Chapter 27

Caverna is a new bar on Fifth near the theater, aptly dark and cozy, its walls lined with expensive bottles I’ve never heard of. I weave my way between closely packed tall tables and bar-height chairs to find Sienna and her friends with drinks in their hands. My Lyft got stuck in rush-hour traffic. I’d Lyfted to work so I could ride back to Revere Lake with Sienna and her friends after the show—not economical, but I didn’t want to miss the post-show girl talk.

“Ladies,” Sienna announces as I approach the table. “This is my friend Maddie. My nephew Gabe’s mom.”

I give her a hug. “Thanks so much for inviting me.”

She hugs back, bony and fierce. “My pleasure. Maddie, this is Cora.” She indicates a petite woman wearing a glittery tank and black leggings with a profusion of tight golden curls and a round face. She beams and waves. “Hey, Maddie.”

“And this is Lani.” Sienna opens her hand toward a tall woman with shiny black hair and a swervy figure—the kind that turns heads in bars even when it’s not clothed, as now, in skinny jeans, a cream-colored halter top with a deep cleavage dive, and stilettos.

She’s familiar. “Did you go to Revere Lake High?” I ask her.

Lani’s gorgeous, smokily outlined green eyes research me carefully. It’s unnerving. “I was a couple of years ahead of you. But yeah.”

“I’m sorry, did we—I can’t remember if we’ve actually met or if you’re just familiar from the pass-in-the-hallway routine.” Although I’m pretty good with names and faces; I think I’d know if we had met.

She shakes her head. Her gaze doesn’t get any warmer. I feel like I’ve done something to piss her off without meaning to, but of course that’s ridiculous. I’ve just met her. “I’m a friend of Jack’s,” she says.

She says it in a way that’s carefully neutral, but something—call it female intuition—tells me that there’s more to the story than “a friend of Jack’s.”

Then she seems to soften, and she sticks her hand out to shake mine. “Nice to meet you. And I love those leggings.” She inclines her head down at my red satin.

“Cool boots, too,” Cora adds, pointing at the boots Jack spec’d last night.

I blush. I will probably blush whenever anyone mentions these boots, possibly till I’m old, or dead.

The waitress comes by and asks what I want.

“You want one of these,” Sienna says, pointing to her drink. “Bee’s Knees.”

The waitress confirms this. “It’s the best drink. Sweet, but not too sweet.”

“Sounds good. Thanks.”

When she’s gone, I incline my head toward Sienna and ask Lani, “So if you were two years ahead of me in school, and Sienna’s three behind, how do you guys know each other?”

“Cora and I work for Lani,” says Sienna, grinning.

“I own Cuppa, the coffee shop in town.”

“Wow, cool,” I say. “I haven’t been in there yet, but I’ve heard it’s got the best coffee in Revere Lake. How’d you get that gig?”

She tells me about buying it from the previous owner, who had driven it almost into the ground, and bringing it back from near-dead. Cora and Sienna were among her first employees, and she credits them with helping her figure out a vibe and a schedule that would work for tourists and locals. Lani smiles as she tells the story, her narrative picking up steam and energy until she’s glowing with pleasure in her work. What came across as coldness or even anger earlier, I realize now, is just a little bit of shyness.

“Do you live in Revere Lake?” Cora asks me.

“Not permanently. Gabe and I are staying with Jack until I can find another place in the city.”

“Oh, yeah,” Lani says. “Jack told me that, right after you moved in. I ran into him hanging at O’Hannihans with Henry and Clark.”

She’s talking about the night he stayed out crazy late, then told me he was hanging with the guys and playing darts. Not “the guys and a really hot black-haired woman named Lani.” Not that he’s required to report anything to me.

That weird, hot feeling in the pit of my stomach—

Pretty sure that’s jealousy.

But fuck me, there’s no call for it. On the evening in question, Jack and I weren’t even sleeping together. We’d had those two lapses of reason, the one on his couch and the one in his mom’s kitchen, of course, but there was no interpretation under which we were together, even in the most rudimentary way.

And even if she told me that he’d told her that last night while they were in bed together, I wouldn’t be within my rights to be jealous. Because I had no claim on Jack. We’d never said what we were doing was anything other than scratching an itch—an incredibly intense itch, to be fair, but an itch. We’d never even asked each other for exclusivity.

Most important, I’ve known all along who Jack is. I’ve known there are probably twenty women like Lani in his life. And the whole reason I said I wanted a firm end date on sex with Jack was because of this exact scenario. These moments would never stop coming. There would be one Lani after another—women who could mean nothing to Jack, or something, or everything. I’d have no way of knowing. One time after another I’d feel this domino series of emotions—jealousy, shame, anger at myself for feeling any of this over a guy I made a promise to myself almost five years ago not to love.

Death by a thousand cuts.

And whether he’d actually slept with Lani—or whoever—wouldn’t even really matter. It was the fact that I believed he could have that would sink me.

Because he’d cheated on me once before, and once a cheater…

I could never live like this. With all the Lanis in the world just one casually uttered sentence away from breaking me.

No, I’d been right to keep him at bay, and when that became impossible, to at least put an expiration stamp on him. That way I might walk away from this with my pride and a couple of friendships intact.

“Maddie?”

Sienna’s touching my sleeve.

“Sorry,” I say. “I was…remembering something I forgot to tell Gabe’s sitter.”

Lani tilts her head to one side. Boy, those green eyes can drill into a face. I think she might see right through me.

“So, how’s the search for a new place going?” Cora asks.

I tell them the whole story of my apartment travails, ending with the fact that the landlord from the Ballard place I’d wanted hadn’t returned any of my five calls. I also told them I’d seen a few more places yesterday.

I don’t say that I’d seen a place that wasn’t too terrible but hadn’t quite been able to make myself put in an application for. Because every time I tried to fill it out, I thought about how if it were accepted, it would mean never having sex with Jack again. Never feeling his mouth on mine, on my body, never putting mine on his, never feeling him inside me. That it would mean no more teasing, no joking, no talking dirty, no significant looks over Gabe’s head. I wasn’t quite ready, yesterday, to sign on the dotted line and give it all up.

“What’s the story with your old apartment?” Sienna asks. “Jack hinted there was some drama.”

I freeze.

“Bad story?” Lani asks, her eyes wise. I get the feeling she’s got some bad stories of her own.

“Yeah, you could say that.”

“Oh, damn, sorry—should have kept my mouth shut.” Sienna wrinkles her face. “Don’t feel like you have to tell us.”

Cora and Lani are leaning on the table, faces sympathetic. And I think it’s because they’re not pushing me to spill that I tell them what happened.

“Je-sus,” Lani says, when I’m done. “I hope you kicked him in the balls.”

Sienna pushes her drink one way, then the other. “I didn’t—Wow, Maddie.” When she raises her eyes to mine, they’re full of apology, but I shake my head. She hadn’t made me tell. I’d wanted to.

“I walked in on my boyfriend and a guy,” Cora says.

I stare at her.

“Shit, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that in a one-up way.”

I shake my head. “Not taken that way. I think getting cheated on is more a misery-loves-company thing.”

“Tell her what happened,” Lani commands.

Cora looks from her to Sienna, who nods.

“I came home from a book club and my boyfriend was on his knees in our living room, blowing the guy. I don’t think he even saw me. The guy did, though. His eyes were huge. And then I just walked out. Lani and Sienna went back and picked up my stuff for me.”

She beams at them, and Sienna touches her hand. “Damn straight we did.”

It makes me smile.

“Sometimes when I tell that story, people are like, ‘It’s so great that he figured out who he really is,’ ” Cora says. “And sure, of course I’m glad he’s out of the closet now. But cheating is cheating, you know? I bet he cheated on that blow-job guy, too…Once a cheater, always a cheater.”

I think I flinch. I look up to find Sienna watching me. She looks away before I can.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Lani says. She turns to me. “Let us know if we can help with the apartment hunt.” Then, in an echo of Sienna’s gesture to Cora, she touches my hand. Just a brush, the barest gesture of support, but I feel about thirty seconds away from tears.

I like her. I like all of them. I’d like them to be my friends.

I don’t want to be jealous of the women in my life. I don’t want to see each of them as a potential competitor, to wonder if someday I’ll walk in to find one of them on her knees in my living room.

I can’t be with a guy I can’t trust.

I need to move out of Jack’s house. Like, yesterday.