Just One Night, Part 1: The Stranger (10 page)

CHAPTER 14

C
HAOS
.

I don’t know how else to describe it. The cheers that erupt are so out of sync with my emotions. Every handshake and tearful congratulations frightens me. This should have been a private moment between two people: me and Dave. Even in the best of circumstances I would have wanted it that way.

These are not the best of circumstances.

I see Simone standing in the corner, her normal effervescence nowhere to be seen. She and I share the secret, my secret, and it hurts her as it demolishes me.

My mother’s arms are around my neck, her tears against my cheek. “We’re so proud of you!”

“I didn’t do anything, Mom,” I protest. “This dinner, the proposal, it’s all Dave.”

“And who chose Dave? You!” She laughs. “Honestly, I look at you and the choices you make, and I know we made good choices with you.” She pulls away, looks me in the eye. “This is good,” she says. “
We
are good.”

I hear what’s not being said. The life I lead, at least the one the world knows of, is a vindication. It excuses a failure that none of us talk about. My rational and responsible choices are an announcement to the universe that anything that happened with Melody wasn’t my parents’ fault. It was her, not them. After all, look at Kasie! Kaise is perfect.

My mother takes my hand in hers as my father shadows her, smiling his approval.

“An odd selection,” she says, looking at the ring. “Why not a diamond?”

“It’s not what she wanted,” Dave answers, pulling himself away from his colleagues.

“It’s not, but you said you wouldn’t offer me what I wanted,” I remind him. “Just yesterday you refused to hear me.”

Dave grows serious for a moment and then with a gentle excuse to my parents pulls me aside. “Up until tonight I haven’t handled our engagement well.”

“No,” I agree. “Neither have I.” I flush as I think of what an enormous understatement that is.

“I never actually proposed. I didn’t say the words. I took all the surprise out of it.”

I glance around the room. “Surprise” can mean so many things. There’s the surprise of fortune and then there’s the surprise of miscalculation.

“I wanted to correct that,” he explains. “So I led you to believe I wasn’t getting you this ring so you would be all the more excited when I did. I brought our family here to surprise you to make up for not surprising you with the proposal itself. Otherwise, to propose after the fact . . . after we had already been ring shopping . . .” He shrugs. “It would have been a formality. I wanted to give you romance.”

I see his point. I get it. I look back at my parents. They’re hugging. My traditionally stoic father is as teary as my mother.

They’re proud of me. They’re proud of themselves. I’m living the life they want me to live.

Because really, somebody has to.

*     *     *

M
ORE HANDSHAKES
, MORE
toasts, the champagne is flowing. . . . I can’t grasp the moment. Dylan Freeland approaches. He embraces Dave and gives me a more formal kiss on the cheek. “I trust you’ll take care of this young man,” he says. “He’s like a son to me.”

The grin on my face feels ugly and misshapen. I don’t like this meeting of worlds. It’s an unsettling reminder that my personal life is loosely tied to my professional prospects. The tightrope I’m walking isn’t as strong as it’s supposed to be and only now do I fully realize that there is no net.

I excuse myself. I need air. I press my way through the crowd. Every step I take brings another congratulations from a new voice. I quicken my pace. I feel nauseous and dizzy as I look for the door, the exit that will lead me out of my nightmare.

I finally reach a patio but it’s not empty. Asha stands there, a thin cigarette in her hand. “We’re not supposed to smoke,” Asha says in lieu of a greeting. “Not even on the patio.” She takes a long drag and lets the smoke out through the side of her mouth. “But sometimes you just
have
to break the rules. Don’t you agree?”

I stand on the other side of the patio putting as much distance as I can between me and the smoke that carries the promise of cancer.

“I’m surprised you’re here,” I say.

She shrugs. “Dave called the office. He wasn’t sure if there was anyone you were close to there, anyone at all who he should invite. Funny he should have to ask. Anyway, I told him there wasn’t . . . just me.”

“We’re not close.”

“No, but I was curious.”

I try to maintain my focus. She’s wearing a tight-fitting black dress with a cutout back revealing a half circle of smooth, brown skin. We’re like cowboys in a Western except we wear our white and black hats in the form of dresses and we’ve traded our guns for other deadly but less tangible weapons.

But then perhaps my white hat should be colored light gray.

“Do you have a problem with me?” I ask her. I’m not sure I care about the answer. This night is filled with demons more frightening than her.

“No one has a problem with
you,
Kasie,” Asha says before inhaling again. “You were given your job as a gift from a grateful lover and now you’ll be married to both. You’re blessed.”

“No one gave me my job,” I counter. “I pulled a string to get an interview, that’s all.”

“True.” She takes an empty glass and drops the cigarette inside. The smoke curls up and rises out, making the stemware into something of a witch’s cauldron. “You’re very good at your job, too. Just be careful. Because the problem with strings is that if you keep pulling them, things unravel.”

*     *     *

I
T’S ANOTHER HALF
HOUR
before Simone catches up with me. She pulls me into the bathroom and checks for feet under the stalls. “What are you doing?” She hisses once our privacy is ensured.

“I couldn’t reject him in front of everyone. Our family, our friends, his colleagues . . . I couldn’t.”

Simone breathes out her frustration. “I underestimated Dave,” she mutters more to herself than to me.

“He can be very romantic.”

Simone looks up sharply, studies my expression, and seems unhappy with what she finds there.

“So what now?” she asks, her tone harsh, demanding. “You’ll reject him tonight? Tomorrow?”

“I don’t know.”

“After the witnesses have gone and you’ve reclaimed the stage?”

I look down at the ruby. I see my parents’ faces. I think about the exuberance outside of this restroom. I think of Dave and his desire to do things right.

Once upon a time I had wanted to do things right, too. I had believed in black and white, right and wrong, good and bad. The truth is, I’m not really a Taoist. I just learned enough about the religion to pass my college exam. I learned enough to romanticize the philosophy when it’s convenient. I’ve never had a comfortable friendship with ambiguity.

“We are good,” my mother said, but she didn’t know how wrong she was. I’ve gagged and bound the angel on my shoulder and given my devil my mind and body as a playground.

Can I go back? Do I even want to?

“I don’t know,” I say. It’s an answer to both Simone’s questions and my own. I tried taking one step at a time but now I don’t know what direction I’m supposed to walk in. So I stand in the bathroom, weighed down by secrets and jewelry, looking for bread crumbs to lead me back to a path that doesn’t terrify me.

The bathroom door opens. It’s Ellis, the woman who I went to school with during my undergrad years, the woman who took me to the luncheon where I first met Dave. We rarely see each other anymore . . . maybe three or four times a year for a reunion lunch, but tonight she treats me like I’m her best friend in the world. “I’m so happy for you!” She gushes as she brushes past Simone. “I always tell everyone I know that you and Dave are the perfect couple.”

And as she embraces me, I hear Simone mutter to herself, “Perfect, like the statues of Italy.”

*     *     *

D
AVE DRIVES ME
HOME
. My ring needs to be resized. It squeezes a bit too tightly.

I’ve given my answer but have yet to make my decision. My world is upside down and backward like that. And it’s my fault. I can no more blame Robert Dade for the complexities in my life than I can blame a fierce storm for knocking down a poorly made building.

“Are you happy?” he asks, and I nod and smile because I don’t know what else to do.

He pulls into my driveway and turns to me. “May I come in for a nightcap?”

The word takes me off guard. It’s old-fashioned and formal, the kind of thing a man asks for with an ironic smile on a third date. But Dave has been with me for six years, touched my bare skin more frequently than my favorite perfume has. Tonight he pledged to spend his life with me. He’s past the point of having to drop hints to charm his way into my home.

Still, I don’t question it. So much has been strange between us lately, maybe this new twist in his vocabulary is simply in keeping with our new awkwardness. So I lead him in and as he watches from the doorway of my kitchen, I select a sweet port from my small collection of wines and two fragile glasses for us to drink from.

But before I can open the bottle, he puts his hand on mine. It’s a light touch and yet . . . it holds a different kind of weight.

“It’s been a while, Kasie.”

I stare down at the unopened bottle.

“Ten days since we’ve made love,” he continues.

“Ah, you’ve been counting,” I tease but there’s a tremor in my voice. Has it really been that long? Why haven’t I noticed?

Because it hasn’t been ten days for me. It hasn’t even been a day. In the wee hours of the morning I had been with Robert Dade.

Dave moves his hand to my wrist, his fingers pressing gently down on the little vein that gives away my speeding pulse.

How can I do this? How can I be with two men within twenty-four hours? How can I call myself anything other than a slut after that?

I focus my eyes on the port, not even allowing myself to blink, as if even the slightest movement of my lids might produce tears.

“Let me pour us something to drink?” I ask meekly. My guilt has made me timid. It makes me blush and tremble.

Dave sees all this, he feels my racing pulse . . . but he reads it differently. He leans over and tenderly touches his lips to mine. It’s a soft kiss, loving, and as he quietly opens my lips with his tongue, I yield to him, raising my arms and wrapping them around his neck as he pulls me closer. Some of my fear subsides. This feels simple, comfortable, secure. God, do I crave a sense of security right now.

And I like the way Dave holds me, like I’m precious and worthy of admiration.

It’s so dissimilar from the uncontrolled passion that shoots from Robert’s fingertips. I remember him biting my lip, holding my arms above my head while tenderly kissing my neck, pressing me up against the wall as I welcomed him inside me. . . .

I pull away from Dave. “A drink,” I say weakly. “I want us to have a drink together first.”

Dave’s confusion is clear but it’s the hurt I see that tears at my heart. I lean forward and place a closed-mouth kiss on his jawline. “Just one drink first. I want you to taste this port.”

He nods and walks out of my kitchen.

How many times have I seen Dave leave a room? It never bothered me before. But now the sight of his retreating back hits me like an ominous omen. I have to take three deep breaths before I can steady my hands enough to effectively dislodge the cork.

I find him on my sofa. He doesn’t look at me as I hand him his glass. The wine is such a deep red it’s almost black and now even that innocuous detail seems telling. The room is suddenly filled with signs and every single one of them is alarming.

Another deep breath, a few more silent words of reason to help me pull it together.

Dave finally raises his eyes, his pain sharpening into something that resembles an accusation. “Are you still mad at me?” he asks.

I stare back, blankly.

“I shouldn’t have left you that night,” he continues. “The night you straddled my lap and asked me to . . .” His voices fades off and he looks away again. “I apologized with roses. But if that’s not enough, just tell me the price for moving past it. Because this”—he vaguely gestures with his hand at everything and nothing—“this is hell.”

“I’m not charging you for a miscommunication. I’m not angry.”

“But something’s off,” Dave observes. “When I put my arm around your shoulders, you don’t lean into me the way you used to. It used to be that when I reached for your hand, your palm would just naturally melt against mine. Now it’s as if our palms don’t fit together the way they used to. I asked you to marry me tonight in front of everyone in the world who matters to us. Is it too much to ask that we celebrate and . . .” Again, his voice fades.

I almost don’t recognize this man. I’ve never seen him miserable.

I did this to him.

“Dave,” I say his name carefully and sit by his side. But I don’t reach for him. Instead I sip the rich sweet notes of wine and try to find an explanation that will help rather than destroy.