*
Caitlin was laughing so hard at George’s story that Finn was reminded of the Caitlin he’d been drawn to back when they were in school together. The Caitlin who baked cookies for her friends when they were having bad days and brought them all homemade noodle soup when they got sick—even in the dorms, where there was a communal kitchenette on each floor that no one else ever used—but who also would swear like a sailor and tell the raunchiest jokes of any girl he’d ever met when she got drunk. This Caitlin was sweet and generous and good at everything she did, a class act with a charming irreverent streak, but above all she was fun. It was jarring to him to see her laugh this way and to realize that the woman who’d been sitting subdued next to him on the couch for months was in fact his fun-loving friend just waiting for an occasion to burst back out. And apparently having George back in town and Finn over for a fancy dinner and maybe one too many glasses of her perfectly paired wine was it.
George’s last trip had wrapped with a couple of days in Singapore, and he was explaining that his colleague—not one of his favorite travel companions, a guy with a “thick, straight stick up his ass,” as George had put it—had left his sunglasses in the seatback on the airplane and ended up buying some Dolce and Gabbana knockoffs from a peddler.
“So we get into the buffet line for lunch and he slides the sunglasses up on his head and starts helping himself—some fruit, some salad, some bread—and the jackass is completely oblivious of the fact that he’s got these smeared black circles where the sunglasses touched his skin. Like the old shoe-polish-on-the-binoculars trick. The spray paint on these things wasn’t even dry!”
This was too much for Caitlin, who slapped her knee and sank her forehead onto the tablecloth, where she was soundlessly laughing so hard she was shaking the whole big farmhouse table. Finn laughed too, more at Caitlin than at the story. She let out something between a squeak and a snort, and he laughed harder. George looked pleased with himself, as if he thought he owed it to his wife to entertain her after so many days away. Finn caught his eye, and George smiled at him the way two parents might share a glance over a child they equally adored. Finn shifted in his seat.
Caitlin raised her head and wiped tears from beneath her eyes with her napkin. She lifted the bottle of wine to gauge how much was left. It was their second, and they’d put a pretty good dent in it. “Should we finish this up, or bring out some port with dessert?”
A fog was settling over Finn’s brain just the way he liked it—enough to dull his constant pain, his misplaced jealousy toward his happily married hosts, and his guilt over feeling that way toward people who were surely better friends than he deserved. He raised his glass and Caitlin topped him off.
“What’s dessert?” George asked. Caitlin never skimped on the last course—not that she’d skimped on anything. Every aspect of the dinner was impeccable, as Finn had known it would be. He hadn’t had a better meal outside of a restaurant.
She clapped her hands. “Molten lava cakes! It will just be a bit—it takes some doing.” She waved off their offers to help clear the table and disappeared into the kitchen.
The two men were silent for a moment, as if someone had hit the light switch and they had to let their eyes grow accustomed to the dark. George filled his own glass with the rest of the wine and reached behind him to place the empty bottle on the antique server. The dining room was octagonal, with tall sheer-curtained windows and layers of crown molding leading up to an opulent crystal chandelier. When Finn and Maribel had gone apartment hunting in Asheville, they’d hit a few pubs afterward and spent half their time looking up from their barstool perches, admiring the historic ceilings, the stamped tin tiles, the hand-carved wood and decorative mirrors mounted high behind the bottle-lined bars. He thought of their foursome’s champagne toast that night on the stairs, the promise of more celebrations to come. Maribel would have loved this room, this place, this food, George’s story about his coworker who got his comeuppance. Why had he not brought her around when he had the chance? And how could he make it through without her here, or anywhere, now and for the rest of his life?
“I know we’ve always been friends mostly through Caitlin,” George said, jarring Finn from his thoughts. Finn looked up, and George was looking at him earnestly, like someone in a Yale class photo. “I was hoping to change that, now that you’re right next door, but I swear I’m barely in town enough to stay married to my own wife.”
Finn laughed uneasily. He knew it was supposed to be a joke, but he never knew how to respond to things like that—to any reference to marriage at all, let alone the idea of one on the edge.
“I do try to hit the links when I’m home on weekends, though,” George continued. “That’s kind of my one indulgence that Caitlin doesn’t have much interest in. You still golf at all? There was that time in Sunny Isles, but I was nursing such a hangover that I admit I don’t remember who was and was not in his element.”
“A little.” Finn shrugged. “Not much, actually. I’m not very good.”
“Excellent. I’d like to actually win once in a while.”
Finn laughed.
“No, seriously. These guys at the club—half of them don’t even have jobs anymore. They just invest. And spend their spare time on the driving range, apparently. It’s not a fair fight. How about next Saturday? I usually try to get an early tee time so I can be back by the time Cait’s done with the farmers’ market and her yoga class. You’d be doing me a favor if you came along, honestly.”
“I’ll let you know.”
George nodded, taking him in. “Look,” he said, “something else I wanted to mention. A lot of guys who spend so much time out of town would not appreciate their wife spending time with a single guy next door.”
Finn stiffened and turned his attention to the delicate stem of his wineglass. How had he not seen this coming? Was he so grief stricken that he was blind to the social norms of the world? His mind was already racing ahead to form an apology, but George was still talking.
“I’m not one of those guys,” he went on.