—
We had dinner with the Dillons every Friday night—it had become a standing date, a tradition. Really, we spent so much time with them that it was almost hard to remember how we’d filled our days before. They were low maintenance, which I came to appreciate more than anything—we could call them last minute to get dinner on a Tuesday, or they’d invite us over Saturday afternoon when Jimmy was cooking a brisket. It was just easy, especially compared to making plans with Colleen and Bruce, where we had to schedule everything weeks in advance and always ended up doing something complicated, like driving to Virginia or watching the Caps play in Bruce’s company box.
When we were in New York, the only other couple we’d ever spent a lot of time with was Chrissie and Joe, who’d both gone to college with Matt. We often went out to dinner with them in the city, and once wine tasting for the weekend in North Fork. But our friendship was more out of necessity than anything else—we were one of the only other married couples in Matt’s group of friends, so if they wanted to do coupley things, we were their only choice. The three of them had known one another for so long that sometimes hanging out with them felt like a college reunion that I’d ended up at by mistake. Chrissie was one of those girls who always wanted to make sure I knew my place, wanted to remind me that she’d known Matt when he was just eighteen, and she made a point of referencing inside jokes or calling people by their college nicknames, so that I spent much of the conversation one step behind, asking, “Wait, who is Cheeks? And why did Cheeks hate milk shakes?”
Sometimes when the three of them were talking, I dug my fingernails into my thighs, just to have something to do.
But with the Dillons, it was different—I don’t know if it was because we all met one another at the same time or if it was just a matter of chemistry, but our foursome could happily split off into any combination. Jimmy was a big fiction reader, and he and I traded books back and forth, e-mailed each other reviews of new novels we wanted to read. Sometimes when we were discussing a book, I’d hear Matt or Ash (neither of whom read much fiction) say to the other in a mocking voice, “Shhh…don’t interrupt. They’re in middle of another book club meeting.”
When we were over at their house, Matt (a huge TV snob) would even watch The Voice or The Bachelorette. “As a joke,” he’d say. I thought maybe he was just doing it to be polite or to blend in (since Jimmy was an unapologetic fan of crappy TV), but once I saw Matt lean in close during a rose ceremony.
Matt relaxed around them in a way he couldn’t with any of the other people we’d met. I’d never thought of my husband as an anxious person, but DC had turned him into one. It was like he constantly monitored his behavior, making sure that he was acting appropriately. But around Jimmy, he wasn’t worried if he was drinking too much or being too loud (maybe because Jimmy was always drunker and louder) and he was able to actually just enjoy himself.
On the weekends when the Dillons were out of town or we couldn’t get together, we felt lost. Sometimes we went out anyway, just the two of us, but it was always a quiet dinner, like we didn’t know how to go on a date without Jimmy and Ash there, and sometimes we didn’t even bother going out, just put on sweatpants and ordered takeout. If I thought about it too much, the whole thing made me nervous, like maybe we needed the Dillons to be happy.
It was almost like the four of us were all dating each other, like we were one big couple. I tried to explain that to Colleen once and she wrinkled her nose. “How kinky,” she said.
“Gross,” I’d said. “Not like that. You’re such a perv.”
—
The Fourth of July was on a Sunday, which meant that we’d have that Monday off. We were all delighted with the idea of a three-day weekend, and we made plans way in advance—a BBQ at the Dillons’ on Friday, Saturday we’d be at Matt’s parents’ club—golfing in the morning, hanging out by the pool in the afternoon, and dinner in the dining room that evening—Sunday we’d watch fireworks on the South Lawn, and Monday, we’d recover.