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Shame.
It had been one of those soft late-June evenings, fifteen … sixteen months ago, and Craig had taken her out to the Sinful Lake Restaurant. It was the best in town and on the golf course, and he’d told her to order whatever she wanted. She hadn’t eaten there with him in years, because they didn’t have the kind of relationship where you wore your dressy clothes and watched the light change on the water and drank very expensive wine. And, of course, she didn’t play golf. Craig did play golf, because it was a networking opportunity with other doctors, especially specialists, and that was where referrals came from, but you didn’t have to enjoy all the same activities to be compatible.
Besides, the two of them were casual, comfortable, more likely to ski together on Saturday morning than to sit around in the lodge on Saturday evening having expensive apres-ski drinks in stylish skiwear. Which was good, because she was better at that, and Roxanne was wrong that it meant Craig took her for granted.
Where was it written that a man had to spend money on you to care about you? She had enough money to take them out to an expensive restaurant if she wanted to go, and, see? She clearly didn’t want to go! Except that it still felt nice that he’d asked her tonight.
He seemed oddly nervous, though, especially for a man used to delivering babies and bad news, and she thought,Why?And wondered with a sort of fluttering in her belly whether he was going to ask her to move in with him, or even to marry him.
No, not possible on the marrying thing. He’d always said he wanted to be absolutely sure before he got married, because he’d seen too many go bad, and he wasn’t sure he wanted kids, what with his job and his outdoor pursuits—Craig was a demon for mountain biking, which was one of the things that had drawn her to him—and kids deserved to be wanted. He’d told her how much he appreciated that she was as ambitious as he was, that she didn’t care about the white picket fence, and what a good match it made them.
As the former Divorce Queen of Sinful, Montana, and a woman definitely eyeing the District Judge spot that looked like opening up sometime in the next couple of years, she hadn’t exactly been able to argue, although a sneaky part of her had always thought,It’s worked for my folks, though.And also,But I’m thirty-five,and then,I’m thirty-six.But that wasn’t Craig’s problem. It was hers.
So, no, it would be about her moving in. He was cautious, so was she, and women could have babies at forty now. Well, some women could, and she didn’tneedkids to make her happy. If she had, she’d clearly have prioritized them. Moving in was better. But …
Craig’s house was big and mountain-modern, had a view of both the lake and the ski mountain, and boasted every luxury appointment money could buy. There was no way in the world he’d want to move in withher.She’d barely had her house for a year, though, and her first thought was,But I love my house! It’s my dream house.
You had to be flexible if you wanted a relationship. You had to compromise. You definitely had to want to live with the person, to enjoy waking up in their sleek leather-headboard platform bed every morning and walking across their rugless gray fake-wood floors—why were they always gray?—and making coffee with plant milk in their complicated espresso machines, not to mention the kind of vegetable-and-protein smoothies that you’d given up along with swim training. You weren’t supposed to think a regular old drip coffeemaker was good enough, or to want to spend your weekends baking chocolate-chip cookies and lasagna with noodlesnotmade of whole-wheat flour, plus three kinds of cheese and ground elk from the big bull your dad had got last season, moving furniture around on your newly refinished hundred-year-old floors and laboriously sanding the trendy white paint off the extravagantly tall baseboards and crown moldings of a house that hadn’t been built for anybody rich, nouveau or otherwise. Because you weren’t cutting-edge and never would be. Because you were, possibly, despite Stanford, despite law school, despite the international swimming career, still a little bit redneck, and your idea of happiness was a regular house and maybe, someday, a boat.
Whyshouldn’tshe get a boat? She didn’t need to wait for a man. She knew how to steer a boat out of the slip and how to dock it again. Her dad had taught her decades ago. She sure as heck knew boating etiquette better than half the guys out there, not to mention what to do in an emergency. She knew how to fish and waterski, too. Ifshewanted to do it …
She was dipping pieces of king crab in melted butter, sipping a California Malbec—all wrong for crab, but Craig was eating steak and had wanted a bottle, she was trying to do the “compromise” thing here, and she wasn’t nearly as picky as he was—and thinking about the thrill of speedboats vs. the luxurious laziness of pontoon boats when he said, “I think it’s time we have a talk.”
“Mm.” She took another swallow of wine and thought,I should have insisted on my own glass of Chardonnay. How hard would that have been? I’m lousy at this “compromise” deal. Maybe I could rent out the house for a year. That way, if it doesn’t work out, I haven’t lost it. That’s a compromise, right?“About what?” she asked, doing her best to lose the tension she was picking up and go with the flow, never her strongest thing.
Craig said, “I know I said I was glad you weren’t pushing me to get married and have kids.”
“Oh. Well, yes. I realize that you’ve got so many babies in your life, it’s probably hard to weigh your actual desire for them.” She went on, probably because she was nervous, “And, of course, the failure rate on marriageishigh overall, though it’s much lower if people get married when they’re over thirty, haven’t been married before, have similar socioeconomic backgrounds, and are highly educated. Only about twenty percent, in fact, if you both have advanced degrees and meet those other criteria, and neither of you has an addiction. Probably mostly just correlation, because you do tend to marry older and have less financial stress in that situation, and you’re probably coming into the marriage with equal status, which makes it a better prospect. Statistically.”
Her heart was beating like this was a threat. No, an opportunity. Hewasgoing to ask her to marry him. He was going to kneel down on the patio in front of half of well-heeled, golf-playing Sinful, pull the ring box from his pocket, and ask her, and she was going to have to say …
She was going to have to say what? She was turning thirty-seven next month! Wasn’t this what she’d been hoping for, if she were honest?
“Trust you to know the statistics.” He pushed a piece of steak around his plate, then speared it and bit down with his extra-white teeth. Craig’s patients loved him. So effortlessly handsome, if a tiny bit … well, skinny. So glamorous, though, with his white coats tailored to fit his lean, fit physique, joking to put them at ease. He was a very good doctor, from what she’d heard, and that was important. In general, and to her. He took a gulp of wine and said, “I guess I changed my mind.”
“Oh.” Now her heart thought she was on the starting block, except with less confidence.
He looked up, set his hands down on the table, and took a breath. Right. He was going to push off, kneel down, and …
He said, “I’ve met someone else.”
She laughed. She didn’t mean to, it just came out. “Craig,” she said, “could youbeany more conventional?”
Wait. It wasn’t funny. Her arms were tingling, and not in a good way. Her fork clicked against the plate, and she realized that her hand was shaking, she was holding a piece of crab in midair, and it was dripping butter onto the plate. She set it down, reached for her water glass, and gulped the contents down, because her mouth had gone dry. And all the while, Craig was talking.
“That’s why,” he said. “When I look at it honestly, that’s exactly why. Because you’re so … so detached. So analytical. You’re never all in. You don’t make me a priority. You don’t makeusa priority. You’re so focused on your own work, your own life,even on yourhouse,which is hardly worth all that effort,that you—”
“I’mnever all in?” The tingling in her arms was worse, and there seemed to be hornets in her brain, it was buzzing so hard. “Who said we should go slow, that there was no point in pushing a good thing? Who said he was glad that I had my own life and wasn’t complaining when he had to break a date because he was stuck at the hospital, or hanging on him when he went to …” She stopped talking and stared at him. “When he went to conferences,” she finished slowly. “Or … had to break a date.”
His face was a little flushed, his brown eyes so sincere. Nobody could look sincere like Craig. “I know this hurts you,” he said. “But it was inevitable. Let’s face it, some women are … well, it’s like they’ve been created for a man to love, not to mention drive him crazy, and you’re not one of them. The world needs women like you, obviously, and I admire you, I wish you the best, but you’re not exactly passionate, are you? Which makes you hard to get passionateabout.”
It was getting a little hard to breathe. The rational half of her mind said,He’s attacking you in order to make himself feel justified,but the other half of her mind wasn’t interested in being rational. “I’m not passionate?” she asked him. “I’m notpassionate?I’m incredibly passionate! How much time do I spend on—”
“On good works? On other people’s problems? People who almost certainly brought those problems on themselves, making terrible choices? You’re not passionate about me. And, all right, I’ll be honest. You’re not passionate sexually.”
“I’m not …” She couldn’t go on. “I perform oral sex more than you do. I kiss you when we’re having sex. I’m open to … to experimentation.”Probably more open than you are,she didn’t say,unless you’ve been holding back, too.“I have an orgasm every time!”
“Because you won’t let me stop until you do,” he said. “Open to experimentation? You? And you ‘perform oral sex’? Whosaysthat? When are you ever carried away? Do you get up and run your hands over my body when we’re eating breakfast and I’m reading the news, like you can’t get enough of me and you have to have me now, and you don’t care if we’re both late for work? Do you put your hand on my thigh in the car, and then move it up like you can’t wait, then take off your seatbelt and move closer so you can kiss my neck?”
