No Strings Attached(22)

“She doesn’t reply and then comes into the coffee shop on Monday and pretends we never even knew each other,” Micky was quick to say.

Kristin shook her head. “Worst case scenario: we lose a customer.”

“I’ve only been working at The Pink Bean for two weeks, and I would have already lost you a customer.”

“The Pink Bean has plenty of other customers,” Sheryl said.

“So you’re all saying I should text her?” Micky took a big gulp of wine.

“Yes” came the unified reply.

Micky felt a twinge of guilt when she reached into her purse for her phone. She was always admonishing her children when they used their phones in social situations—usually the dinner table. She liked to believe she had raised them better than that. But the pull of a smartphone—the dozen dopamine shots it delivered to the brain with every new notification that pinged and every new message that arrived—was irresistible to a teenager. Now to Micky as well.

“I’ll just say ‘Hey, how are you?’” Micky said, then did so. “There. Done.” She put her phone on the table. “Now, please, let’s talk about something else. The way we’ve been going on about my one-night stand, you’d think we were all still in college instead of being mature adults.” Micky raised her glass. “Thank you so much for inviting us over.”

✶ ✶ ✶

Kristin, who appeared to be a domestic goddess as well as a pristine-looking, savvy businesswoman—Micky dreaded to think how much she paled in comparison to so much suave and expertise at life—had already served the mains of scrumptious home-made ravioli with wild mushrooms, and Micky still hadn’t received a text back.

As the night progressed and she’d poured more wine into her system, she’d adopted more of an oh-well attitude. At least her first time with a woman had been spectacular. At least she knew she wanted more. Robin wasn’t right for her anyway. Maybe now that she was more open to the idea of dating women, she should start the internet dating Amber was so against. Amber didn’t need to know.

“So it was an amicable divorce?” Micky heard Sheryl ask. She’d zoned out of the conversation for a second. The professor sure liked to ask the pertinent questions.

“As amicable as a divorce can be,” Micky said. “But Darren and I didn’t want to create a hostile environment for the kids.” Though, for a while, despite their best intentions, of course they had. Telling your kids that their home is being ripped apart will always be hostile.

“And the reason for the divorce was?” The more Sheryl drank of that exquisite wine she served, the more probing her questions became.

“Not what you might think.” Micky gave a nervous chuckle. “Our marriage just didn’t work anymore. It hadn’t for a while. The thought of having to stay with Darren for the rest of my life in what, perhaps for most people, looked like a perfectly acceptable union  , depressed the hell out of me. When I first realized we were more like best friends than anything else, I thought, well, that works for me. Turned out it didn’t. We grew more distant. Darren works very long hours. I was always at home. The kids grew up. Then I woke up one day and had a long hard look at my life and wondered why the hell I was throwing it away.”

“Good for you.” Sheryl raised her glass.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” Micky remembered the agony of waking up every morning and having to drag herself through another dreadful day of everything being exactly the same—and the complete opposite of how she wanted it to be.

“But in the end, one of the best,” Amber said.

Micky looked at her best friend. “Of course, Amber here, with all her psychic gifts, had seen it coming from miles away.”

“I guess I got a first hint of how unhappy you were when you started talking about exactly how hot Claire Underwood is in House of Cards.” Amber turned to Kristin and Sheryl. “The monologues I’ve sat through on the subject.”

“I wasn’t that bad,” Micky said in her defense. “Besides, any creature with a pulse thinks Claire Underwood is the hottest woman to have ever graced the small screen. It’s pretty universal.”

“While there’s definitely some truth in that,” Sheryl said, “it must have given you an inkling of how you really felt about women?”

“Yes, when did you know?” Kristin asked.

Wow. All inhibitions were cast aside now. This was the sort of subject Micky never addressed, apart from a halfhearted conversation with Amber. But Amber always knew when to stop—probably because she wasn’t a big consumer of alcohol like the other people at this table.