“I know we can’t,” he conceded. “Not right now, anyway. But the mixer is totally free, and you might hit it off with someone who lives in the neighborhood. Maybe they have a book club you can join.”
A book club might be nice. Maybe they’d meet some new couples she and Liam could get together with for a barbecue in the warm months or a game of cards during the endless Minnesota winters. Honestly, they could use some more friends. Make a fresh start, socially speaking.
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to pop in,” Layla said. “I think the flyer said it started at six thirty.”
* * *
The term “mixer” was a bit misleading; to Layla, it looked like a full-blown event. There were waiters passing trays of hors d’oeuvres and signature cocktails. There would obviously be a band, because there were a drum kit and a couple of guitars on a stage, lacking only the musicians who would be playing them at some point. Looking at the stage and the instruments filled Layla with the kind of wistful longing she had learned to tamp down.
The men were all wearing jackets, and the women were in dresses or tight, formfitting pants and tops with plunging necklines. Layla was happy she’d worn a pair of heels with her skinny jeans, camisole, and blazer, and had taken the time to give herself a blowout in lieu of her usual ponytail. She was even wearing lipstick, and Liam had commented on how nice she looked when she walked into the kitchen.
She had just accepted one of the signature cocktails—something purple that smelled delicious—when she turned back around and came face-to-face with Suzanne.
“Layla! Hi,” Suzanne shouted as she threw her arms around Layla. “I was hoping I’d see you here.”
Confused, Layla hugged Suzanne back and shook her husband’s hand when the introduction was made. Liam didn’t seem surprised to run into Suzanne, if the relaxed expression on his face was any indication.
“Do you live in this neighborhood?” Layla said.
“Yes. I assumed you would know that. I post about it all the time.”
For several years after their wedding, neither Liam nor Layla had seen much of Suzanne around town, and Layla thought maybe she’d moved away. She popped back up again when everyone Layla had ever known decided to get on Facebook, including her and Liam. Liam had accepted Suzanne’s friend request; Layla had not.
“Why did you accept her friend request?” Layla asked when Liam mentioned it.
“I didn’t see any reason not to. It’s not a big deal,” he said.
Suzanne kept sending Layla friend requests and badgering Liam about it until Layla finally accepted and then promptly scrolled past the endless photos of her children and husband as Suzanne shared every carefully curated second of their lives.
The matching, color-coordinated outfits.
The holiday photo shoots that took place in the library of Suzanne’s home, all of them decked out in orange and black for Halloween and an explosion of tartan plaid and white snowflakes for the winter holidays.
The red of Valentine’s Day and the head-to-toe green for St. Patrick’s Day rolled right into the pastels of Easter.
Layla hid Suzanne so she didn’t have to see the posts at all. But sometimes an interaction between Suzanne and Liam—a comment, a shared funny meme—would make its way onto Layla’s timeline and her intuition would give her a little nudge. A little warning. Maybe you should pay attention to this, it said.
And now Liam had moved them right into Suzanne’s neighborhood. Layla might not have known she lived there, but Liam sure did. It was a large residential development, so unless Suzanne lived on their street—and Layla didn’t think she did, because she and Liam had met most of their closest neighbors, at least in passing—the chances were good that Layla wouldn’t run into Suzanne unless she wanted to. If she confronted Liam about it, he could argue that he wasn’t hiding anything about who lived in the neighborhood from Layla. It was all right there in Suzanne’s Facebook posts.
Layla received her second shock of the evening when she ran into Rick, Storm Warning’s former bass guitarist, on her way back from the bathroom. “Layla!” he shouted, throwing his arms around her and giving her a big hug.
“Oh, my God. Are you playing tonight?”
“Yep. Formed a new band a couple years ago. We’re building a pretty steady following on the country-club and private-event circuit.”
“Wow. I must really be out of the loop. I didn’t know.”
“You should sit in with us tonight.”
“Thanks, but I’m here with my husband. We moved into the neighborhood a few months ago and just popped by to check it out.”
“Feel free to join us onstage if you change your mind. I better go. We’re going on soon. Man, it’s great to see you again, Layla. Reminds me of old times,” he said.
“You too.”
Once the band started playing, Layla took it all in. She had told Liam about running into Rick as soon as she returned from the bathroom. “Cool. I hope they play some of my favorites,” he said.
They did.
The set list wasn’t exactly the same and they’d added a lot of current songs, but when they played the songs they used to play at Connie’s, Layla closed her eyes, transported, remembering how she felt back then and longing to experience it once again.
She didn’t say much on the way home. Liam had had too much to drink, so he slumped against the passenger-side window as she drove along the darkened streets of their new neighborhood. “The country club membership would practically pay for itself,” Liam said. “Do you know how many sales are made over drinks in the dining room?”
“We can’t afford it,” she said, and her tone was firm. No matter how much fun she’d had, the numbers didn’t lie, and if she didn’t shut this down right now, his desire to join would only grow. The country club would become the new shiny toy Liam would want.
“I think we can,” Liam said, and the steel in his tone matched hers.
Neither of them said anything during the rest of the short drive. But Liam brought it up again when they were getting ready for bed. “You can’t tell me you didn’t have a great time tonight,” he said. His tone was much sweeter now.
“I did have a great time,” she said as she stepped into her pajama pants and pulled a T-shirt over her head. “And now I’m tired and I want to go to bed.” She didn’t have the energy to argue with a man who made his living talking people into buying whatever he was selling.
“I think we should consider it.”
“No, we absolutely shouldn’t.”
“I know what this is about. This is because of Suzanne,” he said.
“I don’t give a shit about Suzanne. In fact, I give so few shits about Suzanne, she’s not even a factor in this equation. We can’t afford it. It’s too much money and I’m not going to lose sleep worrying about how we’re going to pay for it. I can’t handle it anymore.”