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Amy laughed. “I think I was getting four hours of sleep a night. Moira basically told me I would have to start sleeping in the guest room if I didn’t give itup.”
Moira was Amy’s wife and the head chef at one of the city’s hottest restaurants. They shared a gorgeous brownstone and a beautiful daughter named Ruth and somehow made it all seemeasy.
They were still deciding what to order when Robin arrived, cheeks red with cold. “Sorry I’m late. There were a lot ofquestions.”
“Questions? About going to a village without running water in the middle of nowhere?” Karen asked. “I can’t imaginewhy.”
Robin laughed and took the empty chair. They made small talk while they decided what to eat, then gave Sarah theirorder.
“My god,” Karen said when Sarah left. “What I wouldn’t give for herskin.”
Sarah couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, with glossy blond hair, clear blue eyes, and dewyskin.
“Aren’t you the one who always tells me women just get better with age?” Nina took a drink ofcoffee.
“There’s a fine line between optimism and denial,” Karen said. “We bring some important things to the table, but dewy skin is not one ofthem.”
“Can’t fight nature,” Robinsaid.
Karen laughed. “The hell Ican’t.”
“If anyone can win the fight, you can,” Robin said. While Karen invested huge amounts of time and money into her appearance, Robin took the opposite tack, keeping her silver hair short, her face mostly makeup-free.
Nina admired them both. She was still figuring out where she fell on the maintenance spectrum. So far bikini waxes were a yes but cleanses were a no. She enjoyed wearing heels when the occasion called for it but still embraced flats — albeit more stylish ones than those she’d worn as a suburbanite — when she did a lot of walking. She’d all but abandoned her yoga pants except when she went to the gym or yoga class. Jeans had become her go-to, and she’d been pleasantly surprised to realize they could be made suitable for nearly every occasion with the right top, shoes, andaccessories.
Lingerie had been her biggest discovery. She’d always had underwear and bras of course. She’d even sprung for the occasional sexy nighty when she’d been married toPeter.
But back then the top drawer of her dresser had contained mostly functional items — nude and black bras with a small amount of obligatory lace that couldn’t quite hide their utilitarian nature, underwear that didn’t ride up her ass cheeks and didn’t leave any lines under the trouser pants that had been the biggest part of heruniform.
That was before her first big lingerie spree with Karen. Since then, Nina had become somewhat of an aficionado. She was almost embarrassed by the amount of money she’d invested in silky bits trimmed with French lace, every kind of underwear, from cheeky boy shorts to thongs that were little more than two pieces of string, bras that pushed and squeezed her boobs into the best kind of cleavage for any given neckline. She’d even branched out into garters and stockings, enjoying the subversive nature of knowing she was wearing them even when there was no man around to enjoy it along withher.
“What about you, Nina? When are you going to jump back into the datingwaters?”
She blinked as Amy’s voice wound its way through Nina’s lingerieinventory.
“The waters ofwhat?”
“That pretty much says it all,” Karen saiddrily.
Amy smiled. “We were talking aboutdating.”
“Ah,” Nina said. “I haven’t really thought aboutit.”
“Well, think about it already,” Karen said. “You’re not getting anyyounger.”
Nina tipped her head and smiled. “Gee, thanksMom.”
It wasn’t an entirely misplaced comparison. Nina’s mother had alluded to the same thing, making not-so-subtle comments about Nina’s advanced age, the remarriage statistics for women of a certain age, and the difficulty of aging alone, although her mother had no experience in the last department given her fifty-year marriage to Nina’sfather.
Karen raised her coffee cup. “I’m justsaying.”
Nina laughed. “I’mhappy!”
“You don’t get lonely?” Amyasked.
Moni shook her head. “Why does everyone assume single women arelonely?”
Nina looked at her. “Exactly.”
