast a glance to the intercom, to make sure it was off. I lowered my voice, anyway, even though the back of the Maybach was practically a sound-proof capsule. “Speaking of steering, we’ve got another problem to deal with.”
“Oh?”
“Tony. We can’t let him keep driving for us when he’s about to become a part of the family.”
“Why not?” Neil asked, his brow creasing.
“Because it’s weird. How am I supposed to treat him like an employee when he’s my step-dad?” Ugh, that sounded so bizarre. “Am I supposed to be like a teenager asking my parents for rides?”
“Am I supposed to fire an employee who’s been with me for years right before he gets married?” Neil countered. “I understand this puts us in a strange position, but I can’t justify letting him go. What will he do for work?”
“Be a chauffeur to someone else?” There were plenty of rich people in New York who needed people to drive them around, and plenty of companies who hired drivers to do that. “I’m betting there’s some weight behind a personal reference from Neil Elwood.”
“Then, he would have to move into the city. And your mother would go with him,” Neil pointed out.
Oh, right. There was that.
I ignored that part, for now. “Look, Tony already knows a little more than I would like a family member to know about our private lives. Can you blame me if I don’t want that to continue?”
“Tony is bound by a non-disclosure agreement,” Neil reminded me, not for the first time.
“Families shouldn’t have non-disclosure agreements!” I rubbed my temples. “This shit is bananas. B-a-n-a-n-a-s.”
“Oh, dear. We’ve reached frustration level Stefani. This must be quite serious.” With a long-suffering sigh, he relented. “I will carefully consider all of this. And I’ll try to…tactfully discuss the issue with Tony. But only after their vacation. I don’t want to spoil it for them.”
“I don’t think we could possibly spoil Vegas for my mother. And she is going to freak when she gets there.” Since the trip was a gift, I’d really gone overboard.
“I hope you didn’t go overboard,” Neil said, reading my mind, as usual. “It isn’t the money, of course. I just don’t want your mother to feel she has come to us and say, ‘Oh, that was too much,’ is all. She’s very uncomfortable taking our money.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, but does she take it?”
Neil chuckled.
“I got them a great trip. Huge suite, VIP status, Britney Spears tickets—”
“Which I’m sure Tony will appreciate.” Neil looked like he’d swallowed a thumbtack at the prospect.
“Well, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t find any mopey hipster bands playing the Strip.” I reached over to playfully smack his shoulder. “Seriously, the Marcus Aurelius Villa at Caesar’s Palace? They are going to die.”
“It just occurred to me that we’re always sending people off on lovely trips, and we hardly ever go anywhere ourselves,” Neil mused aloud.
My laugh stuttered in my chest. “Excuse me, but what? We go all over the place, all the time. We just went on a trip.”
“To Calumet, for your class reunion. And before that we were in Iceland.”
“No, that can’t be right.” I chewed my thumbnail. Neil and I had gone on all sorts of lavish vacations, hadn’t we? But as I ran through it in my brain, I realized that he was right. The last real vacation we’d gone on was our honeymoon, and before that, a New Year’s trip to Paris. All the other traveling we’d done had been for business or illness or family. My heart swelled with possibilities—we could take Olivia to Disney World!—before deflating entirely.
“I can’t take the time off work, right now,” I said with an apologetic wince.
“I wasn’t suggesting it as something we should do right away,” he said uneasily. Which told me that, yes, he absolutely wanted to run off and do something.
“Let’s make a plan, okay?” I suggested. “For a real family vacation somewhere. It doesn’t even have to be anyplace fancy.”
His eyebrows rose. “You mean, you and I and Olivia?”
I hesitated. “Um…yeah? She’s a part of the family.”
“Of course she is,” he said quickly, almost offended at the suggestion that he thought otherwise. “I was just assuming we’d go away somewhere, the two of us.”
As nice as that sounded, would we be bad people for not taking Olivia on vacation with us? Would we stick her with Mariposa or Valerie?
“I don’t know… Both sound fun,” I answered vaguely. “We’ll have to discuss it down the road.”
“Yes, we will. We have more important things to worry about this week.”
We did. And I was so counting the hours.
****
Having a long-distance lover wasn’t always as sexy and romantic as it sounded. Because of our vastly different lives, we rarely saw El-Mudad. He split time between his home country, Bahrain, and France, where his daughters lived with their mother. The girls obviously came first, like Olivia did with us, and it had been a while since our custody schedules had synched up. Now that he was about to arrive, time had obnoxiously slowed.
“Will you calm yourself, woman?” Neil teased as I bounced on the balls of my feet, trying to watch the sky from one of the kitchen windows.
Disappointed, I dropped my heels and made a face. “I wish he would just get here already.”
I’d dressed up cute and everything, in high-waisted denim capris and a sheer white blouse over a black Bordelle push-up bra. I’d accessorized with a big red bow around my ponytail.
Neil tugged it as he passed me. “You look like a gift.”
“Do you approve the wrapping?” I teased, then changed the subject before we became consumed with trite present-related innuendo. “What time did he say they were leaving the airport?”
“He texted an hour ago to say he’d just landed. But not that they’d left.”
I mentally calculated the time it took to reach our house via helicopter. “So, he should be here, like, any minute, now.”
“Exactly. So, perhaps calming yourself slightly might be a good plan?” he suggested with a smile as he got a bottled water out of the refrigerator.
“Do you think he missed us?” I asked nervously.
Neil laughed. “No. I think he’s only coming here grudgingly for an entire week.”
I rolled my eyes. “You really don’t do anything for my anxiety, you know that?”
The phone rang, and Neil picked it up. After a few short all rights and yeses, he hung up. “They’re inbound.”
I strained to hear the sound of rotors, but depending on the conditions, our house could be soundproof. “Let’s go out to the helipad. Please?”
He nodded toward the door. “Let’s go, then.”
The beautiful morning had blossomed into an explosion of sun and color. The crisp white light made the tops of the neatly clipped grass shimmer, and the sky was a shade of blue that seemed to exist only on truly happy days.
“Perhaps we should take a car,” Neil suggested. “He’ll have luggage.”
“Oh, but it’s such a nice day,” I protested, but even I wasn’t selfish enough to ask a guest to lug their suitcases across our lawn. “What do we have here?”
We crossed the large paved circle between the kitchen door and the eight-car garage, and Neil punched in the security code to open a door. Eight cars was just a sliver of his ridiculous collection. Most of it was housed in a huge hangar we’d had custom built on the property, but he did have some lovely practical options kept handy near the house.
“What about the Maserati?” he suggested, walking around the front of the nearest vehicle. “It’s a convertible.”
“Oh, yes, please!” I begged, hopping up and down a little.
Neil laughed. “We’re only going to the helipad.”
“But we’re going in a convertible.” No matter how much money we had or how many neat toys we bought, I would always be awed by some of them. Convertibles were a Midwestern sign of luxury and decadence, due to their impracticality as a year-round vehicle.
Neil found the key in the cabinet on the wall, where each hook corresponded to a numbered space in the garage. For some reason, he could keep everything neat and orderly, except paperwork and desk drawers. We got into the car, and I sighed as I settled into the comfy seat.
“Put your belt on.” We weren’t leaving the property, but Neil’s fear couldn’t be reasoned with.
As we pulled out of the garage, the air pulsed. I looked up, blinking in the blinding sunlight, and a shadow passed over my face. The helicopter glided above us, quickly outpacing us on the way to the helipad.
“He’s here! He’s here!” I squealed, clapping my hands. Neil laughed, and it struck me that, for the first time in a very long time, he appeared truly carefree.
I’d missed that.
“I’m not going to drive all the way down,” Neil explained, raising his voice to be heard over the chopping thunder. “I don’t need grass and leaves blowing into my lovely car.”
He stopped the car at the bottom of the hill that served as a noise-dampener between the house and the helipad, and we got out. The wind whipped around us as we crested the rise; the helicopter hovered just feet off the ground and slowly settled. It seemed only a second before El-Mudad pushed the door aside and climbed out, looking like a male model on the way to a photo shoot in some far-off place.
I looked to Neil and caught my bottom lip between my teeth, eyebrows raised in a silent plea.
He grinned. “Go on.”
I launched into a run across the grass. El-Mudad’s laugh reached me on the wind from the rotors, which whined to a stop as I bounded onto the edge of the pavement. He dropped his bag and opened his arms wide.
“You’re here!” I shouted, charging straight into his arms and knocking him back a step. I really wanted to jump up and wrap my legs around him, but we generally tried to be discreet. I settled for his crushing embrace.
“Oh, it is so good to see you, Sophie.” His lips brushed the skin of my bare shoulder, and he said, lower, “My love. I have missed you. Both of you.”
He released me, his gaze moving to Neil casually strolling toward us. I turned in his direction, and my breath caught.
“He is unfairly handsome,” El-Mudad observed with a laugh.
I pushed playfully at his chest. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
El-Mudad’s brown skin was a deeper bronze from his recent stay on the French Riviera, but he apparently hadn’t been slacking on his workouts while he was there. Beneath his gray T-shirt, his chest was rock hard. The weeks of southern sun had brought out deep topaz highlights in his silky black hair, which he wore carelessly combed to the side.
We walked to meet Neil on the grass, and they shook hands awkwardly. “Very good to see you.”
“You two, as well.” El-Mudad said, a teasing crookedness to his smile. He knew as much as I did how much Neil wanted to grab him and kiss him right there, helicopter pilot be damned.
Neil gestured to the small suitcase El-Mudad pulled behind him. “You didn’t bring much, for a week.”
“I didn’t think I’d be wearing much,” he replied. When Neil offered to carry it, El-Mudad declined.
Once we crested the hill and were out of view of the pilot, Neil stopped. Without a word, he took El-Mudad’s face into his hands and kissed him, long and slow. My heart skipped like a stone over water, watching them together. We hadn’t set out to find a long-term lover and beloved friend when we’d propositioned “Emir” in a French sex club. The whole point had been to pick up a stranger and do something anonymous and dirty, and we had; I’d lain across his lap while he’d fingered me and made me come in front of Neil. None of us had assumed that, years later, we’d be aching with longing when we were apart and overflowing with love for each other when we were all together.
“You did miss me,” El-Mudad said with a laugh as he pulled back. He put an arm out to me. “What about you, Sophie?”
I let him pull me in close to his side. I tilted my face up, and he dipped his head to bring our mouths together; when they touched, I couldn’t hold back my little moan of relief.
“Later,” he promised with a chuckle.
We walked the short distance to the car together, El-Mudad’s arm around my waist.
“Guests get shotgun,” I told him, opening the passenger side door.
“Is this the 2017?” he marveled, running his hand reverently over the glossy white paint.
“It is.” Neil beamed with pride at showing off his new toy. “It’s my latest.”
“What?” El-Mudad sounded scandalized. “Are you living a frugal life, now?”
“Yeah, he only buys one expensive car every six months. We’re really cutting back.” I rolled my eyes and hopped over the side of the car into the back, ignoring Neil’s yelped admonishment to watch my shoes on the seats.
“Would you like to drive?” Neil asked.
El-Mudad shook his head. “I trust you to deliver us safely. But we’ll have to take some of your collection out while I’m here.”
Neil’s face lit up like the Eiffel Tower at dusk. I supposed I hadn’t needed to worry about keeping El-Mudad entertained while I was at work this week.
Neil drove us to the front of the house, not back the way we came. I wondered why that was, until we stepped into the foyer, and he gestured to El-Mudad’s bag.
“We do have a guest room made up for you,” Neil began cautiously. “Unless you’d like to sleep with us?”
“If you’d be more comfortable, please, don’t feel obligated to—” I began, nervous about a possible rejection.
“No, no,” El-Mudad cut me off. “With you would be fine.”
There was nothing I liked better about our time with him than the lazy intimacy of lying together, all three of us, with our limbs in a tangle, not speaking, communicating with our bodies alone.
Well, there was almost nothing I liked better.
Neil showed him to the bedroom, though El-Mudad already knew where it was. I tagged along behind them.
“Lunch is going to be quite simple, I’m afraid,” Neil apologized.
El-Mudad laughed. “The first time I was here, I ate macaroni and cheese.”
“Reheated, at that.” I covered my eyes. “I’ll never live that down.”
“I won’t hold it against you, under the circumstances.” He dropped his bag beside the door but didn’t unpack it. “Shall we? If you don’t mind? I’m starving.”
“Well, when you have two percent body fat…” Neil teased him, but I knew that, while he more than appreciated El-Mudad’s incredible physique, he was also intimidated. It was weird, but I kind of liked that. It made me feel like I was even with Neil, somehow. I spent so much time worrying about my weight and measurements and did I look puffy today that I drove myself—and Neil—up a wall. It was a nice change to be the one doing the reassuring, instead of being reassured.
Neil went into the kitchen, but we’d already asked Julia to set up the dining room for three, so I took El-Mudad there. Red-ringed Noritaki china gleamed on the black lacquer table top, and white hydrangeas complemented the burgundy runner. Neil had picked those; he was notoriously finicky about flowers and plants. I’d brought home a potted geranium once on a whim, and he’d made me promise to keep it where he’d never have to see it. It lived at my mom’s house.
“This looks lovely, Sophie,” El-Mudad complimented me, as though he thought I’d done it.
I gave him a confounded smile. “You know I had no hand in this.”
“Ah, yes. Julia.” He danced his fingertips across the back of a chair. “I’d forgotten about her.”
“How could you forget?” My remark gave us both a laugh; when he’d visited us last time, Julia had been just a little too chilly toward him, to the point that Neil had been forced into one of those awkward employer/domestic employee conversations that were way too Downton Abbey to deal with. I shrugged and added, “She really is the best cook we’ve ever had, though.”
“There was a time when you did quite well with meals from boxes and cans,” he teased in defense of my honor. But his tone changed, and his gaze flicked nervously toward the kitchen door. “Is he…”
“He’s fine. Really,” I reassured El-Mudad. “Still in therapy, like, all the time, so if anything—”
“If anything what?”
Neil’s voice startled me, and I turned around guiltily. I should have left it to him to tell, rather than talk about his mental health in his absence.
El-Mudad stepped in smoothly. “I was prying. I asked Sophie about your health. I still worry about you.”
“Yes, well…” Neil cleared his throat and set a large platter on the table, his expression thoughtful. Finally, he went on, “It’s been much easier going now than the last time we saw each other.”
We’d last had a visit from our friend in February, but it had still been too close to the anniversary of Emma’s death. The timing had seemed right when we’d made the plans; what better way to distract us than a few days of good fun and great sex? And we’d had fun, but Neil had been distant. Not knowing his moods the way I did, El-Mudad had worried the entire time that his presence was a nuisance that would send Neil back to the hospital.
“I am glad to hear that.” His smile was small and deeply relieved. “I apologize. I should have asked you.”
“Not at all.” Neil waved it away. “I’m pleased to report that I see my therapist three times a week, my moments of dissociation come less frequently, and all of my shoes have laces, again.”
“Don’t,” I said gently as we took our seats. If anyone else had made the remark, I would have considered it in poor taste, but Neil’s grim sense of humor had been a precious tool in his recovery. Still, sometimes, it felt a bit too raw.
“Olivia has been a blessing in that respect, too. Now that we’ve all adjusted.” Neil reached for a pair of tongs on the platter. Julia had provided us with an assortment of fruit—grapes, orange slices, cute little triangles of watermelon—some lettuce wraps filled with a mixture of quinoa, sun-dried tomatoes, and walnuts, and a variety of cheeses and crackers. We all helped ourselves as we talked.
“And where is Olivia?” El-Mudad asked, glancing around the room as though he would catch a glimpse of her.
“Headed off to London with her grandmother.” Neil tried too hard to sound unconcerned. “So, you have us all to yourself.”
El-Mudad looked down at his plate to hide his fond smile. “I have a difficult time being away from my girls, as well. I’ve just spent two weeks with them. Every minute. And I still miss them terribly.”
Neil cleared his throat softly and changed the subject. “You mentioned that you were starving. I hope you don’t mind the lighter fare.”
“Not at all.” El-Mudad unfurled his napkin and smoothed it across his lap.
“I thought we could go out for dinner tonight. There are some great laid-back options.” I quickly added, “If you aren’t too tired.”
“Do you plan to tire me out, Chloe?” he teased, using the name he called me when the three of us had sex.
I laughed a little, but a thought struck me. “You know… maybe we could stop using that name.” I looked to Neil. “I know it was supposed to create distance or relegate our time together as a role, but I feel like we don’t have that distance, now. Or we shouldn’t. And if we do…”
“It isn’t what you want anymore?” El-Mudad finished for me.
I nodded and reached for my glass of sparkling water, unable to look Neil in the eye. I hadn’t discussed this change with him. With either of them. I worried how they would take it.
Neil reached across the corner of the table and took my hand. He gave it a squeeze. “Too right. As long as El-Mudad doesn’t object.”
I shouldn’t have worried. Of course, I shouldn’t have.
El-Mudad smiled slowly. “This opens the way for a conversation I suspected we would have this week.”
“I’ve suspected the same.” Neil cleared his throat and released my hand. “But shall we save that for the end of the week? Make this a test run, so to speak?”
“A test run for what? All of us together?” My heart did barrel rolls at the thought. “Like, you would be our boyfriend?”
“Yes,” El-Mudad replied with an easy shrug.
But he lived in France. And we lived here. We only saw each other a few times a year. How would it work? How would it be different from what we already had?
The idea of it was intoxicating. The reality was confusing.
“I can see you overthinking this,” Neil said gently. “Nothing will be decided without ample consideration.”
“Between the two of you, especially,” El-Mudad added. “I’ve been in this situation before, and…”
The statement hung between us uncomfortably. We all knew how his marriage had ended. I felt certain that Neil wouldn’t leave me for him, and I knew I wouldn’t leave Neil…but El-Mudad and his wife had probably thought the same thing.
“Sophie,” he said softly, “I love you both too much to rush into this. Let’s enjoy each other this week. We don’t have to make an irreversible decision.”
“Okay.” I smiled gratefully at him. “Now, you have to tell us about your trip.”
Even with the ridiculous advantages life had handed me, I found myself a little envious as El-Mudad described his weeks of chic high-end vacationing in the Riviera. It was the kind of life I loved to fantasize about, and one I could definitely afford, but at the same time, it was one I knew I couldn’t have. Too many things tied me to my life—Olivia, the magazine, my own innate shame at our wealth. I supposed I didn’t envy El-Mudad’s life as much as I envied his ability to enjoy it guilt-free.
“Perhaps we should go, sometime,” Neil mused. “Or Monaco. Sophie’s never been.”
Like almost everyone in the world, I added mentally. Like El-Mudad, Neil had been born into wealth. He couldn’t understand the working-class mindset in which endless toil made a person virtuous and success made them immoral. On an intellectual level, I understood that wasn’t true, but it was tough to shake that mindset. And while I had no trouble spending money or accepting lavish gifts from my husband, I didn’t like examining that comfort too closely. Up and running away to one of the most expensive cities in the world just because I’d never been there seemed wasteful.
On the other hand, Neil and I had sort of expected to have that life together. He was fifty-three, now. He couldn’t exactly wait for me to reach retirement age to travel the world. And if we waited for Olivia to grow up, he would be seventy before we really got to do anything.
My heart fell. Was this what people meant when they said life happened when you were busy making other plans? Was that why it was on so many coffee mugs? Because that sucked.
“We might go together,” El-Mudad suggested. “I have a beautiful house there, and somehow, I never quite make it for visits.”
“Like our wasted apartment in Venice,” I joked. I still had never been.
“I think we should sell it. Make some new memories somewhere else,” Neil said with forced cheerfulness. He’d bought the apartment for his ex-wife and, apparently, fought for it out of sheer spite. I couldn’t blame him for not weekending there.
“As long as I get to go to Venice at least once.” I wouldn’t bend on that stipulation. But my tone grew serious. “It’s all well and good to talk about running around all over the world, but it’s not practical. I’ve got the magazine, we’ve got Olivia—”
“But you don’t have them tonight,” El-Mudad said with an arched brow.
“It’s not like we can run away to France tonight,” I reminded him.
“We can’t run away to France until Neil learns to speak French properly,” El-Mudad said, looking mischievously at him.
I squinched up my nose in confusion. “What are you talking about? Neil speaks French fluently.”
“Neil thinks he speaks French fluently.” El-Mudad chuckled. “The reality—”
“Oh, all right, all right. Perhaps I…overestimated my skill.” Neil gave a dark laugh, his eyes practically glittering with lascivious intent. “But who says we can’t run away to France tonight?”