“You did.” She poked his leg gently with her finger.
“All right, I did. Sorry. It was news. I like to make myself interesting for her.”
Tess put her cup of hot chocolate down on the wall next to her. “What did she say?”
He glanced at her. “You’ve obviously never been in therapy. They don’t say a word. They say things like, ‘And how did that make you feel?’ and ‘Why do you think you did that?’”
“I bet she didn’t approve of me,” said Tess. She saw herself through the therapist’s eyes: An ex-girlfriend who broke his heart years ago suddenly reappears in his life when she’s right in the middle of a marriage crisis. Tess felt defensive. But I’m not leading him on. He’s a grown man. Anyway, maybe it will go somewhere. It’s true I never thought about him since then, but maybe I could fall in love with him. In fact, maybe I am falling in love with him. I know he’s all messed up about his murdered first girlfriend. I’m not going to break his heart. I’m a good person.
Wasn’t she a good person? She felt a dim awareness of something almost shameful about the way she’d lived her life. Wasn’t there something closed off, even small-minded and mean, about the way she cut herself off from people, ducking down behind the convenient wall of her shyness, her social anxiety? When she sensed overtures of friendship, she took too long to respond to phone calls and e-mails, and eventually people gave up, and Tess was always relieved. If she were a better mother, a more social mother, she would have helped Liam cultivate friendships with kids other than Marcus. But no, she’d just sat back with Felicity, giggling over their wine and sniping. She and Felicity didn’t tolerate the overly skinny, the overly sporty, the overly rich or the overly intellectual. They laughed at people with personal trainers and small dogs, people who put overly intellectual or misspelled comments on Facebook, people who used the phrase “I’m in a very good place right now” and people who always got “involved”—people like Cecilia Fitzpatrick.
Tess and Felicity sat on the sidelines of life smirking at the players.
If Tess had a wider social network, then perhaps Will wouldn’t have fallen in love with Felicity. Or at least he would have had a wider range of potential mistresses at his disposal.
When her life fell apart there hadn’t been one friend whom Tess could call. Not one friend. That’s why she was behaving like this with Connor. She needed a friend.
“I fit the pattern, don’t I?” said Tess suddenly. “You keep choosing the wrong women. I’m another wrong woman. I’m terrible for you.”
“Mmmm,” said Connor. “Also, you didn’t even bring the hot cross buns you promised.”
He tipped back his paper cup and drained the last of his hot chocolate. He put it down on the ledge next to him and shifted closer to her.
“I’m using you,” said Tess. “I’m a bad person.”
He put one warm hand on the back of her neck and pulled her close enough that she could smell the chocolate on his breath. He took the paper cup from her unresisting hand.
“I’m using you to help me not think about my husband,” she clarified. She wanted him to understand.
“Tess. Honey. Do you think I don’t know that?” Then he kissed her so deeply and so completely that she felt like she was falling, floating, spiraling down, down, down, like Alice in Wonderland.
FORTY-FIVE
APRIL 6, 1984
Janie didn’t know that boys could blush. Her brother, Rob, blushed, but obviously he didn’t count as a proper boy. She didn’t know that a smart, good-looking, private-school boy like John-Paul Fitzpatrick could blush. It was late in the afternoon, and the light was changing, making everything indistinct and shadowy, but she still could see that John-Paul’s face was glowing. Even his ears, she noticed, were a translucent pink.