“What’re you grinning about?”
“Sorry.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Ryan stared at the door, realizing Paige had closed it behind them. He looked from her to the door. “Should we be in here? Alone, I mean. Someone could—” He stopped, uncertain. Something felt off about it, surely, but he wasn’t sure he could put it into words.
“Someone could what?” Paige let her dangling feet swing. She tilted her left foot down and her shoe dropped off the heel, holding to the toe. After a moment she twisted her toes and the shoe popped back up. “Come in? See us? Are we forbidden to be in here together unsupervised? Do you plan to ravish me against the hamper? The basin?” She pointed at each and then stared at him, expressionless.
Ryan felt the crawling embarrassment, she was making fun of him, surely, this was a game, surely. Something these two did at parties, divide and conquer, some sick trick to make fun of—
“Ryan?” Paige touched his chin lightly, lifting it up so he could look into her eyes. “I think we’ll be okay.”
The internal conflict vanished in an instant, a puff of smoke. He smiled back.
“So, tell me about you and Jennifer.” She folded her hands in her lap and waited.
Ryan found the gesture adorable. Then he wondered if a mature woman like Paige would want to be called adorable, if it’d be somehow degrading. Jennifer still liked being called that, said it made her feel like they were teenagers. What age does one get to before they don’t want to feel that way anymore? “We’ve, uh, been together seven years.”
“Would you like me to scratch it?” she smirked.
“What?”
Paige nudged him with her shoulder. “The itch. Seven.” She shook her head. “I mean, that pause…”
The door snapped open. Barbara jumped when she saw them. “Paige.”
“Hello, Barb.” Paige crossed and uncrossed her ankles. “Need to check the tablecloth?” She tapped her heel against the circular glass door, where suds still splashed.
“And Ryan,” Barbara looked between them.
“Yes,” said Ryan. “I’m here too.”
Barbara locked eyes with Paige, and her face hardened for a moment. Ryan looked at Paige, who smiled and winked. “I’ll let you know when it’s done,” Paige offered, but Barbara didn’t stay to hear it.
“Well, she certainly thinks dirty things are going on.” Paige put her hand on his arm and looked at him.
Ryan looked at her hand.
“You’re turning red.”
“No,” he said.
Paige laughed, genuine. Had he heard it earlier, when he was momentarily certain that the Shepards had concocted a plot to embarrass him, that laugh would have filled Ryan with dread.
“I’m messing with you.” She held her forefingers over her cascading hair like devil horns, then scrunched her nose. “It’s fun!” Her grin softened when he stared at her. He opened his mouth a couple times.
Something here made him feel comfortable. Something so different from trying to talk to Noah, who always made things about himself, or Sam whose woes approached operatic levels. He almost asked her to tell him that she didn’t always want sex, that it wasn’t the mark of a good relationship, that it didn’t mean things were bad or wrong, that, well, that everything was going to be okay.
Because in the end, wasn’t that what he wanted? Just acknowledgment. Maybe even the acknowledgment that this was in fact a rough patch and the way out didn’t need to be a stampede. Just gradual work. A slope upward.
“You okay?”
He realized he’d been staring at his hands. “So,” he began, entirely unsure of how he would finish the question. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
He didn’t raise his eyes. “It’s sorta personal.”
“Okay.”
“Have you ever—” When he did raise his eyes and look into hers, he stopped short. The concern on her face was real. She was listening in a way he hadn’t seen in he couldn’t remember how long. Certainly Dr. Petrillo, all pursed lips and paging through almost nonexistent notes, didn’t listen this way. Emboldened, he pushed forward. “Have you ever, um, had a dry spell?”
Paige thought for a moment.
Fearing an uncomfortable silence, Ryan threw some extra words out. “You know. Sex.”
Paige narrowed her eyes, nodding conspiratorially. “Ah. Yes. Sex.” Then she put her hands on the washer behind her and leaned back a bit. She looked at the ceiling, then back at him. “Sure. Everybody does. You in one?”
He nodded. “What do you do?”
“I dunno.” She shrugged. “I guess you just sorta have to work around it.”
He parsed her words, but couldn’t follow them through to meaning. “How do you work around it?”
She tilted her head and looked away. Opened her mouth, then closed it again. Began and then stopped. After a moment or two of this, she put her hand on his knee comfortingly. “You know, I think you and Jennifer have a lot going on up here,” she tapped her finger on his temple, “and you’re not paying nearly enough attention to what’s going on in here,” she pressed her finger against his chest.
Ryan wondered if she could feel his heartbeat quicken.
“And most importantly, down here.” She pointed a finger directly down, into his lap and the growing bulge Ryan hoped she wouldn’t notice.
“But such is life.” She patted his knee.
9
She’d turned her back toward Bruce what seemed like ages ago, resting against his shoulder, listening to him talk. Jennifer had seen him consume nearly two full bottles of wine now, if her count was remotely accurate, and he was showing no sign of intoxication. The storyteller in him seemed to expand to fill the room.
She let go of a bit more of her cautiousness when he offered to rub her shoulders. A long day spent filing had really put a kink in her left. At first she thought she’d only let him rub the one shoulder, and only until the kink was relieved, but Bruce’s large hands knew how to detect and work problem areas. Soon her worries and cares were forgotten thanks to his aptly named “magic hands.”
She drifted in and out as he spoke, sometimes apologizing for missing something. “That means I’m doing a good job,” he assured her.
“We used to come to parties worried about how long we’d have to stay, who we’d interact with, how we’d put on the show,” he told her, thumb sliding deep along her shoulder blade.
“The show?” Jennifer wondered if she’d told him then that, before they’d met the Shepards, she weren’t likely to stay past nine o’clock.
“The married show. The aren’t we happy and in love and everything’s good and wonderful and so on and so forth.”
She started. “But aren’t you? Isn’t it?”
“Didn’t say we aren’t, just that it was something we used to worry about.” He slid his index and middle finger along her spine, searching for more trouble spots to work.
“But you don’t anymore?”
Bruce shook his head. “Doesn’t really come up anymore.”
“I need one of those tonight, too, I’ve got a thing!” Paige flopped onto the couch, close enough for Jennifer’s feet to brush her thighs. She reached back and rubbed her own shoulder to demonstrate her thing.
“Anytime, angel.” Bruce transitioned from deep rubbing to a gentle back and forth on both of Jennifer’s shoulders, then a tap that seemed to indicate that he was done.
“Hope he hasn’t been boring you,” Paige said to her. “The massages are his cunning way to get people to listen to him.”
“Not at all,” Jennifer said. “He’s been wonderful.”
Paige leaned over and put her hands on Jennifer’s feet, a move she found surprising. For a moment, Jennifer considered pulling them back, but found that her impulse seemed driven by what she was expected to do, not what she wanted to do.