“I hated you for being happy.”
“I hated me. But I couldn’t stop. I wanted you to be with me all the way.”
“Look at you,” Olivia said. She reached over and rested her hand on her friend’s taut belly.
“We didn’t even think, you know?” Winnie said, her voice hushed. “We just had sex like teenagers, thoughtless, reckless sex. Too many margaritas. Too much mariachi. Sex on the beach, on our little balcony, even on the plane on the way home. I guess we’re members of that stupid club. What’s it called?”
“Mile High?”
Winnie rolled her eyes. “Not worth it. Too cramped. And now I’ve got a vegetarian husband and a country house and a basketball for a stomach.” She paused and pointed one finger and thumb at Olivia, a gun aimed right at her heart. “You wait, Olivia. It’s going to happen for you, too.”
“Don’t,” Olivia said.
“It will happen again. Someday you will look back and wonder how you got from here to there. Babies and mariachi. The works.”
“Okay,” Olivia said.
“And now let’s go home, because I fall asleep so early, and I brought pictures to show you.”
“We can’t go home,” Olivia said. “Not until we’ve talked.
“Don’t tell me you have a boarder or something? Or wait. A lover?” Winnie grabbed Olivia’s arm too urgently. “Do you?”
Olivia started the car. “No. But I did let Janice fix me up.”
“Janice.” Winnie groaned. “Has it been that bad up here? Not with one of Carl’s friends, I hope.”
“Poor guy. Poor nice guy,” Olivia said.
Winnie let her hand stay on Olivia’s arm. “You can have a lover and still not love him. It could be purely physical, the way it was in the good old days. You could just take this poor nice guy, friend of Carl, and fuck his lights out. Orgasms are therapeutic. Good for the skin.”
The surfer boy flashed through Olivia’s mind and she couldn’t shake him. He had full lips and a good chin. He had, she’d noticed in his office, one pierced ear, and she had found it sexy.
“Remember how when you and Josh broke up I talked you into going out on a date with the guy from the farmers’ market? The one with the good lettuce?”
“He said Feb-u-ary,” Olivia said.
“Remember how I thought he might be Amish? And I had you all set to go and live on a big farm in Pennsylvania, to swear off buttons and cars and live a simple life?”
“He said li-berry,” Olivia said.
“My point is …” Winnie began.
But Olivia stopped listening. She knew Winnie’s point. That farmer, Olivia remembered, had had the softest hands. He used to rub beeswax on them every morning. Instead of a bottle of wine, he’d brought her two big jars of amber-colored honey and a pattypan squash. She had slept with him, too, and Winnie had been right—she had felt better about things. But Josh hadn’t been dead. And Olivia hadn’t been about to make changes on her own, at least nothing like adopting a baby.
“Hello?” Winnie said. “If you’re not going to listen to my good advice, then you at least have to let me pee. Hello?”
“I’m here,” Olivia said.
Winnie squeezed her arm. “I’m here, too.”
On summer nights, the Coast Guard House restaurant opened their deck and people sat at tables overlooking the ocean. Olivia ordered a margarita with extra salt and Winnie ordered warm water with lemon.
“See the light from the lighthouse,” Olivia said. “Wait. It’ll sweep across in a minute.”
“Why do I keep expecting you to tell me something big?”
“I do have to tell you something,” Olivia said. “Big.”
“My God.” Winnie laughed. “I just had the weirdest feeling. Like you were going to tell me you were pregnant or something.”
“I guess I should just say it,” Olivia said. She laughed, too, because she was so nervous.
“You aren’t pregnant, are you?” Winnie’s voice turned suddenly very serious. “You didn’t do the turkey-baster thing, did you? Or Carl’s friend?”
“Not exactly.”
Now Winnie was frowning. “Olivia?”
“Did I tell you I started jogging? It’s strange, I know, but I started, and one day I came home and this girl, this teenager, was in my house—”
“Robbing you?”
“No. Not exactly. Not then anyway.”
“Stop saying ‘not exactly,’” Winnie said. “You’re making me nervous.”
“The thing is,” Olivia said, “she’s pregnant. Pregnant like you.”
“The girl?”
Olivia nodded. “Ruby. And she’s living with me now.”
Winnie was still frowning. “Living with you?”