He pushed the package toward her. “I got this for you in New York.”
“It’s too big to be a diamond,” she joked, opening the box. Inside lay a pair of gray sweats and a hooded sweatshirt that read: Fox Sports. It was a size medium. Apparently Jack hadn’t noticed that she’d paddled into the “large” pond.
“You used to love your college sweats, remember?”
I was nineteen years old. She smiled at him. “Thanks, honey.”
He leaned toward her, put his hands on her thighs. “We can do this, Birdie. We can move to New York and start over.”
She sat very still, holding in her middle-aged hands the favorite clothes of her teenaged self. He could dream all he wanted. She knew the truth. Things would change for Jack, but not for her. In a few weeks, she’d fly to a new city and settle into her old marriage.
“It’ll be great,” she said.
“It will be.” He was grinning now. She could see how relieved he was.
Her anger resurfaced.
He slipped an arm around her and pulled her to her feet. “Let’s watch TV in bed. Like the old days.”
They climbed into their king-sized sleigh bed and watched Sex and the City and The Practice.
When the programs were over, Jack turned off the light and rolled onto his side.
“I love you, Birdie,” he said, kissing her. His hand moved down her back and pushed up beneath her flannel nightgown, coming to rest on her naked thigh.
She kissed him back. They made love in the quiet, familiar way that had evolved over the last decade. When it was done, he rolled away from her and went to sleep.
Elizabeth inched away from him. She laid her head on her pillow and listened to the ordinary rhythm of his breathing. She couldn’t help but remember how wonderful their lovemaking used to be. For years, even as the marriage had begun to go stale, their passion for each other had remained. Now, even that spark had gone out.
Still … they’d been married so long. More than half of her life had been spent with Jack. She’d thought they’d grow old together in this house. Foolishly, she’d believed his promise to live here forever.
Even last week, when she’d looked into her own future, she’d seen them on the porch together, white-haired and smiling, sitting on the wrought-iron garden bench, watching their great-grandchildren play.
Now when she looked into their future, she couldn’t see anything at all.
TEN
Jack walked up Broadway, elbowing his way through the crowd. He’d been in New York two weeks, and already he felt like a local.
It had always been one of his favorite cities. As a boy, growing up in the small, depressed logging town of Aberdeen, Washington, watching his parents work themselves into early graves, he’d had two dreams—one was to play football in the NFL, the other was to live in a city full of lights-camera-action. He’d always longed to be a big fish in the biggest pond, and now, after fifteen anonymous, wasteland years, he was BACK.
Fox’s corporate apartment was right in the thick of it all: Midtown. It was a killer location, with great restaurants on every block. If you had a craving for a Krispy Kreme doughnut at three o’clock in the morning, by God, there was a way to get one. He loved everything about this city, but mostly, he loved that in only two weeks he’d become someone again.
It was only going to get better. The show, Good Sports, hadn’t aired yet, but the industry talk was already hot, and in television, buzz was the Holy Grail. Fox had been running an endless series of We’ve-Got-Jumpin’-Jack-Flash-and-Warlord-together-again promotions. Their faces were everywhere, on billboards, on busboards, on commercials.
It would gather steam, Jack knew. The celebrity thing always did. It was like the old commercial: she told two friends … and he told two friends … and the next thing you knew they were saving you a corner table at Le Cirque.
He turned onto Fiftieth Street and headed home. Funny how he already thought of it that way. An impersonal one-bedroom apartment with a kitchen smaller than most bathrooms, and it was home.
A doorman let him into the building. He walked through the narrow, marble-floored lobby to the elevator. On the twenty-fourth floor, he got out.
Inside the apartment, everything was exactly as he’d left it. There was a half-empty bottle of beer on the kitchen counter, and the latest Sports Illustrated lay open on the coffee table. In his absence, no one had come along and tidied up after him. He could pick up reading right where he’d left off.
He walked past the shadowy minikitchen. In his bedroom, he kicked off his shoes. One hit the wall with a thunk; the other tumbled across the creamy berber carpet and disappeared under the unmade bed.
He sat down on the twisted pile of white sheets and blankets. He hadn’t made the bed since he’d moved in. That was only one of the changes Elizabeth would make.