Just Lunch Read online

  “When will that be?” she asks.

  “This weekend sometime.”

  “Cool. I look forward to that.”

  “I might be tied up with moving in for most of Saturday, but let me hit you up when the smoke clears a little.”

  “Absolutely.”

  She is as smooth as silk. There is not a hint of eagerness in her tone; like she could either go out with me, or … wash her hair and it would be all the same to her. But the smoothness doesn’t fool me, because this is the second time she’s dropped a suggestion that we “get together” even though I haven’t once reciprocated. She might be acting cool, but I know I have the upper hand.

  And I can’t lie. I feel a little of the old excitement, and a decent-sized shot of the ego-boost that always comes when a woman most men would salivate over, gives me strong ‘go’ signals.

  I haven’t been out there like that in a while. Haven’t had the urge.

  But Alexa has me curious.

  She reminds me of the women I used to meet all the time, who slipped in and out of my life—and in and out of my bed—stealthily, and without leaving a trace of themselves behind, like ninjas. I used to have a girl in L.A., when I was out there in the game. Her name was Rayna. Whenever I was on the West Coast, we went out, hooked up, and then I would leave for the next game in the schedule, probably across the country.

  And the thing about it was … Rayna didn’t care. She didn’t call, text, or tag me on Instagram. She didn’t ‘like’ my pictures, or send me private messages on Twitter. She was like a ghost, until the next time I was out her way.

  I liked that about her. Even respected that about her. Even though, in retrospect there was probably very little I should have respected about a woman who knowingly, willingly and repeatedly made herself available to a married man. There was very little to respect about myself back then. But Rayna and me? We were like co-conspirators in a crime where the code was silence.

  She wasn’t the only one, but she was the quietest, the most discreet. One time, I ran into her in a hotel lobby in Chicago. She was walking in my direction, and I had Faith at my side, holding Little Rocket. Rayna didn’t miss a step, nor avert her eyes. And she didn’t smile, or give a sneaky wave … She just kept on stepping, giving me just about the same amount of attention as she did the carpet beneath her feet.

  Something about that was just … gangsta. And as shitty as it sounds, those kinds of moves made the sex with Rayna just a dozen times better than it was with all those other chicks. Because we could do anything … I mean anything, and I would swear on my life, she wouldn’t breathe a word.

  Today, though, I can’t remember Rayna’s face hardly at all, and I’ve long forgotten her last name, but something about Alexa’s aura reminds me of her. And I wish to God, I could say that I wasn’t just a little bit excited by that.

  This is crazy. I never should have let Trudie persuade me to look at this.

  I don’t even know why I mentioned it to her in the first place.

  We are eating lunch in the hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant that is midway between her office and mine. Mandarin Palace is the spot where we always meet when we decide to have lunch together, though lately, I wonder why we ever met for lunch.

  After all, we lived together, saw each other in the morning, and then again for dinner because we shared an apartment. Now, the lunches together make more sense, even though I realize—guiltily—that I would not miss them if they happened less frequently.

  Today, in a desperate search for something interesting and engaging to talk about, I mention that Rand may have gotten caught up in the national anthem controversy during his first live broadcast. And then I tell her that his co-worker Alexa counseled him to steer clear of it. Trudie latched onto the name like a pit-bull.

  ‘Alexa Chang?’ she asked, with her eyes wide.

  From that, I guessed that she was a personality I should have heard of, though I haven’t. Trudie was only too happy to whip out her iPad, and so now, I am poring miserably over pictures on Alexa Chang’s Instagram. Of course, she’s on Instagram. It seems everyone is these days. ‘I Instagram therefore I am’ seems to be society’s new credo.

  If you eat a delicious meal and don’t document it on social media, was it really that delicious? If you go to a concert … If you buy a dress … see a funny sign on the side of the road …? Did any of those things really have any meaning if you didn’t get a dozen ‘likes’ or whatever those little heart thingies are, to validate the experience?

  I don’t get it personally, but in this moment, I’m feeling gratified, but also a little wretched that social media gives me the chance to see the woman who—I haven’t told Trudie this part—Rand said he was going out to lunch with, to “celebrate.”

  “You think ol’ girl really knows anything about sports?” Trudie scoffs as we scroll through Alexa Chang’s pictures.

  I say nothing. My eyes are glued to the screen. Actually, Alexa Chang’s photos are mostly shots that are clearly meant to highlight her career, and only occasionally does she have personal shots of her in casualwear, and one or two where she is in a swimsuit in some tropical location, and once, on a yacht.

  She seems to have been intentional about showing some of her assets, but not too often, and not too many. It doesn’t matter. Whether she is wearing a tight, pencil skirt that drops below the knees, or shorts that showcase her long legs, she is gorgeous. She has feline eyes and dark, beautiful skin that looks impossibly smooth across her defined cheekbones. Even in the shots where she seems to have been caught unawares, she looks posed. My heart drops to the soles of my feet.

  “Does he work closely with her?” Trudie asks. Even she is starting to sound a little worried for me.

  I finally look away and reach for my fork again, stabbing at a piece of broccoli though the last thing I am thinking about is food.

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “He’s in-studio and she’s a sidelines reporter … or whatever they call that.”

  I can feel Trudie’s eyes on me as I pretend to be interested in finishing my chicken and broccoli.

  Rand and I haven’t seen each other since his return from Bristol on the evening of the toy party. And when we spoke, he said he was busy getting things together for his and Little Rocket’s partial move to the new place he’s rented. Though they aren’t taking a lot of their things, he said, there were still clothes and other items he is planning to drive up there this weekend and has to pack. And, there’s shopping that he was doing with Freya, for household items.

  I wrack my brain, trying to recall his tone during our last conversation, wondering whether there was any hint in his voice that he might be, I don’t know … different. It’s Wednesday, so that makes it only a few days since I haven’t seen him. I decide I’m being silly.

  “Did I mention I might be running a half-marathon?” I say. I’m determined to change the subject, since my hunch is that Trudie would love to belabor it.

  “A what?”

  “Half-marathon,” I say.

  Trudie twists her lips, and narrows her eyes.

  As I glance at her, I notice something. There is a new definition about her chin. Unless I’m mistaken, she is a little thinner as well. I don’t dare ask, since my significant weight-loss from a size 16 to now an eight is a little bit of a sore spot between us.

  “How far is that?” she asks.

  “A little over thirteen miles.” I can hear how proud I sound, as though I’ve already run it. I need to rein that in, because I don’t want to sound boastful.

  “Better you than me,” Trudie says. She pops a piece of orange chicken into her mouth.

  From my seat, I can smell the tangy sweetness of her meal, and I am dying to swap out my comparatively bland lunch for hers. But now that Eric has convinced me to train to run the Brooklyn event, I feel more single-minded about my diet and, as he puts it, conscientious about what I use to “fuel the machine.”

  Since Saturday, I have seen
him at the track twice and we chat a little before and after our runs, though I’ve avoided going with him to the smoothie bar again. The first time was incidental; the second time would be intentional.

  “You’re really serious about this running stuff now, huh?” Trudie adds.

  “I guess,” I say, shrugging. “It helps clear my head. Sometimes I feel like I can think better after a run. And I definitely feel less stressed.”

  The expression on Trudie’s face is blank, telling me without words that she doesn’t relate, and can’t imagine what I’m babbling about.

  “Well, you look good,” she says.

  And I am surprised by how cool it feels to have her acknowledge that. My “self-improvement kick” as she calls it, has always been received as something selfish, or even accusatory, as though it means she isn’t interested in self-improvement.

  “Anyway …” She lets the word drag. “If I were you, I’d keep an eye on this.” She nods in the direction of her iPad, now flat on the table. A picture of Alexa Chang is still onscreen.

  “I told you,” I say, trying not to sound impatient. “Rand and me … we’re not committed.”

  “What does that mean? Are you checking for anyone else? Because if you are, I would …”

  “There is someone, actually,” I say quickly. “A guy at the track.”

  Trudie looks up at me. “Really?”

  “Yeah. A nice guy who I talk to a little. We run at the same time.”

  For some reason, this news, she seems to greet with approval. She smiles and nods.

  “Well go ‘head then, Danielle.”

  “It’s not like that …”

  “Why not?”

  “Because …”

  “Danielle, no one sticks with the first man they’ve been with. The first one is just … practice. If the guy at the track is attractive and available, why should you restrict yourself to a dude who’s around …” she motions toward the iPad, “… that all day at work. If I were you, I would play the odds. If Randall Reese is not your man, then you’re not his woman.”

  “So, tell me what else you do at work.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  I’m in bed and Dani is on the phone. I can hear by her voice that she’s probably in bed, too. She sounds like she’s lying down, and is half-asleep.

  I think this started when I was still pissed at her about the way we met. Turned out, she withheld some pretty fucking pertinent information that it took me a little bit of time to get over. But even while I was mad at her, I wanted to hear her voice. Didn’t want to see her … or at least, I didn’t want to admit I wanted to see her, so instead, I called.

  But now, every night, after I get Little Rocket in bed, turn off all the lights in my too-large house, and settle into my room, I call Danielle. Our conversations wander all over the map until one of us gets sleepy enough to admit we can’t talk anymore, or, a few times, just falls asleep, with a still-open line.

  “Tell me what you do when you’re not on-air. I don’t understand how they can pay you all that money when you spend only an hour on the air once a week. And you’re not even in the office most of the time. So … what do you … do?”

  “Read. Research … stuff like that.”

  “Okay, but what exactly are you researching and reading?”

  Her willingness to admit her utter cluelessness about some stuff is one of the things I like most about Dani. I can even picture her exact expression right now—eyes open and inquisitive, like a kid sitting in the front of the classroom asking the teacher for an answer all her classmates are too embarrassed to admit they don’t know.

  “Stats. Up-and-coming players we might want to watch. Off-the-field stuff that might impact the game …”

  “Like what? The anthem stuff?”

  “Yeah, that’s one example. But also things like which player was seen going into the office of a sports doctor who specializes in ACL injuries, and whether that means he’s going to be out longer than we thought. Or …”

  “Who was drunk in Vegas …”

  “Hey!” I say, laughing at this reference to one of my most infamous moments when I was a professional athlete.

  “Sorry. Low blow,” she says, laughing a little herself. “But is that the kind of thing you mean?”

  “Yeah. I guess. Although I haven’t had anything like that to cover since I’ve been with the network.”

  “I’m going to start watching you every week,” she says with the air of someone making a resolution.

  I smile. “You’ll be bored.”

  “Maybe,” she says. “But I’ll still watch. Because y’know what I’ve noticed from the little I’ve seen? Like clips from sports shows and stuff?”

  “What?”

  “They’re so, I don’t know, unkind to the players.”

  At that, I laugh again. “Unkind?” I echo.

  “Yeah. Now that I know you, something that used to bother me a little about the coverage you got? It bothers me even more now.”

  “What’s that?” I sit up, listening more closely. In her own goofy, offhand way, Dani drops knowledge when I pay attention.

  “Well … these are young men, most of them. Like, twenty-one, twenty-two on average, when they come out of school for the draft, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And some come from nice middle-class homes, but many don’t.”

  “True.”

  “And so, a team … acquires them and they throw money at them in, like, the six or seven figures. More money than they’ve ever had. Than their family has ever had. And they get all this attention, some of them … and all this access, and all these favors. And people make exceptions for them all the time ... isn’t that what you told me happened to you?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So, is it any wonder they sometimes behave badly? Young, with more resources than they ever believed they would have, and all these people around them kind of enabling them … I just think we can forgive them for some of that. That’s all.”

  I know what she’s doing. She’s not just talking about some faceless ‘young men.’ She’s talking about me, as well. I behaved badly. I had people enabling me. I sometimes still feel the need to be forgiven.

  “Any complete story has to have context. And that’s the context for some of these guys. So, I just think the stories should take that into account, and not be so …”

  “Unkind,” I finish for her.

  “Yeah. The way the stories get told, it’s like these guys are undeserving, when maybe all they are is just … young.”

  I smile. She sounds like she’s about to pass out on me. But still dropping knowledge.

  “You’re a good person, Danielle Erlinger.”

  “You are, too, Randall Reese.”

  “Nah,” I say. “If you only knew …”

  “If I only knew what?” she asks.

  “If you knew that half the time you were talking, I was picturing you naked.”

  On the other end of the line, Danielle laughs. “Oh, I give up with you,” she says. “Goodnight, Rand.”

  “G’night,” I say. “But, hey …”

  “Yeah?”

  “I want to see you tomorrow,” I tell her. “Can I see you?”

  “Rand,” she says. She sounds exasperated. “You can see me whenever you want. G’night.”

  When she hangs up, I’m awake for a little while more. When I told her she was a good person, I meant it. But what I didn’t say was that sometimes I wonder whether she’s not just good, but maybe too good for me.

  ~6~

  “Is that a ‘no’?”

  I shake my head. “No. It’s not a ‘no’, it’s just …”

  Eric is still catching his breath. And so am I, because he’s just asked me out.

  Today, I got to the track a little later than usual and he was already there and finishing up his run. When he was done, he flagged me down on my second lap and said, as casual as could be, that he wanted to take me
to “lunch, or dinner, or something.”

  He said it with such confidence, that I almost can’t believe he’s asking for a date. There is no sense that he has considered I might refuse. Until just now, when he asked if my hesitation meant ‘no.’

  “Good,” he says, still breathing a little heavily. “How’s this Saturday?”

  He’s moving so fast, my head is spinning. It was only a little over a week ago that he first spoke to me. And then we started speaking to each other all the time, as he gave me tips on training, and talked about the marathons and half-marathons he’s done.

  “This Saturday?” I repeat.

  “Yeah. Lunch?” I still say nothing, so he continues. “Or dinner if you prefer. But I feel like us talking at the track wrecks both our workouts, so …”

  “Thank you,” I say, feeling silly. Like, who thanks a man for asking them on a date?

  He smiles at that, as though he is charmed. “You’re welcome?”

  I laugh. “No, I mean, thank you for not wanting to wreck my workout,” I lie.

  Eric nods and pulls in his lower lip, his brow furrowed like he’s figuring me out. “You’re cute,” he says, as if he’s finally arrived at a conclusion.

  “You too,” I blurt.

  And he is. Now, even more so, with the beads of sweat on his forehead, and his sleeveless workout shirt clinging to his lean, well-defined chest. I now know that he’s a fireman. I didn’t know there were full-time firemen in our town, but apparently there are. He told me there’s a lot of down-time, and that while some guys use it to sit around, he uses it in other ways, like working out and trying to stay in peak physical condition. I didn’t say what I was thinking; that I was fairly certain he’s succeeded.

  “So now that we’ve settled that … that we each think the other is cute, how about dinner?”

  “You said, ‘or lunch’,” I remind him.

  “I thought you might find that more comfortable,” he says. “Because you don’t know me that well, yet. And you seem …”

  I wait.