The dumbwaiter chimes. Sage unveils a tray of salmon skewers. “Haida Gwaii spring, seared rare.” She pairs it with a BC pinot noir, and I don’t remember my mouth ever feeling so satisfied.
“Who likes drinking games?” says Sage. “We’ll start light. Never Have I Ever.”
I roll my eyes. The game where everyone’s thrilled to cop to every risqué thing they’ve done since they were twelve. Jake hates it more than I do, but he leans forward and says, “I love games.”
Tame questions go around, things we easily drink to or laugh when someone doesn’t. On Sage’s fourth turn, she says, “Never have I ever had group sex.”
Jake and I share a grin that remembers our old life, patios rolling into booze cans rolling into random apartments. We drink. So do Sage and Tommy.
“Well now. Time to amp up.” Sage takes a sushi platter from the dumbwaiter and sets the salmon tray inside with our used plates. “Truth or Dare.”
Tommy groans. “Are normal dinner parties even possible with you?”
“Only when my boring husband is in town.” She pours sake into ceramic cups. “Just for asking, Tommy, you’re first. Truth or dare?”
“Dare.”
She dares him to kiss me.
I look at Jake, who shrugs. “I’m game if you are.”
Tommy’s lips don’t linger, but the split-second they’re on mine is electric.
“Quid pro quo,” says Tommy. “I dare Sage to kiss Jake.”
She sidles up to Jake and plants a full but quick kiss onto his lips. His eyebrows shoot up and I can tell he liked it. A lot.
In the morning, the housekeeper wakes Jake and me up with coffee and a pajama-clad Hannah. We cuddle Hannah in bed for ten full minutes, soaking our little family in.
“We needed this.” Jake strokes my cheek and gives me a kiss that lasts until Hannah breaks it up.
When we see Tommy in the foyer, it’s awkward but delicious, like in college after you sleep with a jock you might never go home with again, but you want to savor your wild side a few minutes longer before you return to the science lab.
Jake leaves to use the washroom and Tommy says, “Last night, I felt like we were tandem paragliding, you and me. I forgot there was anyone else in the room.”
I zip Hannah into her raincoat.
“Can we do this again?” he whispers. “Just the two of us?”
I shake my head. “I’m married. Alone would be cheating.”
“You like Sage,” I say to Jake when Hannah goes down for her nap.
“She’s hot.”
“Are you going to work in her library?”
“Do you mind?”
I picture Sage popping in with midmorning snacks, twirling in micro shorts, asking if there’s anything he needs. But we said we’d never be that couple, the petty jealous type who hold each other back. We even wrote, If you love something, set it free, into our marriage vows. So I say, “If you need a creative shift, go for it.”
“You’re the best. I’m getting stifled in the boathouse.”
I run my finger along his cock, stroke it a while before taking it into my mouth, because if I’m going to set him free, I’d better give him reason to come home. His sighs mix with the thunder and I lap my tongue to the rhythm of the rain.
“This is paradise,” he says, and my grip tightens because of course this is paradise for him. He gets to write all day and ignore his daughter, and his wife makes his lattes and gives him blow jobs and irons his father’s shirts so he can have this writing space by the sea, and if that’s not fucking good enough, he can write in the library of a hot mom nearby and fuck her if he wants to because everyone in his life is just so. Damn. Cool.
“That library is the bomb.” Jake shakes out his umbrella at the boathouse door. “This week alone, I resolved three plot points that have been snagging me for months.”
“Good.” I stir the bolognese and pour him a glass of the cheap Italian red we both like. “I like when you’re creatively satisfied.”
He slips an arm around my waist. “When Emmaline goes to bed, I want to creatively satisfy you.”
“Emmaline?” I say.
“Shit. I mean Hannah.”
We have the Horseshoe Bay playground to ourselves. Just us and the crows.
Emmaline is fussing. She doesn’t want to ride the wet swings, won’t eat the cut veggies Sage packed.
Hannah taps our diaper bag and asks for an applesauce pouch. Before I realize what’s happening, she marches it over to Emmaline.
“No, Hannah!” I shout as Emmaline slurps the whole pouch down.
“It’s okay.” Sage grabs the empty package and scans the ingredient list. “Hannah was being sweet. It’s just, if Em gets a taste for processed food... and it’s sweetened with apple juice, which is basically sugar...”
Jenna rummages through her snack bag. “I guess she won’t want homemade hummus after fruit juice.”
“Oh relax, you guys,” Misty says with a laugh. “Look how happy Emmaline is now.”
“Because of sugar. She’ll crash soon.” Sage shakes her head. “I’m not mad. It’s just...”
A week or so later, Hannah and I have a chill day, so I pack a picnic and we walk to Whytecliff Park. She falls asleep in her stroller, which means I should go home and vacuum the drapes. But I’m feeling rebellious. Let Jake earn our rent for a change.
Sage’s Tesla is in the parking lot. I glance in the window and it slams me all at once.
Sage and Jake. Necking like teenagers. I slink away before they see me.
I push Hannah toward home, the hour’s walk made twice as long when she wakes up and demands release. She splashes along beside me, holds my hand and half-sings songs from music class. I pay enough attention to keep her safe from cars and headed generally forward, but the rest of my mind is stuck in the back of that Tesla.
I could leave Jake, get a job bartending, and try to find a crummy apartment with whatever money’s left after childcare. Or I could make the best of this fucked-up situation, put in my two hours of housework for a free ride in what most people in the world would call paradise.
By the time I reach the boathouse, I’ve decided to say nothing. Hannah’s thriving with her new friends. Jake reads with her now, even took her to the park the other morning. Before I met Sage, I was trapped inside my own Cinderella story. She waved her wand and everything is better. So what if she wants to share my prince?
And there’s another perk. I text Tommy: Tandem paragliding?
I drag Hannah to the ladies’ room handicap stall. The ferry’s rocking, but I manage to apply colored hairspray until her dark mop is blonder than Emmaline’s. I spray mine gray to look like I’m her grandmother. A quick change of clothes and we’re no longer the people in the Amber Alert.
I try to load her into the stroller but she clings to me, screams when I try to set her down.
We’ll ditch the stroller. In case the bus driver remembers.
I clutch Hannah’s hand and lead her to the gangplank.
The rain breaks, and Sage invites us for playgroup on her boat. Except when I arrive at the yacht club with Hannah, only Sage and Emmaline are waiting.
“Jenna and Misty couldn’t make it. But we’ll have a fun foursome with our daughters.”