Just Lunch Read online

“Cautious,” he finishes.

  My eyebrows lift in surprise. “I’m not. Not at all. I think some people might even say I’m reckless.”

  At that, he outright grins at me. “I look forward to seeing that side of you then, Danielle.” His eyes are fixed on mine and I feel that stab of attraction, and of something like fear again. How can I be doing this … feeling this for someone else?

  “So …” he begins to back away, ready to leave me to my run, and head for his truck. “Lunch? Saturday?”

  I nod, without thinking.

  “Cool” he says. “On Saturday, maybe we can run first, go shower—in our respective homes,” he adds, “and then meet up for a meal.”

  I nod again. “Okay.” I sound like an automaton.

  When he is gone, I run harder than I have in a while, trying to sort through the feelings of exhilaration, excitement and adrenaline that are surging through me. It is all so new, having someone attractive be attracted to me. Rand was the first. In so many ways, Rand is my first.

  When we talk every night, I feel like he is next to me. His voice rumbles through me, and I get excited just listening to it, right there in my ear. I squeeze my thighs together when he speaks, and I remember what it is like to have him between them; how he makes waves of pleasure radiate through me so that I disappear from myself.

  Lying there, I remember the feeling of his tongue in my mouth, and the taste of him when it is. I can’t imagine feeling that way with another man.

  He is my familiar, now. More than a lover, more than a friend. We confide in each other, and tell each other aimless, pointless stories. He is the best friend I have, next to Trudie, and in some ways, even closer than Trudie. Because she seems to be friends with another Danielle, whom I have long let go of, but whom she refuses to acknowledge is gone.

  What is most confusing about right now as my feet hit the pavement in perfect rhythm, and my breaths come in deep, evenly-spaced bursts, is that I want to tell someone about Eric; and the person I most want to tell is Rand.

  “What am I supposed to do now, Freya?”

  “Rand, I said I’m sorry. I got all my dates mixed up. You know I can’t keep up with those boys and all their activities.”

  We had planned a family caravan up to Bristol. Me driving my SUV, and Freya and Garrett following in their minivan with the boys. And together we were all going to get the new townhouse set up. The more hands the better. My nephews would keep Little Rocket occupied, and by sundown on Saturday the place would be done, and my son would feel like it was home, because all his favorite people would be there to help him get acclimated.

  Now, Freya is telling me that she’d screwed up on the calendar and my nephew, Matt has a football game on my scheduled moving day; so they won’t be able to come until the next morning.

  “Hire someone to help,” Freya suggests. “Just for that day. And we’ll be there the next morning.”

  “That’s only part of the problem.”

  In fact, the moving is barely a problem at all. All I’m taking are clothes, linens, toys and some personal effects. The problem is that my son will feel like he’s leaving his home behind. He’ll see the bins with clothes, and some of his favorite things, and feel like he is being displaced, or losing something. He has had enough loss for his short life. I don’t know if I can handle it if he gets into one of his rages when he realizes the change that is coming. And my sister is especially good at calming him down, my nephews are experts at distracting him.

  And me? When he gets that way, I am lost, and completely out of my depth.

  “You’re anticipating a problem where there might be none, Rand,” Freya says. “He already knows that he and his Daddy are going to a new place, and that …”

  “Actually …”

  “Actually, what?” Freya’s voice is incredulous.

  “I thought I would tell him tonight. And then …”

  “Jesus Christ, Rand!”

  “I know! But I thought …”

  “What? That I would tell him? That’s what you were thinking, isn’t it? That I would be the one to break it to Rocket that he’s going to be sleeping in a new house sometimes, and going to a new daycare? Have you even begun to interview sitters, or …?”

  I say nothing, and hear my sister exhale deeply.

  “Putting things like that off only makes it worse in the end. So, haven’t you been packing? Hasn’t he seen you pulling all his stuff out and …”

  “That’s tonight.”

  “Rand.”

  “It wouldn’t be that much stuff. I figured …”

  “Oh God.” I picture my sister running her hand over her face in exasperation. “You act like you just picked him up from an orphanage yesterday,” she says, sounding angry. “Like you have no earthly clue who he is and how it is you wound up responsible for him.”

  “Look, can you help me, or …”

  “Yes. I will be there the morning after you get there,” she says. “But for the move itself, I suggest you get your ass in gear and figure out who can be your support system for getting your son ready to move part-time to Connecticut.”

  When she hangs up on me, only one name comes to mind.

  I reach Dani while she’s finishing up with a client, and she promises to call me right back. I spend the time as I wait, thinking about how to phrase my request. You don’t ask just anyone to help you pack up your kid and help prepare him for a move he doesn’t even know is coming. You don’t ask just anyone to come on a four-hour drive to execute that move, and to be your backup when your three-year-old possibly loses his shit.

  But then again, Dani isn’t just anyone.

  “What’s up?” she asks when she calls me back.

  “You got a minute?” I ask, still stalling on how exactly to ask the favor.

  “Sure.”

  I take a deep breath and describe the problem. I expect—because that’s the way she is—that Danielle will say ‘yes’ right away. But she doesn’t. There is a long pause and I’m thinking I might have messed up by asking too much.

  “When are you planning to leave?” she asks finally.

  “Tomorrow morning, really early.”

  “And come back when?”

  “Sunday.”

  “Oh. It’s just that there’s this thing I have Saturday, that …”

  And she stops so abruptly that I suddenly get a pinprick of intuition at the back of my neck. I wait for her to finish her sentence, but she doesn’t. With each second that she doesn’t say something, my guess becomes closer to a conviction.

  Does she have a fuckin’ date on Saturday?

  “Sure. I can do it,” she says eventually.

  “If your … thing is really important, you could take the train back,” I say. I’m trying not to sound sarcastic, and think I’ve failed, but Dani doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Yeah,” she says. “That’s an option. Okay, cool. D’you need me to come over tonight to help with getting things together, or …?”

  “Nah,” I say. “That’s a’ight. I got that part covered.”

  I had been hoping for her to come over, but now I’m feeling some type of way about what I’m now almost one-hundred percent certain is true. I weigh the options: I could just ask her outright: what the hell about her and me made her think I was cool with her dating?

  On the other hand—and the only thing that stops my outburst is the countervailing thought: what was there about her and me that would make her think otherwise?

  “Okay, so I’m going to run,” Dani says, still clueless about my change in mood. “I have someone else in a couple minutes. Text me when you know exactly what time you’re picking me up tomorrow.”

  Once she’s gone, I search my memory for every conversation Dani and I have had about our relationship, and come up empty. Shit. Is that possible, that there are none? That we haven’t talked about it at all?

  But I know the answer. The truth is, when I was a completely free and single man, I dreaded those ta
lks. I avoided them like a case of herpes. And because I got together with my wife in such a weird way, and was so publicly branded ‘hers’ so soon, those talks were basically beside the point. Women knew from jump that I was not available for anything like a commitment, and even Faith, my wife, knew that my hold on monogamy was non-existent.

  Danielle, I realize now with a little shock, is the closest I have ever come to being in a real relationship. She is literally the only woman I have ever been faithful to.

  My sister takes pity on me, and shows up just as Little Rocket and I are sitting down to dinner. She even sits with us, and eats some of the mac-n-cheese with chicken nuggets that are our meal for the evening. Across the table, she stares me down, making sure I know that even though she is rescuing me—again—she thinks it’s high time I pull my shit together. I can’t say I disagree.

  “Baby, let’s go upstairs and get settled while your Daddy cleans up,” she says when Little Rocket is done eating and has begun playing with the remnants of food on his plate.

  As they leave, she glances back at me.

  “Rand,” she says. “Come join us when you’re done.”

  She sounds like a mother; like she’s being my mother. And for about the hundredth time in this whole parenting thing, I feel useless. When I am alone in the kitchen, I sit at the breakfast bar and take a deep breath.

  Faith, my wife, was a great mother. Despite all the other things that complicated her life and mine, she still managed to stay focused on our son for the short time she was part of his life. Lately, I’m remembering how she used to stop all the action when he woke up from a nap, or came toddling into a room.

  It didn’t matter if she was getting her hair done for one of the never-ending series of photo shoots she seemed to be participating in, or dictating to someone the required one thousand words for her blog ‘Mommy Chic.’ She always gave Little Rocket as much of her attention as she could when he was around.

  Lately, more of that is coming back to me, like a fog receding from the surface of a lake and revealing the clear water beneath. I remember how she tried to get me to do the same, and how I refused. Don’t get me wrong, I loved—love—my kid. He is everything. But at the time, the distractions were so many, and time seemed so scarce. And I had her, after all, filling in the places where I fell short.

  Sometimes, now, I wish I had paid attention to the small steps Faith tried to take toward change. I don’t know whether it would have changed anything between us, because I was married to her, but neither committed, nor in love. But maybe, I could have been a better father then, and would be a better father now. If I had paid attention. If I had just tried.

  I find Freya and Little Rocket sitting on the floor in the center of his room. The rug is custom-made to look like a train-track running around the perimeter of the space. And inside the tracks, is a complex pattern of streets and lanes, over which Little Rocket runs his cars, and plays at building things. He and Freya are sitting dead-smack in the center, and his eyes are wet.

  “Will you and Lance and Matty live there too?” he is asking my sister.

  “No, baby. But we’re coming to visit. We’re coming on Saturday, and we’ll stay Sunday, and all of us will come back together.”

  “Daddy too?” Little Rocket asks, as though I am not standing there.

  “Daddy too,” Freya assures him. Then she shoots me a look, warning me not to contradict her.

  There are teardrops on the ends of my son’s long, thick lashes. I feel my heart lurch.

  “Are there little boys and girls there?” he asks, his voice clogged with tears.

  “Yeah, man. Lots of new friends for you to make.” I sit next to him and he glances at me out of the corner of his eyes, like there is nothing I say that he is willing to believe.

  “Is it a house just like our house?” he asks. He is still addressing his questions to Freya, and I see from that just how much trust I have broken with him. I should have told him sooner.

  I’m fucking up. I just can’t seem to stop fucking this up.

  “Not like this house, no,” I say. “Smaller. But it’s nice. And there’s …”

  But I don’t get to finish because Little Rocket is legitimately crying now. He crawls onto Freya’s lap and wraps his little arms around her neck, and begins to sob into her shoulder. Looking up, my sister catches my gaze. She tightens her hold around Little Rocket. Her expression is reproachful. It says: ‘I told you so. Idiot.’

  ~7~

  By the time I am up at six in the morning, and waiting for Rand to show up for the drive to Bristol, I still haven’t mustered the will to text Eric and cancel our lunch date. I planned to do it last night, but now I tell myself that it is still a day away, and so maybe I can make it work.

  I can take a train back home, and meet him at the track as planned. We’ll run, and then we’ll go to lunch. I’m still excited, still curious about what that will be like, going on an actual date with a man, who asked me out in the conventional way.

  Nothing about me and Rand has been conventional. And even though I don’t feel like I’m missing something when I’m with him, the excitement I feel from having been asked out by Eric makes me second-guess whether I have been. And of course, there’s the soundtrack of Trudie’s voice in my head.

  But now, that excitement is dimmed by another concern, helping Rand get Little Rocket happily settled into their new part-time home in Connecticut. I like that he thought of me, that he trusts me to do this with him and his son, but part of me also feels like we’ve skipped a step. Rand has never taken me to lunch. He has never taken me to dinner. Apart from the very first day we met, we have always eaten in, after getting takeout, or I’ve cooked.

  He has never seen me dressed-up, and I have never walked into a restaurant with him on my arm. We have never even been to his sister’s house for a casual brunch. And now, someone else, someone I have known for less than three weeks has looked at me, and wasted no time in letting me know that I am a woman he wants to ‘date.’

  I think of Trudie’s warning that I need to ‘do me.’ And I know I shouldn’t attach undue significance to it, but now, sitting in my living room with half-open eyes, preparing to help Rand go straighten out his situation, I can’t help but wonder whether she’s right. Am I being taken for granted? Am I being used?

  I hear the Land Rover’s horn, just as I am thinking about calling him. And though I know he has to honk only because he can’t get out and leave Little Rocket in the car, I am a little annoyed as I lock my apartment and lug my overnight bag outside. The annoyance fades when I get into the SUV and glance into the backseat.

  Little Rocket is strapped into his car seat, his neck lolling to one side. He is fast asleep and his neck pillow has fallen to the floor. Rand hasn’t even dressed him so he is still in his full-length onesie pajamas but with a denim jacket over it, and sneakers on his feet.

  I look at him, and then smile at Rand.

  He smiles back, and leans in to kiss me. He tastes like toothpaste, and coffee.

  “Ready?” he asks. His voice is hoarse still, with sleep.

  “Ready.”

  Rand’s eyes linger on me, and the emotion in them is unmistakable. I feel something like a tingle. It reminds me what he means to me, and how much more he is beginning to mean with every passing day.

  “Are we driving through New York?” I ask.

  “Yeah. That’s why we’re leaving this early,” Rand says. His gravelly, early-morning voice is sexy. As is his rough, unshaven face. “Didn’t want to hit too much traffic once we get there.”

  If I saw this face more often, I have a hard time believing that Eric, or anyone else would stand a chance. As we pull out of my complex and onto the main road, his hand falls off the steering wheel and onto my thigh. Like the kiss, it just feels perfect there.

  I think I fall asleep for a few minutes because the next thing I know, we are on the highway, and cruising at a smooth, even speed. Rand is listening to music—jazz
, turned down low—and he is bopping his head to the beat.

  “We’re going to have to change that to something else,” I say.

  “Don’t you touch that …” he warns as I lift my hand. “Not ‘less you want to lose those fingers.”

  I shake my head. “Fine. Can we stop for coffee at least?”

  “In another fifteen minutes,” he says. “Just before we get on 95. And speaking of fingers …”

  I laugh. “I know where this is going.”

  He laughs with me and glances in my direction. “Just wondering whether you laid them off and gave your new little toy the job.”

  “Are you seriously asking me about whether I’ve masturbated lately?” I look over into the backseat.

  “He wouldn’t know what it meant even if he was conscious to hear me,” Rand says, noting the look. “So … have you?”

  “Rand. Really.”

  “Have you?”

  “Which? Fingers, or …?”

  “Either.”

  “No,” I say, blushing.

  “I don’t believe you,” he says baldly.

  “Why don’t you believe me?” I laugh.

  “Because it’s been a minute since we …”

  “Less than two weeks,” I correct him. “That’s hardly a drought.”

  “For me it is.”

  He gives me one of those looks, holding it for so long, I almost have to remind him that he’s driving, and that we don’t want to run off the road. But I don’t allude to car accidents with him. For obvious reasons. So, I simply point forward, indicating the direction he should be looking in.

  “Maybe we have too much sex as it is,” I murmur.

  I don’t mean that. Not by a longshot. What I mean is that I want him to be equally focused on doing things with me that don’t involve sex.

  And the minute I say the words, I am sorry I did.

  “For real?” He is looking something between curious, and crestfallen.

  I say nothing, and so he keeps looking over at me, in between looking at the road.

  “Really?” he asks again.

  “No,” I say finally.