One of the Guys (10 page)

“
It’s
fine, it’s fine. Tell me more about him.”

Kate
smiled at Lucy and excused herself, heading into the bedroom for some privacy. “What
do you want to know?” she asked.

“What
does he do?
 
How did you meet?
 
Is he cute?”

“He’s
a photographer. We met through work and he’s friends with Jackson. Yes, he’s
cute.
Very tall, built really nice, curly blonde hair.
Blue eyes.”

“
Wooooo
!” her mom cried. “Is it serious?”

“I
have no idea.”

“What?”
she demanded. “How do you not have any idea?
 
Is it serious or not?”

“I
don’t know, Mom. We’ve only been seeing each other for a little while. I mean,
we see each other all the time through work and poker and stuff…”

“Poker?
 
He’s one of your… poker buddies?”

“Well,
yeah. We’re friends.”

“Oh.”

“What
do you mean, ‘Oh.’?” Kate asked. “What’s wrong with that?”

“Do
you think it’ll last?”

“I
have no idea!
 
‘It’ only just started.”

Her
mother clucked on the other end of the phone. “I just wish you’d find yourself
a nice guy.”

“He
is
a nice guy!”

“I’m
sure he is. But do you think you’ll settle down with him?
 
Do you think he might be the one?”

Kate
giggled. “I don’t know. I’m just enjoying it for right now. Who knows where
it’ll go?”

“Well,
that’s just it. You
should
know.”

“What
do you mean?”

“I
can’t explain it, honey. You’d know it if you felt it.”

“What
in the world are you talking about?”

“Honey,
I think I better go. I should see if your father needs any help out there.”

“Okay,”
Kate said. “Tell Dad I’m really sorry about his garden.
And
his beer.”

*

           
Kate let herself into Kevin’s
apartment and called out a cheerful hello to the guys. She stopped in the
kitchen, tossed her purse on the counter, peeked into the pizza box on the
stove, (mushrooms – she’d have to pass!) and helped herself to a beer from the
fridge. “Sorry I’m late!” she said, popping the top and taking a sip. She
joined them at the poker table in the dining room and took a seat between Max
and Jackson. “Wedding ran a little late. The couple was having such a good
time,
they wanted to rent the country club a little later. Not
that management minded with what they’re charging,” she added.

“Who
was the photographer?” Chris asked, shuffling the cards.

           
“Lillian Gregory,” Kate said,
grimacing. Lillian Gregory was an elderly woman who had been in the business
forever. She was very well-known in town for her simple, classic portraits –
but they weren’t as fun or as captivating as the more candid images Chris was
known for. She also wasn’t as much fun to work with.

Chris snorted and rolled his eyes as he began dealing
the cards.

“So
what else is new?” Kate asked, looking around the table at the rest of the guys.
She didn’t want to be obvious and focus all of her attention on Chris.

“My
divorce is final,” Jackson said abruptly.

“Oh?”
Kevin asked.

“I
got the divorce decree in the mail from my ex-wife’s attorney today,” he said.

“Wow. You okay?”
Max asked.

Jackson
stroked his chin.
“Yeah.
I hate to say this, but I’m
glad it’s all finally over with.”

Kate
squeezed Jackson’s arm. He hadn’t ever really spoken much about the divorce to
any of them. “Hey, it’s okay. You’re moving on. You’re leaving behind a
relationship that wasn’t so great. And you’re working on a new one.”

“You’re
pretty lucky, dude,” Max said in agreement.

Jackson
nodded. “I know. I just hate the fact that…” he trailed off and everyone looked
at him in surprise. Poker games usually didn’t get this serious. “I just hate
the fact that I always wanted to be with Lucy. I wanted to marry her. I should
have married her. But I made a mistake, and now… I did all that stuff with
somebody else first.
With the wrong person.”

“But
that part’s over now. Just focus on the future,” Chris said.

“I
know…
 
But then I think… I messed things
up for me, but I also messed things up for Sloane. I shouldn’t have married her.
She was just supposed to be my rebound person after Lucy,” he chuckled. Everyone
around the poker table sat quietly, letting him continue. “I guess I just kept
going with the flow, doing all the stuff we were expected to do… Moved in
together, got engaged, got married,
started
trying to
have a baby…
 
I was just doing what I
thought came next, even though it wasn’t what I really wanted.”

“What
does Lucy think of all this?” Kate asked, surprised that Lucy hadn’t said
anything to her about it.

“She
didn’t really want any of the details,” Jackson said. “I think it upsets her to
think of herself as ‘the other woman.’
 
You know, like she caused the divorce.”

“But
that’s it?
 
Your ex signs the divorce
papers and you’re off the hook?” Kevin asked.

“Basically.
Neither one of us contested the divorce. We agreed on all the terms,” Jackson
said. “So that’s it.”

Kate
sat back and studied Jackson. She’d envied him and Lucy for finding each other
and making their relationship work after all these years. It had seemed like
such a fairy tale. But when you stopped to think about it…
 
Lucy and Jackson had both cheated on their
significant others to be with each other. Lucy had broken off her engagement to
her boyfriend, Matt and Jackson had left his wife, Sloane. What seemed like
“happily ever after” was actually pretty messy, once you considered the details.

“I’m
just glad to finally be able to put it all behind me.”

“Hey,”
Max said. “You have Lucy now. That’s all that matters.”

Jackson
nodded. “When I moved back down here, I had no idea if I’d get her back or
not,” he said. “I didn’t even know where to start. I had made such a mess of
things that I didn’t know if she’d ever speak to me again.”
 
He looked at Kate. “And then when I ran into
you guys at her sister’s
wedding…”

“I
remember,” she said. Jackson had just moved back into town and was staying at
the Davenport Hotel where Lucy’s sister, Maggie, had gotten married. He hadn’t
even known that Lucy was in town for the wedding, or that she had moved in with
Kate.

“It
took, like, ten years too long, but now I finally feel like things are going
the way they were supposed to,” Jackson said.

Kate
squeezed Jackson’s arm. “Want me to talk to Lucy about it?”

Jackson
looked at her for a moment, and then nodded.

“Okay,”
Kate said. “I will. Now can we play some cards, please?”

*

           
Max managed to take both Kate and
Chris out of the game in one hand. His straight flush beat Kate’s three of a
kind and Chris’ straight. The game stopped for a minute as Kate and Chris said
goodbye to everyone and Kevin went to the kitchen to grab another slice of
pizza. Kate gave Jackson a big hug as he held the door open for them and then
she followed Chris down the stairs to the parking lot.

           
He walked her to her car and waited
as she rummaged through her purse for her keys. Suddenly, she felt nervous. Were
those butterflies in her stomach again?
 
She pushed things back and forth in her purse, knowing that her keys had
probably worked their way to the bottom as usual. “So, um,” she said, pulling
out two ballpoint pens and sticking them in her mouth, “do you maybe want to
come over?” she mumbled.

           
“Tonight?”
Chris asked.

           
“Yeah, like now,” Kate said. She
finally located her keys and held them up triumphantly before unlocking the
door. She tossed the pens back into her purse and then tossed the bag onto the
passenger seat. “You don’t have to spend the night or anything. I mean, if you
don’t want to.”

           
“Well, first, I kind of wanted to
talk to you about that.”

           
“Oh.”
 
She closed the door and
leaned
up against it. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and pressed her lips
together. “Okay. So… talk.”

           
“Last weekend was great,” he began.

           
“It was?” Kate beamed. She’d been
meaning to ask him about it.

           
Chris grinned. “Yeah, I mean,
despite the mess with the pigs, it was nice. I just don’t want to get carried
away.”

           
“Okay…” Kate said. “What does that
mean?”

           
“Look, Kate. I don’t want to mess
with your emotions or anything like that. I just want to have fun and see where
this takes us.”

           
“Um… Okay.”

           
“I guess what I mean is that we’re
friends, right?
 
I just don’t want to
mess anything up…
 
And I don’t know if we
should tell any of the guys about this…”

           
“Don’t worry about that. Nobody
needs to know our business, okay?” Kate said. “I’m fine. It’s fine. Let’s not
mess things up with all this talking, either,” she said, grabbing the front of
his shirt and playfully pulling him closer. She kissed him and smiled up at him.
“You can come over some other time.”

           
Chris nodded.
“Some
other time.”

           
Kate drove home, feeling a little
disappointed that Chris wasn’t coming to join her, but glad that they had kind
of cleared the air between them. It sounded like they were both on the same
page. They both just wanted to have fun and see what happened.
Nothing serious or romantic – at least not yet, anyway.
And
nothing that anybody needed to know about. They could just keep things quiet
for as long as possible, until they figured out where exactly they stood.

When
Kate got home, she let herself in quietly and then tiptoed towards Lucy’s
bedroom door. It was closed and the light was off, so she would have to talk to
Lucy about Jackson’s divorce in the morning.

She
crossed the living room to her own bedroom, closed the door softly, and
stripped off her dress. She hung it in the closet, thinking that if she got up
early enough the next morning, she’d drop off her dry cleaning before heading
into the office. She tossed her bra in the hamper and pulled on a t-shirt.

           
In the bathroom, she pulled her hair
up into a ponytail, brushed her teeth, and washed the makeup off of her face. She
pulled the covers down on the bed and was just about to crawl in when she heard
a car pull up in the driveway. She grinned. So Chris had decided to come by
after all!

           
She ran into the bathroom and tugged
her ponytail holder out, shaking her hair loose so that it spilled down over
her shoulders. Her t-shirt wasn’t too ratty, and it would have to do. She
hurried through the bedroom and into the living room, where she flung the door
open wide and struck what she hoped was a seductive, inviting pose.

           
“Well,
hellooo
,”
Max grinned, his eyes wide. “Don’t you look good enough to eat,” he said,
grabbing her around the waist and pressing his lips against hers. She was so
startled that she couldn’t move.
Until he reached around
behind her and squeezed her barely-covered behind.

           
“What are you doing?” she hissed,
backing away.

           
“I got knocked out of the game right
after you and Chris. Jackson and Kevin decided to split the pot and they’re all
headed to the Sand Bar. I said I might meet them, but I thought I’d stop by
here first,” he said. “Is that okay?”

           
“What do you want?” she asked.

           
“I thought maybe we could…”
 
Max hooked his thumbs through the belt loops
of his jeans. “You know. It’s been forever.”

           
“You think you can just drop by
after poker whenever you want and try to hook up?” Kate asked.

           
“Well, isn’t that how it usually
goes?” he asked.

           
“Well… Yes. But…”