The next morning I woke alone in the hotel suite that Kat and I were sharing. I had my own room, and as soon as my eyes opened, I sat up abruptly. The air felt still around me. I swung my legs out of bed, stood and padded through the communal living room. Everything looked unchanged since I’d gone to sleep the night before, which didn’t surprise me. I was a light sleeper and would probably have woken if Kat had returned to our room. Since I hadn’t, I assumed she’d been out all night. Still, I hesitated for a moment. If Kat had come back, I didn’t want to wake her. I pressed my ear to the door of her bedroom, but I couldn’t hear anything from within. After a moment, I creaked open the door. I wasn’t surprised to see that her bed was empty and still neatly made up.
I’d left Kat and Hudson still enmeshed together on the dance floor when I retired the night before. I assumed that wherever Kat was, she was with him. I checked my phone, but she hadn’t texted or called.
I showered and dressed in a cotton embroidered tunic over an aqua bikini, then headed downstairs. The hotel served breakfast buffet style, and I had the choice of eating inside or out on the patio. It looked like a glorious day, so I opted for the alfresco dining option and requested a table for one. But when the hostess walked me outside, Kat was already there, sitting at a table with Hudson. She waved me over.
“Come sit with us,” she called out, gesturing toward an open rattan chair.
Both Kat and Hudson were wearing their clothes from the night before, and Kat’s face was scrubbed free of makeup. It seemed odd and vaguely uncomfortable to be sitting with my married friend and the man she had apparently picked up the night before. But as they didn’t seem at all embarrassed, I tried to tamp down my own discomfort.
“Hi,” I said, keeping my tone bright. “How’s breakfast?”
“The eggs Benedict is fabulous,” Kat replied. “You should try it. You have to order them from the waitress, though. They’re not part of the buffet.”
“Looks good.” I glanced over at Hudson, who was not eating the decadent eggs Benedict. Instead his plate was filled with what looked like egg whites scrambled with peppers and onions and a side dish of cut fruit.
“He doesn’t eat carbs.” Kat shuddered. “Can you imagine such a bleak and horrible existence? No pasta, no bread. I wouldn’t make it through a single day eating like that.”
Although Kat was supposedly speaking to me, she was smiling coyly at Hudson. He grinned back at her, enjoying the attention. I was ancillary to the conversation. My presence, it seemed, was useful only to give them another topic to flirt over.
“How do you think I maintain my six-pack?” he bragged.
“I thought you must just do a lot of sit-ups.” She laughed, reaching over to pat his flat stomach.
As if this display weren’t nauseating enough, Hudson then murmured, “That, too,” leaned forward and kissed her. When I caught sight of tongues flicking, I stood abruptly and headed inside to the buffet. I wished I had requested a table inside so I could have eaten my breakfast in peace. I certainly had no interest in trying to choke down a plateful of eggs while Kat and Hudson pawed at one another like horny teenagers.
I was also already resentful about this awkward situation being imposed on our plans for a day of beachside lounging. If Kat had wanted to have a revenge affair—if that was what this was—why did she have to pick our weekend away together to do it?
I got in line at the omelet station, although unlike Hudson, I ordered mine with whole eggs, cheese and bacon.
When I got back to the table, Hudson was gone. Kat was sitting alone, looking relaxed and happy while she sipped a mimosa.
I almost asked Where’s your boyfriend? but managed to stop myself. I didn’t want to sound as churlish as I felt. Instead I said, “Where did Hudson run off to?”
“He went home to shower and change. He has to work this afternoon,” Kat said. She took a sip from her champagne flute. “Mmm, I love mimosas. You should get one. It’s delicious. I swear, everything tastes better here.”
I was starting to have concerns about how this trip would affect my liver.
“No, thanks” was all I managed to say between forkfuls of food.
Kat flagged down a passing waiter. He stopped at our table, smiling subserviently.
Kat ordered, “Two more mimosas, please.”
“Right away, madam,” he replied and hurried off.
“God, I hate being called madam,” Kat said, making a face. “Can’t we women band together and get that word struck from the English language?”
“Why did you order two? I just told you I didn’t want one.” I wasn’t entirely sure why I was so irritable—whether it was Hudson or Kat’s disappearing act the night before or the fact that she did not listen to me when I said I didn’t want to start imbibing at nine in the morning—but I couldn’t keep the sharp barb out of my tone.
Kat stared at me. “Well, excuse me. I thought we were on vacation, but you certainly don’t have to drink it if you don’t want it.” She drawled out the words in an exaggerated way.
She sounded so much like a moody, hormonal teenager, I couldn’t help smiling.
“You sound like you’re fifteen,” I said when Kat scowled at me.
My words dispelled the frostiness. Kat laughed, too, and pushed her sunglasses on top of her head.
“I feel like I’m fifteen,” she confessed. “This is crazy, isn’t it? But then Hudson touches me and I’m just—” She stopped and shook her head. “I don’t know. Like I’m not in charge of whatever is happening. Does that sound silly?”
It did, but I shook my head. “No, of course not.”
Kat smiled condescendingly. “I’ve shocked you. I had no idea you were so provincial, Alice.”
My irritation flared back up. I was quickly losing patience with this situation. I didn’t like Howard, but he was Kat’s husband. She had chosen to marry him, and more to the point, she had chosen to remain married to him after he cheated on her. Even if she had her reasons not to divorce him—whether they were money or fear of being alone or simply not wanting to give up on the marriage—it had still been her choice. Yet here she was, acting selfish and silly, and she had the nerve to mock me for failing to embrace her adultery?
There was a brief pause while the waiter arrived with the two mimosas.
“You can do as you please,” I said. I took another bite of my omelet, although I could barely taste the food. It felt as though the trip had already been soured. Despite the lavish accommodations and beautiful surroundings, I suddenly wished I was home—even if that meant another Saturday spent getting caught up on the laundry. Unfortunately, Kat and I had driven down together in her Porsche convertible. I was stuck here. Despite my earlier protestations, I took a sip of my mimosa.
“You’re angry with me,” Kat commented.
I put my fork down and looked at her. “I thought this was our weekend to get away. To relax and spend time together.”
“We are! Look,” Kat said, sighing, “I’m sorry I deserted you last night. I shouldn’t have.”
I nodded, accepting her apology. “It just feels...well, awkward, I guess. It’s like I’m suddenly the third wheel on a very steamy first date.”
Kat laughed and flushed slightly. “Yes, well, last night might not have been my best moment. And I am sorry that I left you alone—that wasn’t cool, I know it wasn’t—but honestly, I have zero guilt when it comes to Howard. I don’t know what that says about me. Maybe it means I’m a horrible person, but I suddenly feel weirdly alive. It’s like I finally woke up to the fact that I can have a life after divorce. I know that sounds trite, but whenever I’ve tried to picture myself leaving Howard, not being married, I just...shut down.”
I softened. Maybe I was being too harsh, too puritanical. Kat had been through a lot with Howard, but she’d been married to him for more than half her life. Of course the idea of leaving him, of building a life for herself without him, would be daunting. Perhaps having a brief fling with a younger man would prove to be the catharsis she needed to move on.
“Although it’s possible that thanks to Hudson, I now have an entirely unrealistic vision of what postdivorce life would look like,” Kat continued, leaning in and lowering her voice. “Without going into too much detail, he was absolutely amazing.”
I raised a hand, wanting to staunch this confessional flow. “It’s okay. You don’t have to go into detail.”
Kat made a face. “I wasn’t going to,” she said. “And you really are a prude.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. Anyway, all I was going to say is that it’s probably not very likely that my future will be filled with hot young bartenders.”
“You never know,” I commented. “There could be thousands of them out there, waiting for a beautiful divorcée to walk into their bars.”
Kat shuddered. “I hate that word. Divorcée. Ugh. Never say that again. It’s almost as bad as madam. Hurry up and finish your mimosa.” She drained the last of hers. “I want to go for a swim.”
* * *
Despite the rocky start, it ended up being a lovely day. We spent most of it on the beach, stretched out on lounge chairs, the sun warming our skin. Kat had gone up to our room to change. When she returned, she brought down a stack of fashion magazines. We paged lazily through them, reading actress profiles—all of whom claimed they never dieted and maintained their whippet-thin figures through yoga and healthy lifestyles—and articles advising the perfect shade of red lipstick for every complexion. When we got hot, we waded into the clear aqua ocean and floated on our backs while we gazed up at the cotton-ball puffs of clouds in the sky. When we were hungry or thirsty, we raised the flag attached to the beach chairs to summon a waiter. Someone would rush over to supply us with whatever we desired. Then, when we grew tired of being on the beach, we went up to our shared suite, where we each showered and changed before heading back down for cocktails.
We returned to the outside bar, where Hudson was working. He brought us our drinks and a plate of hummus and pita chips and stopped back to chat with us when he had a lull in customers. I had to admit he was a pretty charming guy, and it was less awkward talking with the two of them than it had been that morning.
Hudson had promised to find us after his shift, so I was surprised when later, just before dinner, Kat asked if I wanted to go back to the beach.
“It’s so beautiful out,” she said. “Let’s go for a short walk. It will give me a chance to clear my head so I can figure out what I should do about Hudson.”
I nodded, and we strolled back down to the beach, which was now deserted. The sun was setting, turning the sky into ribbons of pink and orange. The ocean was calm, its waves lapping gently onto the beach. Kat and I stood side by side and looked out at the water, neither of us speaking.
Finally Kat broke the silence. “As I’m sure you can guess, things aren’t going well with Howard and me.”
Kat rarely talked about the state of her marriage with me. I knew that right after she found out about Howard’s affair, she had confronted him. He’d denied it at first, but once Kat showed him the pictures her private investigator had taken, he’d finally admitted to it. She said they discussed separating but decided to try to work things out, on the condition that he ended his relationship with the Alana Dupree. He’d agreed. Since then, she’d rarely mentioned him to me. This had struck me as odd, but I knew how painful his infidelities had been for Kat. I didn’t want to press her. Anyway, I wasn’t sure what working things out meant for them, since as far as I knew, they hadn’t been to couples therapy or made an effort to spend more time together, nor make any other meaningful changes. Or maybe they had done all of those things and Kat just hadn’t told me.
“Did something happen?” I asked.
“A few somethings happened.”
Kat sounded so strange, her voice tight and higher than usual. I turned to her, reaching a hand out, but she didn’t seem to see me. Her face was blank and she had her arms wrapped around herself.
“Kat, what is it?”
Kat breathed in deeply, and when she exhaled, she puffed her cheeks out. I noticed then that tears were sliding down her face.
“Kat? Tell me.”
“I’m sorry. I probably should have told you everything before, but somehow telling you makes it more real, I guess,” Kat said. “Okay. There are actually two things I haven’t told you about. The first is that I found out Howard is still having an affair with the bartender. Or maybe he never stopped the first time.” She shook her head and laughed without humor. “And now I’ve gone and slept with a bartender. What do you think that says about us?”
“Oh, Kat,” I said. I put an arm around her and squeezed her. She didn’t resist, but she also didn’t hug me back.
“I just feel so incredibly stupid.” She exhaled loudly. “Why did I think he was suddenly going to start being faithful? Because he said so?”
“That is sort of how it’s supposed to work,” I said softly. “He says he’ll be faithful and you believe him.”
“Only if you’re an idiot. Which apparently I am.”
“How did you find out?”
Kat sighed again and kicked her sandaled foot into the soft white sand. “In the most humiliating way possible. I followed him.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yeah, there’s nothing like finding out that you’re a cliché.” Kat sighed. “Anyway, he was apparently so looking forward to getting his dick sucked that he didn’t notice I was driving right behind him. I followed him all the way to her condo.”
“I’m sorry I was so shitty and judgmental earlier,” I said. “About Hudson.”
Kat shrugged. “You didn’t know.”
“But still. I should have given you the benefit of the doubt.”
“The worst of it is, that’s not even the worst of it.”
I waited, dreading what was coming next.
“I didn’t confront him then, in the parking lot of her building. It just seemed so...well, tawdry, I suppose. And I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of seeing me outside her apartment, yelling at my husband. So I drove home, and while I waited for him to return, I drank two large martinis.”
I could picture her sitting alone in her beautiful kitchen, drink in hand, trying to stop herself from visualizing her husband romping with his girlfriend.
“Did he come back that night?”
Kat nodded. She was still looking out at the water, her arms still wrapped around her, as though by doing so, she was holding herself together.
“He did. And I told him that I’d followed him, and he...he hit me.”
I inhaled sharply and turned to look at her. “Oh, my God, Kat. He hit you? Where?”
She returned my gaze, her blue eyes steady and sober.
“He backhanded me across the face.” She shook her head like she still couldn’t quite believe it. “He hit me so hard, I saw stars. You know, like in cartoons when little stars and birds rotate around a character’s head?”
Kat laughed, and it was such a sad, broken sound that I nearly cried.
“Has he ever hit you before?”
“No. He’s grabbed me a few times, you know, hard on the upper part of my arm,” Kat said, demonstrating this by squeezing her own arm. “And he pushed me once, actually pushed me really hard, but he was so drunk that he didn’t remember it the next day. So I’m not sure that counts.”
I stared at her, dumbfounded. “What are you talking about? Of course it counts.”
“No, I mean, I know it wasn’t right, but I also don’t think it was intentional. When he slapped me—” Kat stopped and shivered “—that was intentional.”
I listened, trying to absorb what Kat was telling me. Of course spousal abuse occurred across the socioeconomic divides. I knew it did. It just had simply never occurred to me that anyone I knew—much less someone I knew as well as Kat—was being battered. It was like one of those terrible made-for-television movies, the ones with titles like Abandoned and Betrayed.
“What are you going to do?” I finally asked.
Kat looked at me blankly. “About what?”
“What do you think?” I said. “About Howard. You can’t stay with him. You have to move out or get him to move out. Right away.”
“I told you before, if I divorce him, he’ll get half my money, half the house, probably even half of K-Gallery.”
I could feel a flash of anger push up past my original shock at her sad confession.
“Kat, you can’t stay married to someone who beats you.”
“He doesn’t beat me. He slapped me. It’s not the same thing.”
“It’s still abusive,” I argued. “Look, I’m not going to say the money doesn’t matter. Of course it matters. But even if you had to give him half of everything, you’d still be an incredibly wealthy woman.”
“But that’s just it. Why should I have to give him half?” Kat asked, turning to me, her voice suddenly angry. “What has he done to deserve that?”
“I’m not saying he deserves it. But your safety is more important.”
Kat looked at me, her expression so savage that she was almost unrecognizable. Her eyes were narrowed into slits, her lips pulled back in a snarl.
“I wish he’d just die,” she said through clenched teeth. “That would solve everything.”
“Waiting for him to die is not exactly a good action plan,” I pointed out.
“Why not? Drunks die all the time. They get into car crashes, they fall down stairs.” Kat spoke as though in a trance.
I wondered if this was an oblique reference to my brother-in-law’s death. Brendon, the drunk who had died after falling down the stairs on Thanksgiving. I didn’t like thinking about that night and pushed the memory away.
“You can’t count on Howard having a car accident,” I said.
Kat turned to stare back out at the water. The light was fading and the sky was turning smudged gray. But there was just enough light for me to see the tears still rolling down Kat’s face. I wrapped an arm around her again, and she briefly rested her head on my shoulder.
“I wish he would die,” she repeated. “It would solve everything.”