“Sure,” Everett says. “Mind if I look around a bit?”
“Yeah! Of course,” Roberta answers, the sudden intensity in her voice echoing around us. “Actually, Teeny. Can I steal you for a minute? There’s something…my office. Some new end tables I—Maybe you can look?”
I shoot a confused look in her direction, and she wildly gestures toward her office. “Are you okay here on your own?” I ask Everett.
He looks up at me and smiles a crooked smile. His eyes soften after a bemused scowl had taken over his features over the different fabric options. “Yeah.”
I feel Roberta’s hand hook over my wrist, and she practically drags me away. Once in her office, behind the closed door, she shoots me an accusative glare. “Okay, who is he?”
“He’s a client,” I tell her.
“Clients don’t look at you like that.”
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “You’re so dramatic. He doesn’t look at me like anything.”
Roberta scoffs. “Are you kidding me?”
“Fine,” I say, lifting a hand in a surrendering gesture. “How does he look at me?”
“Girl, like he’s mesmerized by you.”
“He does?”
She nods aggressively. “So, is he still ‘just a client?’”
“There’s…history,” I finally tell her. “But that was ages ago. We were kids.”
“Well, it’s a shame that you’re married because if someone from my past looked at me like that?—”
“We’re getting a divorce,” I blurt out.
Roberta looks at me with a blank stare, flashing morse code like blinks asking me if she heard me right. “What?”
“He cheated on me. Some twenty-something with perky tits and probably no gag reflex,” I say sardonically. “But um, I kicked him out.” I don’t know why I’m telling Roberta all of this. Maybe it’s the idea that if I’m garnering even a hint of attention from Everett, it wouldn’t be toward a married woman committed to her husband. It would be toward a woman scorned.
Roberta grabs me by my shoulders and guides me to one of the matching armchairs in her office, a set she designed and made herself. She sits opposite me, peering at me with concern and sympathy. “Are you okay?”
“You mean aside from the fact that I’m about to be single for the first time in what, fifteen years?” I blow out a sigh. Fifteen years. That’s an entire lifetime. And it’s gone. Poof! “Jesus,” I say to myself in shock. “Fifteen fucking years.”
Roberta stays quiet, her brows raised in agreement.
“I’m way too old to be starting over,” I say, a whoosh of breath following my words. “I’m going to be this old divorcée filling my time planting begonias and marigolds and watchingFriendson repeat while Leo goes and marries someone half my age.”
“Okay, now who’s being dramatic?”
“It’s the truth!” I exclaim, throwing my hands in the air. “We women only get to age and wrinkle and sag while the men around us get to fuck anything with long legs and tight skin.”
“You could always join the other team,” Roberta suggests jokingly. “We never leave the toilet seat up.”
“I like dick too much,” I mutter. And we both burst out laughing. I cower forward at the same time my eyes mist over, and I don’t know if they’re tears of joy or misery.
Roberta looks at me, her face serious now that the laughter has subsided. “Teeny,” she says, firmly calling for my attention. “You’re going to be fine. It’s going to take some time, but you are going to be fine.”
I nod, a wave of betrayal returning full force with a golf ball sized knot in my throat.
“Now, come on,” she says, nodding toward the door. “Let’s get back to your handsome client.”
Roberta and I walk out of her office, her giving my hand an encouraging squeeze, and we reach Everett as he’s looking over a row of coffee tables. He’s examining Roberta’s handiwork, focusing on the carvings she carefully whittled into the wood.
