She followed his truck in her car for the three miles into town. She thought maybe she should call Nate, tell him she was meeting Tripp. In another life, he’d have gotten a kick out of this. Back when Holden was alive, and she and Nate and Alecia and Bridget were a foursome, they’d have parties at Nate and Alecia’s.
Sometimes he’d come to Nate’s without a date and flirt with Bridget and Alecia, vying for their attention, the men oblivious or just not caring or even teasing them all. Holden would say here comes your boyfriend and laugh, and Bridget would redden. Or she remembered one of his girlfriends, Aubrey with the perm, who worked nights at the Quarry Bar, who sat incongruously at the living room card table next to Alecia. Alecia with her Seven jeans and her straight blond hair. Aubrey went out to smoke a cigarette and Alecia had hissed across the table, Jesus, Tripp, are you slumming for women now? And Bridget had elbowed her, because honestly, the girl-on-girl trash talk irritated the living shit out of her. Didn’t they get enough bullshit from men and now they had to give it to each other? Tripp would say, Aw, A, you’re such a bitch sometimes. Bridget had laughed, because that, at least, was true. Tripp would put his arm around Bridget, his big hand squeezing her shoulder, and say, listen, my two favorite women are already taken. Holden would roll his eyes and later say, I don’t know how anyone can stand that guy. Bridget would defend him, he’s just kidding around, lighten up. But lightening up wasn’t in Holden’s repertoire and he only tolerated Tripp because Nate loved the guy. Their card nights had always seemed like postcollege shenanigans, where the rules of normal society didn’t exactly apply and they could all be as ridiculous as they wanted with few consequences.
But now the weird part was, Bridget was available and Holden was dead, and none of them had partied like that in what seemed like years. Since Gabe was diagnosed, at least. Three years felt like a lifetime. Sometimes she asked Nate how Tripp was; he even once told her that Tripp was engaged—maybe to the woman in the picture on his desk. At the time, she’d been oddly sad about it.
And now, Tripp was here. She remembered the way his fingers clutched her arm as she leaned into him at the mill, gentle and firm. It made her wonder what his hands would feel like on her bare skin and then chastise herself for the thought. But truthfully, the idea had been there for a very long time, if only in a boozy afterthought way. If she was truly honest about it, she’d always used to put on a little bit more makeup, her shirt a little lower cut, her hair a bit more curled on the nights she thought Tripp might come.
Now he sat across the booth from her at The 543 giving her a grin she’d thrilled at only a few years ago, and the jolt under her skin went up her arms and straight up into her hair, then dissipated, instantly, like static.
She wasn’t that same person. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn lipstick. Her clothes hung on her—she’d been curvy at one point, but a sporadic diet of frozen dinners and red wine for dinner had run the curves right off her body. Now she had no hips, no waist, just a straight blob from her neck to her knees, and had Aunt Nadine seen her now, she would say girl you gotta stand up twice to cast a shadow. The jacket Bridget wore had been Holden’s spring jacket—a tan canvas, utterly unfashionable with no shape whatsoever. She was a widow now, still having sex dreams about a man who died a year (nearly a year, must call Petra!) before, and being content with orgasming in her sleep and calling it a good night.
Dating was a laughable proposition. Then again he hadn’t asked.
She ran a hand through the ends of her hair.
They both ordered coffee. Tripp suggested pancakes and Bridget went along with it because food didn’t have much taste and she truly didn’t care. The waitress took away their menus and the pregnant silence was followed by them both speaking at once.
“So, do you think—” Bridget started.
“What do you want—” Tripp said.
They laughed. Tripp motioned for Bridget to talk first.
“I was going to ask you, do you think Lucia and Nate are together?” She shook out a sugar packet and tore the top.
“I don’t know. I called Nate just before I saw you at the mill—”
“Did you follow me?” She interrupted him without thinking.
“I did,” Tripp conceded, stirring his coffee. “I had a hunch you wouldn’t go home. You left my house in such a rush. Tell me, why are you so intent on figuring this all out? It doesn’t seem like you believe Nate. You don’t believe Lucia, do you?”
Bridget considered this. It was a perfectly fair question, and one she’d been asking herself the entire drive to the mill earlier. Again, because today seemed like a particularly good day for honesty, she had to admit maybe it was the curiosity of the whole affair that pulled at her. I mean, what else did she have? Besides Petra and the perfect maple tree, which seemed pretty stupid now. For God’s sake, let Petra find the tree.
“I think I believe Nate. I do. He’s not a cheater. I’ve known him for years.”
“Does a cheater have a type?” Tripp asked slowly, unfolding and refolding his napkin.
“Oh, I don’t know. I think so.” But then Bridget flashed on Holden, on Watercress 6:30, on that broken red acrylic fingernail, each so seemingly innocent. Holden—stiff, conservative, predictable Holden drinking one (and only one) bourbon and water on the rocks at the bar after his medical conference—had taken a red-fingernailed radiologist to his bed. He didn’t seem the type, either. He’d voted for Bush. “Maybe not,” she conceded.
“Alecia cheated on Nate, did you know that?”
Bridget looked up then, stunned. “No. When?”
“Years ago, before they were married maybe? Someone kissed her at a work thing. This is how life happens, though. There’s no type for anything. People are just doing their thing, being people, right?”
“Maybe. But with a student?” Bridget tried to figure out if he was defending Nate. It was one thing to explore a kiss at a work function when you had a boyfriend, but it was quite another to hunker down with a student when you had a wife and a disabled son at home who depended on you.
“I don’t think so.” He moved in his seat, tucking his hands under his legs and leaning forward. “Lucia being missing? This changes things, I think. They’ll gun for him. Harper already had a closed case on the guy for institutional assault. I don’t know if it would have stuck. He was talking to the DA. But he wanted Nate, for sure.”
“Should you be telling me this?” Bridget practically whispered, looking around. The closest occupied table was ten feet away, but still.