Chapter Fifty-two
“You’ll never guesswhat just happened,” Tracy said as we were leaving the party.
“What just happened?” I asked as a gust of cold night air slapped across my cheeks on the way to our respective cars.
“He said he’d like to see me again.”
“Who did?” I questioned, although the sinking feeling in my gut told me that I already knew the answer.
“Andrew, of course.” She giggled. “I knew he was interested. I could tell from the way he kept looking at me.”
“Please tell me that you said no.”
“Why would I do that?”
I stopped in the middle of the road. “Because he’s Elyse’s son. Because I don’t trust him.”
“You don’t have to trust him,” she said. “I’mthe one he wants to see again.”
“You shouldn’t trust him, either.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because I think he’s bad news.”
“Based on what?”
“Based on the fact that he’s Elyse’s son,” I repeated.Based on the fact that the man you know as Andrew is the same man Iknew as Roger when I slept with him a few months back, and now he’s using that to blackmail me into not interfering with his mother’s plans, whatever the hell they might be.“I just think you should be careful, that’s all.”
“Be careful of what?”
“I don’t know,” I lied. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Since when do you care about that?”
“What are you talking about? I’ve always cared about that.”
“Really? I don’t remember you objecting when I dated that asshole Mark Webster.”
“Who?”
“Exactly!” she proclaimed.
“Ladies,” my husband interjected from somewhere beside us. “It’s late, it’s freezing, and we’re going to get run over, standing here arguing in the middle of the road. Surely you can debate this in the morning.”
“Debate’s over,” Tracy declared. “I win.”
I swallowed my outrage. “When is this date happening?”
“Not for a while. He has to get back to Detroit, and he’s not sure when he’ll be back.”
Thank God,I thought. It gave me some time to try to figure out my options.
Assuming, of course, that I had any.
—
I doubt I slept more than a couple of hours that night. I kept replaying the party in my head, from the moment Elyse introduced Roger as her son, Andrew, to the moment he showed me the incriminating video of my postcoital slumber, to Tracy’s startling revelation that he’d expressed an interest in seeing her again, and that she fully intended to go along.