Jesse wrinkled her nose. “I know better.”
Arshan drove with both hands in perfect safety position, eyes straight ahead, back erect. He checked his three mirrors in clockwise order—rearview, right side, left side, straight ahead, and repeat. The sun paraded its late-afternoon glare, so Arshan pulled down the visor and adjusted his posture.
Lynette watched him and thought about how much Arshan had grown on her. He was still morose and dry, but he’d loosened up as their bridge nights had piled up over the years, and now Lynette realized that he provided the perfect balance to their little group.
She also knew that Jesse had fallen for him, even more than she’d hinted at. Lynette studied Arshan’s severe profile and his slim frame. He was a handsome man, regal somehow, and safe. He just wasn’t someone she would have ever imagined Jesse with. Jesse dated businessmen from the salon, or firemen, or attractive divorcés she met on the internet.
They had no proof that moody, serious Arshan felt the same way about Jesse, which Lynette knew must be infuriating her best friend, not to mention shaking her ample confidence. No one had been hurt more in love than Jesse, and Lynette wasn’t about to push.
She peered so long that Arshan whipped sideways and caught her. Lynette was embarrassed and pretended to be looking out the window past him.
Arshan appreciated Lynette’s silence. He had underestimated the feelings this trip would bring back. Ghosts swirled around him in the car and rushed past the windows, interlacing with the scenery. Mina was everywhere in this group. He caught echoes of all her favorite catch phrases. Samantha’s laugh sounded strange by itself. He’d always heard it aligned with his daughter’s, the mixture spilling into the hallway outside her bedroom. The way Isabel talked with her hands, the private jokes she shared with Samantha—everything was an excruciating reminder of Mina’s absence.
And then he kept envisioning his wife, Maliheh. Her laughing eyes. The jasmine scent she wore. Arshan had learned to accept these fleeting glimpses of his wife, but still they startled him, like the richness of gourmet chocolate. He slipped into the past like an egg sliding into water to be poached. Arshan regularly boiled himself alive for his mistakes as a husband and a father.
He remembered every second of the day before Mina was born.
Maliheh lay on the bed, with her puffy eyes and swollen belly. They’d moved to the U.S. in a haze after losing their son in Iran. Maliheh had hardly spoken to him in the months since. Betrayal by God. That was the only way to describe the pain of losing a child. But on that day, when Maliheh had taken his hand and put it on top of the baby, they had stopped discussing.
Maliheh was always the stronger one. She told Arshan that their child could not be born into such sorrow, that he must promise her to be kind, to be open, to laugh. Arshan’s heart was reborn, looking into the eyes of the only woman he’d ever loved. He promised her then and there that the three of them would be happy and safe.
But he’d failed. He’d failed them all.
Suddenly, he felt Lynette staring at him. He glanced over and she looked past him, embarrassed.
Arshan smiled, even though his skin was still scalding. He broke his driving rules to look at Cornell asleep in the back-seat, drooling on a pillow.
Lynette looked at her husband and smiled, too.
I was thinking about Remy. I sipped a Coca-Cola and slipped into my new favorite fantasy: being married to Remy Badeau. I pictured an art opening with flashing paparazzi. I pictured us on the covers of French magazines. I pictured a home chef serving us dinner under a chandelier. I started to picture us in bed. Suddenly I felt a little carsick. This had happened a few times recently, as a matter of fact. I was attracted to Remy. He was ruggedly handsome. Other women obviously thought so, too. And the man certainly had skills between the sheets. So what did the spin-cycle stomach mean?
I tried thinking about him again, starting with his smile—the smile that melted me like butter on a skillet every time. Remy must’ve gotten away with a lot packing that smile. It was disarmingly boyish and more contagious than chicken pox.
I remembered the day he threw out my collection of trinkets. I’d been collecting them since I arrived in Paris—matchbooks, scraps of advertisements, discarded ticket stubs. The plan was to incorporate them into a new series I’d begun, have them morph into photos or get mired in paint. Yes, they looked like junk, but weren’t they obviously collected in a pretty box for a reason?
Remy tossed them out along with my fashion magazines. Man, was I furious. Livid. I’d barged in on him when he was working, with my chin thrust out for a fight. When he understood what he had done, he chuckled. I checked my earlobes—yep, hotter than a newly murdered lobster. A sure sign I was as angry as I could get. He dismissed his assistant and held out his hand. I shook my head, so he laughed again, and swept his arm wide to suggest a place to sit. Dizziness was fast replacing my rage, so I sat and watched him, fuming.
Remy scratched his head for comic effect, then turned his pockets inside out. From the floor, he retrieved a match-book and a few coins and a mint wrapper. He crawled on the carpet to the wastebasket, sniffing and wagging his butt like a puppy, and took out a magazine, scripts, and a newspaper. He shredded them with his teeth, growling, then got on his knees at my feet. When he looked up at me, presenting his peace offering of garbage, he smiled that smile of his.
We spent the rest of the afternoon in bed, naked under crisp white sheets. Remy reclined on fluffy pillows and I curled around him, my head on his chest until he said it was too hot. He twirled my curls around his fingers and teased that my skin betrayed my every emotion—from anger to desire. He kissed the top of my head and told me stories about his life, his travels, his work. Entranced, I lifted my head to kiss him and he moved smoothly to meet me halfway. We kissed slowly, Remy brushing his petal-smooth lips side to side across my mouth, flicking his tongue ever so softly to part my lips. I loved the way he touched me, knowing every muscle, every sensitive spot, as if he were reciting a manual on female pleasure. I slid my body atop his lean torso and muscled stomach, easing myself down onto him, him inside of me. We both exhaled and moaned into each other’s mouths, lips hovering centimeters apart.
Isabel bumped my seat. I yelped when the ice-cold soda hit my broiling thighs.
“Shit!” I sprung my legs apart and caught myself panting.
“Sorry!” Isabel yelled overly loudly, on account of rocking out to her headphones.
Jesse looked at me closely. “Well, I have a purty good idea what you were thinkin’ about.”
Jesse kept thinking about Kendra’s last-minute bailout. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but something wasn’t right. She remembered what Lynette had told her about the conversation. Kendra blaming her crazy boss and her incompetent assistant. Normal. Kendra letting it drop about a fancy client dinner. Normal. Kendra stressed-out and overworked and feeling guilty about spending too much on shoes. Totally normal. Worrying about missing work was Kendra since her first job. But that girl cared about this group and about her family.
Maybe Kendra and Lynette had some latent issues. Lynette had confessed only a handful of times that she wasn’t sure she’d done a good job raising a mixed-race daughter. Jesse had to smile. She didn’t think the problem had to do with Kendra being half-black so much as it had to do with Kendra being Kendra.
Lynette came from a conservative Southern family, but turned out a hippie actress. Jesse knew Lynette had envisioned being the understanding mom to a wild artistic daughter. But kids don’t
