Beside Herself Page 17

  “Sorry, sorry,” she said, coming up to Lance and taking the barstool next to him.

  “No problem,” he said so kindly. “I was just talking to Sam here, and he said he makes a mean margarita. What do you think of that?”

  “I think that sounds great!” Hannah said.

  “Salt?” Sam asked.

  “Yes,” Hannah and Lance said at the same time, and then they both laughed.

  “So.” Lance turned to her. She could smell a subtle soap scent and behind that the slightest hint of the chlorine from the pool. “Thanks for asking me to meet you.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Thanks for meeting me.”

  “Have you been swimming at the Y long?”

  “Yeah, for years, really,” Hannah said. “What about you? How long have you been lifeguarding there?” She knew the answer, of course, but it was a good question.

  “Exactly ten months today,” he said. “I realized it this morning.”

  “So,” she said slowly. “What was your life like one year ago today?”

  “Clever,” he said, not seeming to be put off by a personal question. “One year ago today I was living in Ocean City, New Jersey, with my daughter, Kathryn. She’s four. I was finishing up the summer tasks and paperwork and even looking ahead to the next season—I was a head guard for the beach patrol there. My daughter went to her usual day care while I worked, which up until that time had been a great place; I never worried about her there. But then they had an incident—not with my daughter, my daughter was safe, thankfully—but it just changed everything for me. I found myself worrying about her all the time, wanting to check in on her. I wasn’t as focused at work. And that is a job that demands your attention. So my parents were here in Philly, and we talked about having them move to Ocean City, but my mom is not as mobile as she used to be, and their apartment is perfect for her—they’ve made changes to it so she can get around no problem—so Kathryn and I came here. I don’t worry about her when she’s with my parents.”

  Hannah had so many questions, but even though Lance seemed open, she wasn’t sure she dared ask them. On the other hand, why not?

  “Wow,” she said. “Do you miss Ocean City?”

  “Yes, especially at this time of year, when it’s more quiet and quite peaceful,” he said. “But it’s okay. I make it work.”

  “Is Kathryn with your parents now?”

  “Yup,” he said. “It is the best thing ever—for all of us.”

  Sam placed two beautiful cocktails in front of them.

  “Cheers,” he said.

  “Cheers,” they both said again at the same time, and once again, they laughed.

  They were quiet for a moment while they each took a drink. Hannah took three big, quick sips to Lance’s one slow one.

  “What was the incident? At the day care? Is it okay for me to ask?”

  “Oh, sure, and nobody knows exactly what happened, but a dog came into the day care facility with an adult who was there to pick up a child—presumably the dog was a family pet and was tame, but it should never have been allowed in—and it got away from the family and seriously injured one of the babies. The family claims that a child taunted it and scared it. But none of that matters. The baby was badly hurt, with bites on her face, and she lost a finger. I forgot to mention I was also an EMT when I wasn’t on the beach, so I responded to the call. And Kathryn was there when it happened. It took me a long time to get that image out of my head.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Hannah said, thinking of her own kids’ tiny baby fingers and how precious they had been. “That sounds awful.”

  “Can I ask you some things now?” Lance said.

  “Um, yes, maybe,” Hannah said quickly. She had not thought this through. “Can I ask you one more question, though? And this one might be too personal because I really don’t know the story, although you might have figured there are guesses among the moms at the Y. But you’re a single dad, right?”

  “I am,” he said proudly, which surprised her. She thought there must be a sad story there, of a death or divorce, something. She pushed ahead. The longer she could avoid questions directed at her, the better.

  “Can I ask why?” she said, but it sounded like an accusation, and she didn’t mean for it to. “I mean, how did that come to be?”

  “Sure,” he said, taking out his phone and scrolling through. He held it up for her to see the image of a pretty, blonde little girl sitting on the beach with a frilly skirt spread out all around her in a big circle. “This is Kathryn, just so you can picture her while I tell the story.”

  “She’s beautiful,” Hannah said. Her impulse was to show photos of her own kids, but did she even have any that didn’t include Joel on her phone? She didn’t think so.

  “So here’s my story. About five years ago my girlfriend, Marlene, and I were living a happy, relatively carefree life. We had been dating for a few years already, and she was always lukewarm about getting married. She was very clear about that from the beginning. She is a doctor, a cardiologist, and had spent her life to that point building toward that and training for it. She was finally exactly where she wanted to be. I, too, thought I’d be okay with things staying just the way they were. We had a great time together and a very active and healthy sex life. I hope you don’t mind my sharing that. We were careful, but sometimes things go awry. I’m sure you know where this is going. She got pregnant. She very thoughtfully decided she wasn’t ready to have a baby, that she had just reached the exact point she was aiming for in her own life, after years and years of medical school, her residency, her fellowship, and that she wanted to be a doctor more than she wanted to be a mother. I was less sure once the possibility of having a family was actually presented to me, and I was less committed to a career. One night I had a dream about the baby, that it would be a boy and he was going to tell me the most important thing in the world on the deck of a boat. It was going to be a life-changing statement; I just had to wait for it. Anyway, that coupled with my indecision led me to a proposal—not of marriage—but that she have the baby and after the baby was born we split ways. At that point, we were falling out of love anyway. I respect her, don’t get me wrong, but we were no longer in it together; we wanted different things. All my buddies told me to let it go, cut her loose, cut the baby loose, but that dream stuck with me—I had to know what the baby was going to tell me. So she had the baby, I have full custody, and we have nothing to do with Marlene. She signed away all her rights. Last I heard she was in California happily saving lives.”

  “That sounds complicated,” Hannah said, and she could see something pass over Lance’s face.

  “I know, I know,” he said. “This has been the hardest part of all with trying to date. I want to be upfront, but nobody believes me. Everyone thinks she’s just waiting in the wings, about to come back at any time, and that I’ll take her back, if not for my sake then for Kathryn’s, but it isn’t true. It’s not going to happen. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  Hannah finished her drink, and Sam immediately asked if she wanted another. She nodded, feeling her head get light as the tequila sank in. It seemed like Sam was their own personal bartender, their first-date Sherpa.

  “Another for you?” he asked Lance.

  “Sure,” said Lance.

  “Hey, Sam,” Hannah said, and she sounded on the verge of drunk to herself. “Do you ever do any line dancing here?”

  Sam smirked, then looked sideways at them and nodded.

  “Not usually,” he said. “But I have a feeling tonight isn’t a usual night. I’ll put something on.”

  The music until that point had been an easy mix of eighties classics, many of them acoustic versions, and some mainstream country music like Kacey Musgraves, which she liked. Kacey was singing about butterflies when the song morphed into the first few lines of a song Hannah didn’t recognize but Lance clearly did—his eyes lit up, and he jumped off his stool, grabbing Hannah’s hand as the lights came up on the
empty dance floor.

  “What is it?” she asked, laughing.

  “The Cha Cha Slide,” he said, leading her to the dance floor and taking the spot next to her. He knew it. He did all the moves and kept gesturing to her to follow along. Even though they were the only ones out there, she kept going in the wrong direction and bumping into him. Finally she bowed out and went to the side to watch him. He looked exasperated.

  “It’s not a solo dance,” he said. “It’s a line dance. You need a line.”

  “No, no,” she said, feeling way more exposed than she had anticipated. She was just about to say maybe they should sit back down when she heard the first notes to a line dance she recognized—the Hoedown Throwdown from the Hannah Montana movie, Ridley’s second-favorite movie after Despicable Me.

  “I know this!” she said, rejoining him on the dance floor. She picked it up right away; she could do it all. She and Ridley had spent hours, whole afternoons, learning it. They had watched this movie so many times she couldn’t even begin to count the number. Ever since Ridley was a tiny girl, she’d been drawn to the movie. It wasn’t until recently that Joel had made the connection that the main character in the movie shared a first name with Hannah, and that was probably why Ridley liked it so much. But now it was coming in handy! She popped it and locked it and polka dotted it, and so did Lance. He knew the whole thing too. And by the time they were finished, they were laughing so hard she could barely breathe. They crumpled to the floor, and he reached out and touched her arm, then grabbed her hand. An unreadable expression crossed his face.

  “I think I’ll have to get going soon,” he said, gently pulling his hand away from hers.

  “What?” she said, trying not to look as shocked as she felt. “I . . . I thought it was going well. I did a line dance!”

  “I know! And it is!” he said. “I’m having a great time, it’s not that. It’s just I don’t want to get ahead of myself. What’s the rush?”

  Well, she wanted to say, the rush is that I’ve been trying to have an affair for months now, and I think I’m finally ready. The rush is that I have to get on with it, in one way or another.

  “No rush,” she said. “But can we at least finish the drinks?”

  “Sure,” he said, reaching for her hand again and leading her back to the bar. She wanted him to stay. She felt like she was in eighth grade and Scott Gerardo had just told her he didn’t know if he liked her. She could feel all sorts of words building up that were fighting to get out. No, she told herself, try to be cool.

  “I’m married,” she blurted when they sat back down. It took all her energy to not smack the bar in frustration. Why had she said that?

  He didn’t even look surprised. “I know. I asked that other woman Dani about you a few times, and she said you were married and have two kids. I was so confused when you asked me out.”

  “You asked about me?” she asked.

  “Well, yeah, I’ve always found you attractive, and you seem nice and relatively smart except for the part about not knowing how to use the flags to time your backstroke, but I figured everyone has some gap in their knowledge.”

  She reached out and punched his arm gently, finding herself laughing again. When was the last time she’d laughed this much? Actually, she knew. It was on the way to the train in New York right before she’d found out about the affair. Joel had kept saying the funniest things about the people around them, and she’d been howling, and each time as she’d been about to calm down, he would make some other observation that would send her back into hysterics.

  “So why did you ask me out?”

  “This is going to sound crazy to you, I’m sure,” she said.

  “Try me,” he said. “I specialize in crazy.”

  “Do you want the truth? Or the sugarcoated version?”

  “The one without the sugar,” he said.

  “Okay. Here goes. I found out that Joel—my husband—had an affair. It’s over, and he wants to stay married, but I don’t know what I want. I am just so angry I don’t know if I will ever get beyond it. We kept trying to figure out how to get from this phase to the next one, and well, it just seems impossible, and out of frustration I told him I was going to have an affair too. So he knows I’m doing this; he doesn’t like it, but he knows. Sorry to drag you into it.”

  “That was my next question,” Lance said. “Why me?”

  “Well, I guess I can say I saved the best for last. I’ve been on other dates, each one a disaster,” she said. “And in the back of my mind, I always wondered about you. You’re handsome, you seem nice, you’re mysterious, and all the other moms are desperate to be with you. I mean, they literally follow you around. I don’t know, it made sense.”

  “Well, I appreciate your honesty,” he said. “And to reciprocate that honesty, I want to be very clear about what’s going on with me. I had a good time tonight. I could imagine really liking you, and well, that’s something I struggle with because so far I have not been eager to actually get attached to someone. And it sounds like things are even more complicated than I even realized, but . . .”

  As he said the word but, he stood and took one of her arms in each hand firmly but gently and eased her up to standing. She felt like she was in a movie—Coyote Ugly, maybe, because it took place at a bar, but she certainly didn’t feel ugly. She felt pretty. She told herself this wasn’t real, that she was acting, and that was what let her stand there as he moved closer to her, and she wanted him to keep going, to reach her face and her lips. When he did, she was surprised by the urgency she felt, the craving that erupted in her. He kissed her gently, moving his mouth purposefully but not sloppily. She leaned into him, kissing back, her eyes closed. When she felt him slowing down, she kept going, but he didn’t pick it up again, and she slowly backed down, letting him ease to a simple end. He was the one to take a step back.

  “Thanks for a fun night,” Lance said.

  “That’s it?” Hannah asked, trying not to sound like she had the emotions of a frantic middle schooler.

  “I’m just not sure where else this night can take us,” Lance said reasonably, motioning to Sam for the check. “I guess I need some time to think.”

  Hannah nodded. This was okay, she told herself. Really, what had she thought was going to happen? She really hadn’t thought beyond this point.

  “Thanks for meeting me,” she said in her best adult voice. “This has been great, my most successful attempt at, well, at having an affair.”

  She reached into her purse for her wallet. She was the one who’d asked him, so she should pay, but he gently pushed her hand away. She waited while he paid, wondering if he might kiss her one more time. But he was moving away, not toward her now. They pushed through the door and out into the hazy night. It seemed like another world in there, one that existed separate from everything else. They stood there, and all of the ease they’d had inside was gone. Now it was awkward.

  “Are you okay getting home?” he asked.

  “Yes, fine. Thank you.”

  “I’ll give you a call,” he said with a smile that told her he knew how ridiculous that sounded. Great, now she was going to have to wonder if he was ever going to follow through. She certainly hadn’t factored that into this whole thing.

  “I’ll look forward to it,” she said, and she watched him walk away. At the corner he turned, his hair lifting slightly in the breeze, his dimple more pronounced than ever. She hadn’t noticed it before, but he definitely had the look of a more mature Justin Bieber.

  “See ya,” he said, just as she realized she was staring at him.

  “Yeah,” she said, pulling her eyes away. “See ya.”

  Hannah couldn’t sleep that night, wondering when and if he would call, making deals with herself about how long she should wait before she reached out to him. Two days? A week? The good news was Lance called the next morning. The bad news was he didn’t want to have an affair with her.

  “Look, Hannah, family life is hard eno
ugh, whatever configuration yours comes in, and whatever bumps in the road there might be, I am just not up for jumping into someone else’s drama,” he said kindly, the sounds of the indoor pool echoing around him.

  “I understand,” she said, and she really did. She just hadn’t expected to like him so much.

  “In another time and place . . .” He let his words trail off. Maybe he was just saying it or maybe he was really good at letting someone down, but why not take it, Hannah thought.

  “Yeah, me too,” she said.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Hannah was on her way to visit Richard when she came around the corner and saw Reuben through the window of the conference room. Older women—residents of the nursing home—sat in the seats as Reuben poured coffee into each of their mugs. A plate of colorful sprinkled cookies sat on the table. The women were talking away, and if the setting had been different, it would have seemed like Reuben was their server, not one of their caregivers. Hannah waved through the window, planning to continue on to Richard’s room, but Reuben put up his finger, asking her to wait.

  “Tell me something interesting that didn’t happen in 1950,” he said breathlessly as he came out the door and quietly closed it behind him.

  “Well, I literally can’t find a single person to have an affair with,” Hannah said. It was the thing she was thinking about, and she just said it. “And I’ve tried.”