Playing Dirty (Stargazer #2)(41)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“I’m not working,” she said. “I’m just checking on my pregnant friend.”

“How far along?”

The question struck Sarah as strange. Wendy’s husband Daniel had seemed well-informed and very sympathetic about Wendy’s condition. But most men in Sarah’s experience thought pregnant was pregnant until the baby appeared.

“To hear her talk, about thirteen months.” Sarah found Wendy’s latest message, chuckled at it, and clicked the phone off.

“What’d she say?” Quentin glanced nervously in the rearview mirror.

“She’s still at home having contractions, it’s not time to get an epidural yet, and this is all my fault.”

“Your fault! It’s been a while since high school biology, but—”

“It’s a long story. A long, passive-aggressive story.”

“I’ve got some time,” Quentin said. He glanced again and again at the rearview mirror. Sarah turned around in her seat to see an eighteen-wheeler behind them, tailgating. Birmingham traffic was like this, and Quentin needed to get used to it.

She watched him carefully. Except for the frequent glances at the rearview mirror, he was motionless. He seemed to be driving fine now, but he stiff-armed the steering wheel, and his knuckles were white. She had to distract him.

“It’s not really my fault,” she said. “It was a collaborative effort. About this time last year, my friend and I were doing well at work, and we were about to turn twenty-nine. We decided that we didn’t want to wake up one day, forty-five years old, professionally successful, and barren. We made a pact to go home that night and inform our husbands that it was time to get pregnant.”

“Husband?” Quentin grabbed her hand and yanked it in front of him so he could look for a ring while keeping his eyes on the road. At least he’d forgotten about the eighteen-wheeler for now.

She wondered whether he was putting on a show or he really cared she wasn’t quite single. How delicious! But she managed to withdraw her hand. She wanted him to keep both hands on the wheel. “A few months later, Wendy was pregnant, and I was getting a divorce. My husband, Harold, got a girlfriend.”

Quentin glanced at her, then into the rearview mirror, and tapped the brakes in warning. The eighteen-wheeler backed off. He glanced at her again. He said in disbelief, “You had a husband, and he cheated on you and divorced you because he didn’t want to have a baby with you? He didn’t want to be with you, when you look like that?”

“I didn’t look like this,” Sarah explained. “This isn’t my natural hair color.”

“Really? I thought you were the love child of Nicki Minaj and Ronald McDonald.”

“Hey,” Sarah said. “I’d enter a bridge tournament if I wanted my mother’s opinion. I’m making myself vulnerable here to take your mind off driving and help you with your disabling codependence, and this is the thanks I get?”

He raked one hand back through his hair, but it got tangled in his curls. He gave up and put his hand on the steering wheel. “I’m really sorry. I’m a little tense. The story helps. Go on.”

“About the time Harold moved out, Manhattan Music started getting reports that Nine Lives was self-destructing in Brazil. Before my breakup, I would have hidden in the bathroom until some other fool was assigned to the job. But I didn’t want to be that person anymore. I could see myself becoming that childless, and now husbandless, professional forty-five-year-old. My friend Wendy and I had a college professor who wore red socks with her purple Birkenstocks and cooked for her dogs. I didn’t want to be that woman. She seemed very bitter. I couldn’t do anything about being childless and husbandless just then, but I didn’t have to devolve into a shapeless mass. So I volunteered to tackle Nine Lives.

“I’d been pretty successful looking like I did, which basically was like a marathon runner after a shower. But I’d never gone up against someone like Nine Lives. Wendy kept warning me he would eat me for lunch if I wasn’t careful. So I gave myself a makeover. As a result, Wendy tried to make me an appointment with her therapist. And Harold decided that he wanted me back.”

“Whoa,” Quentin said. She thought he was about to hit the brakes. Then she realized that he was commenting on her story. He asked, “What did you say to Harold?”

Sarah recited for Quentin the stream of epithets she’d offered Harold.

Quentin laughed and laughed, until Sarah laughed, too. He laughed so hard that he had to wipe tears from his eyes. Slowly his laughter subsided. Finally he asked her almost seriously, “Did you love him?”

“I thought I loved him,” she answered honestly, “but now I realize I didn’t. I loved being married. Or the idea of being married. I liked having someone to do stuff with and plan with. I wanted to have kids. You know? I enjoyed the partnership.”

Quentin probably couldn’t fathom such a thing. He stared through the windshield and asked the next logical question: “Are you glad you didn’t get back with him?”

Sarah sighed. “I’d been with him all through college. I thought marriage would be more exciting, but it got to be kind of a rut. And now . . . Well, I wouldn’t say I’ve been happy, but I’m definitely not in a rut.”

Quentin nodded. “And then what happened?” he asked. “What happened in Rio? You said you’re going to die at the hands of a crazed rock star. That sounds fairly serious.”

Sarah went cold despite the warm sun streaming through the windshield. Reaching down to adjust the air conditioner, she said, “Figure of speech. Enough about me. You tell me a secret. Let’s talk about what happened to you in Thailand, and why you fired your manager, and why Erin ran to Owen.”

“Let’s not,” he said.

“Why not?”

He pulled off the highway to park at an overlook, with downtown Birmingham spread out below them, skyscrapers and warehouses and the complex of university hospitals. He punched the button to open the convertible top, letting in a rush of fresh, warm air.

Then he turned to Sarah and grinned maniacally. “I can drive.”

“You can drive!” She clapped for him.

“I can drive,” he said, still smiling, “and I’m having a great time with you, and the last thing I want to do right now is to go back to Thailand. You know where I want to go? You know where I want to drive, I mean?”