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“Don’t suppose you want to take credit for it.”
“Ha! Yeah, right, but if you want to give me a discount for bringing you so much high-end business, I won’t complain.”
“Donotlisten to her,” said one of Jocie’s girlfriends, the academic vegetarian named Loren. “She’s been schmoozing and schmaltzing this new client all month, and she’s driving menuts.She talks like a used car salesman.”
“Babe.Babe, babe, babe.” Jocie slung her arm around Loren’s petite shoulders and led her toward the dining table. “You knew this when you got with me.”
Rhea laughed from where she sat. “You guys crack me up. Like the old days.”
That instantly created a riot, since Rhea always knew how to punch her friends’ buttons. Paige continued tossing vegetables into a skillet. Her sigh was the quietest thing in the room.
None of these people aremyfriends.She thought that with the kind of lament that she knew it was her fault. Since graduating college, getting married, and starting her own business, Paige had been “unfriendable.” The few friends she retained over the years either moved out of LA or were busy with their own lives.Some of them even have kids, the weirdos.Paige couldn’t imagine it. She and Rhea never wanted kids, but even though she knew some of her friends did… shit, weren’t they still too young? Even when she reminded herself that they were all in their late thirties, it made no sense.When did that happen?Life went by way too quickly.
Paige liked her wife’s old-school friends well enough. She simply wished she had some of her own.
The sounds of the skillet soon overtook Paige’s senses. Behind her, she heard laughter and the scrapes of chairs, but all of her minute focus was on the food she was about to serve her guests. Between the vegetables and the faux meat from the freezer dancing against colorful produce and extra virgin olive oil was a severe feeling that Paige was losing her mind.
Her muscles ached from her own workouts and demonstrating to her clients what she wanted them to do in the gym. Her stomach was slightly upset that she wasn’t getting enough rest and still attempting to eat. Her feet ached from standing most days. Paige had to stop everything to fix her hair before it fell in her face again. All she wanted was to turn off the burner and go take a quick nap upstairs.
Except that wasn’t how cooking dinner worked. It wasn’t how she conducted herself in front of her guests.
The last two visitors arrived a few minutes before Paige put the finishing touches on the food. Fellow married couple Roxy and Jeanette brought a bottle of wine and garlic bread for that night’s meal. It enticed Rhea to jokingly ask what Loren and Jocie had brought, which prompted Jocie to say, “We brought dessert!”
“What the hell did we bring for dessert?” Her girlfriend asked.
“Why, us, of course.”
Everyone laughed. Paige concentrated on serving dinner without spilling anything. She was rewarded with the first glass of wine poured from the bottle.
Even when she sat down to eat her cooking, all Paige could think about was closing her eyes and nodding off.
“You all right?” Rhea leaned in toward her to ask. “I’ve got some chocolate-covered coffee beans in the cupboard above the fridge.”
Paige waved her off. “I’m good. Really.”
Shewantedto be involved with her wife’s party. It wasn’t every day that so many people came together under their roof, let alone to relax and reminisce about their adolescence. In older days, Paige would have joined in with her own “crazy college” stories that occurred before dating her one-day wife. She liked hearing about Roxy and Jeanette’s travels and shelikedlearning about Loren’s career as an associate professor of religious studies at a local private college.I get enough of Jocie at work, but she’s had a wild life, too.Rhea was so reserved compared to her old school chums, not all of whom grew up rich and privileged.Again, like Jocie.In another life, she and Paige were best friends. Unfortunately in this one, they had too much overlap in their careers to be anything but professional.
Or maybe that was Paige making excuses for herself again.
Everyone commended her food and asked for her secrets in making fake meat taste like “the real thing.” Paige used the last of her energy to gather the dirty dishes at the end of dinner. If she had been more involved in the conversation, she might have let the dishes wait until later to wash. As it was, she liked the relative peace the sound of the sink and the clinking of the dishwasher gave her. Besides, everyone was finished with their first glass of wine, and some were working on their second. Paige hadn’t even finished hers, instead passing it to her wife who continued to sit at the dining table and talk about her latest book she had sent to the editor.
Jeanette got up to stretch her legs. She wandered toward Paige in the kitchen, asking, “Need any help with that?”
“I’m good, thanks.” Paige turned off the sink to let the dirtiest of the dishes soak in a tub of suds. “Besides, you’re the guest. You should be drinking wine.” She nodded toward the red wine in Jeanette’s glass.
She laughed. “I admit, dishes arenotmy forte.” Jeanette wagged her empty hand in front of Paige’s face. “These delicate things, you know? My agent wants me to keep them fresh.”
“Are you back in the modeling game again?”
Jeanette shrugged. Even that simple movement was captivating enough to almost make Paige drop a dish on the floor.She was a born model, that’s for sure.According to legend – which was hearsay from Rhea on agoodday – Jeanette’s mother was a Ugandan supermodel who gave her only child a leg-up in the cutthroat Californian world. Yet most of Jeanette’s biggest modeling days were behind her. Marriage had been the perfect excuse to retire and do whatever she liked.
“I do a job here and there,” Jeanette said. “Right now, my agent has mehandmodeling. I don’t mind it. As long as I keep my cuticles clean Photoshop takes care of the blemishes. It’s all about the shape of your hand and fingers, anyway.” She demonstrated with a flourish of her hand. “Although I miss the haircare modeling. It was how I found my stylist. The woman is amagicianwith afros.”
“You do have incredible hair.” Paige gestured to her flat blond hair as she wiped down the edges of the sink. “Sometimes I think about cutting all of mine off and being done with it. Always in the way.”
Jeanette leaned against the counter. “With your job, it makes sense to keep it simple… but I bet Rhea would be really sad to see you cut italloff.”
Paige snorted. “Why would she care?”
