Dear debbie, p.8
Dear Debbie, page 8
“I brought you these brownies.” I bring them over to him, glad to have an excuse for entering the office. “I was hoping we could chat.”
Coach Pike accepts the brownies, peeking under the foil wrapping with a look of approval. He doesn’t suggest that I sit down, but I do it anyway.
“I wanted to talk to you about Izzy,” I say. “I found out today that she was cut from the soccer team.”
“Yep” is all he has to say on the matter.
“Well, that confused me,” I continue, “because, as you know, she’s a great player. I watched her play all year last year, and I think she’s one of your strongest players. So I just don’t understand…”
Pike peels back the tinfoil to discover that I wrapped the brownies in several layers of plastic wrap. He looks like he’s considering unwrapping them, but he decides against the effort. “They look good.”
“They taste good too.”
He stares at the chocolaty treats thoughtfully, considering his next words. “Actually, the brownies are part of the problem.”
“Ex…excuse me?”
“At the end of last season,” Pike tells me, “I told Izzy that she was too slow, and she needed to lose some weight before the next season. Fifteen pounds at least. But twenty would be better.”
My jaw drops. “You…you told my fifteen-year-old daughter that she needs to drop twenty pounds?”
“I told her she needs to be faster,” he corrects me. “I suggested that losing weight might be a way to be faster. But she’s not any faster, and on top of that, she’s five pounds more than she was last year at this time. We’ve got two extra girls on the team, and someone had to go. So I had to cut her.”
“Izzy is plenty fast!” I protest.
“With all due respect, Mrs. Mullen, you’re not the soccer coach, are you?” He taps on the tinfoil of the brownie tray. “I’m a soccer coach, and I’m the one who can tell you who is fast enough. Not you.”
It suddenly makes perfect sense that Izzy was mad at me for making brownies. She was mad because my fit, perfect daughter somehow felt like she needed to be smaller.
“Look,” he says, “I agree that Izzy has potential. If she can lose the weight and get faster, maybe I’ll consider taking her back.”
“So it’s about speed.” I shift in my chair. “How fast does she need to be? Like, if we do some running, how fast does she need to—”
“Faster than she is now,” he says without further explanation. “And like I said, the best way to get faster is to lose weight. The treadmill won’t cut it.” He pauses to fold his arms across his chest. “And anyway, nobody wants to watch a bunch of chubby girls running around the soccer field. That eyeful isn’t going to make the crowd happy. Hell, I don’t want to see it.”
My head is spinning. I can’t believe he just said that about a bunch of teenage girls. I want to repeat this conversation to the principal, but he’ll just deny it. If I ever doubted Lexi’s story about the coach “accidentally” walking into the locker room, that doubt is gone. If he hadn’t kicked Izzy off the team, I’d have insisted she withdraw to avoid any further interactions with Pike.
Izzy can’t play the sport she loves because of this man. And worse, he’s making her feel bad about herself. He’s making her feel like she needs to change.
And he’s ogling teenage girls while they’re changing in the locker room.
“I’m sorry I can’t just give in to everything you want.” Pike shrugs, not looking the least bit sorry. “But that’s not the way the world works, and it’s better she learns that sooner rather than later.”
“She deserves to be on the team,” I say through my teeth, although I no longer want her on his team.
“If you want to help your daughter, help her lose that weight,” he says to me. “Stop making brownies all the time. And while you’re at it, it wouldn’t hurt for you to lose a few pounds yourself.”
My teeth are clenched so tightly, I can’t believe one of them doesn’t crack in half. I take a breath, trying to calm myself. I count to ten in my head, then get to my feet.
“Thank you for your time, Coach Pike,” I say.
He nods at me. “Anytime.”
I turn around and exit the coach’s office. All I can think of is that I need to get out of this school before I scream.
But I can’t leave now. I have one more stop to make before I go.
19
COOPER
The house is dark when I get home.
I had thought Debbie would be in the kitchen, working on dinner, and I’m relieved that she isn’t. I didn’t want to be bombarded with questions the second I walked through the door. Although there likely won’t be that many questions. Only one.
What happened with your boss?
The thought of it makes a cold sweat break out along my hairline. It’s a familiar feeling, one that I have grown to hate. All I can think is that there’s only one thing that will make me feel better. There’s only one place I can go right now.
I’ve got to get out of here.
Before I can bolt, I hear the garage door crank open. Damn, I waited too long. I brace myself, knowing that Debbie will be here in another minute. My whole body tenses up.
“Cooper?” Debbie’s voice fills the living room before I even see her. “Why are you standing there in the dark?”
“I, uh…” I don’t have a good answer for her question. Debbie flicks on the light, and I blink a few times as my eyes adjust. “I just got home.”
“Sorry I’m late,” she says. “I was at the grocery store, and it was a lot more crowded than I expected.”
Except she’s not carrying any groceries. That’s weird.
She looks good though. She’s changed out of the clingy dress she was wearing this morning, but she looks great in everything. I still remember the first day I met her, over twenty years ago now, and it was like a bolt of lightning hit me. I hadn’t been thinking about marriage before that, but I knew right away I wanted to marry Debbie. This was a woman I’d never be able to get out of my head.
“How was your day?” I ask her before she can ask me. “Oh, hey, how was the photo shoot?”
She was so excited about it. I’m sure we can kill at least fifteen minutes going over the details.
“It went great,” she says in a chipper voice. “I can’t wait for you to see the pictures.”
I can’t wait either. I’m not into gardening like Debbie is—the truth is, I find plants boring in the same way that other people find tax codes boring—but I’m excited because she’s excited. Maybe I can get one of the photos professionally framed so we can hang it in the hallway. I can do it as a surprise when the article comes out.
I wait for the rush of details about the photo shoot. Debbie loves to tell me all about her day, and I’m usually happy to listen, but right now, she’s strangely quiet. I guess she’s worn out from all the excitement.
“So, uh,” I say. “Anything else happen today?”
She taps her chin as if thinking about it. “Not really. Just an ordinary day.”
“Oh.”
“So…” She grins at me. “How did the conversation with Ken go?”
Well, that didn’t take long.
“It didn’t go…great.”
The smile fades from her lips. “What do you mean?”
I can’t bring myself to tell Debbie that I didn’t get the promotion and then decided to quit. Christ, what will she think of me? So instead, I tell her a version of the truth. “The partnership isn’t going to happen. It’s off the table.”
Eventually, I’ll have to admit to her that I quit. Even worse, I’m going to have to find another job without the benefit of a reference, although my last boss from a decade ago might still vouch for me. If I don’t find something quickly, we’ll have to move. Hingham is expensive, and it’s barely in our price range as it is. We are pretty screwed right now. The thought of it makes me feel like there’s a noose tightening around my neck.
At least we’ve got Debbie’s newspaper job to tide us over. It’s not much, but it’s something. Worse comes to worst, I can beg for my job back—probably with a pay cut.
“Did he say why?” Debbie presses me.
“Not really.” I avoid Debbie’s eyes and instead look at our clock mounted on the wall. “Hey, are we going to have dinner soon?”
The question throws her off. She obviously doesn’t have a meal prepared, because she just got home. From wherever she was, which definitely wasn’t the supermarket.
Where could she have gone? And how is it possible that she doesn’t have dinner ready? Debbie has dinner ready at six thirty on the dot every night. You could set a clock by it.
“It will be a little while before dinner,” Debbie admits. “An hour? Sorry about that—busy day.”
“You know what?” I rest a hand on my belly and pretend to wince. “I’m starving. Do you mind if I just run out and grab some fast food? Is that okay?”
Debbie is a stickler for family dinners, so I expect her to protest. But instead, she smiles at me. “Of course. I’ll probably just throw together some sandwiches for me and Izzy. Lexi is having dinner out with Zane tonight.”
Debbie makes a sour face the way she always does when she mentions our daughter’s boyfriend. I have to admit, I don’t think much of the kid either. But I realize my opinion won’t mean much to Lexi.
“So anyway,” she says, “go out and get something greasy. I’ll hold down the fort.”
My shoulders sag. It’s becoming harder and harder to come up with excuses to slip out in the evening. “Do you want me to bring you back anything?”
She tilts her head thoughtfully, and she looks so sweet at that moment, I can’t help but feel a jab of ice-cold guilt. “I would never say no to french fries.”
“You got it.”
As if fries would make up for lying to her face.
Before I leave, I tap out a quick text message on my phone. Then I snatch my car keys from where I left them on the mantel in the living room and head out the front door.
Last year, Debbie—who I might have mentioned is a genius—installed an app on our phones called Findly. It’s sort of like Find My Friends, but with much more impressive accuracy. Jesse was shocked when I told him there was a tracking app on my phone that allowed my wife to know where I was at all times. He announced that I must be pretty whipped to allow her to install something like that. At the time, I couldn’t imagine anything I would be doing that I wouldn’t want Debbie to know about.
And now, as I walk out the front door, I toggle off Findly. If she asks, I’ll tell her I must have been in a dead zone, but I’m sure as hell not sharing my location with her for the next couple of hours. She can’t know where I’m going.
20
HARLEY
I always shower after I get home from Titan Fitness.
Yes, there are showers at the gym. But seriously, they’re gross. If the members knew how seldom they were cleaned, they wouldn’t shower there either. Showers are not self-cleaning, believe me.
Besides, I love long, luxurious, hot showers. I love standing under the burning hot water until my skin turns beet red. I keep turning the heat higher and higher until I’m certain that I’m going to be boiled alive like a lobster in a pot. I stand there until all the hot water is gone, and only then do I come out and wrap myself in a warm, fluffy towel.
Like I said, I love showers.
I have a little basement apartment on a dead-end street, where there’s only one other house that appears to be abandoned, possibly condemned from the looks of it. The couple that lives in the main part of the house are super old and deaf, and they keep to themselves, so it feels a bit like I’m living here by myself. One of these days, I’m probably going to come upstairs to give them my rent check and find one or both unresponsive in the living room. But until then, it’s a nice quiet place to live.
Just as I’m wrapping a towel around myself, my phone pings with a text message. I find it lying on the nightstand in the bedroom and smile when I see the message waiting for me.
Can I come over?
I type out my response:
Absolutely. ETA?
Fifteen minutes.
Oh, yay. That will give me just enough time to blow-dry my hair and apply some makeup for the perfect no-makeup look. I’ll get dressed, but there’s no need to bother with too many clothes, considering they’ll be coming off again shortly, if you know what I mean.
When I’m done dolling myself up, I look myself over in the full-length mirror in my bedroom. Just enough makeup? Check. Hair sexily tousled? Check. Tank top showing just a little too much cleavage? Check.
I look hot. Much hotter than her. I mean, it isn’t even close.
While I’m in the middle of practicing smoldering looks in the mirror, there’s a knock on my door. My heart speeds up in my chest the way it always does when he knocks, and I race across my apartment, practically tripping over an ottoman.
That’s how you know you really like somebody. When you nearly suffer bodily harm in your eagerness to answer the door for them.
I throw it open, and he’s standing there, looking a bit guilty like he always does, but at the same time really sexy. Maybe it’s sexy that he’s guilty. He says he’s never done anything like this before, and I believe it. But there’s no doubt he wants to be here—badly. His gaze is flooded with desire.
“Hey, Harley,” he says.
I smile at him, that flutter in my chest that I always get when he shows up at my door. God, he’s sexy.
“Hey, Cooper,” I say.
He pauses one more beat, and then he steps inside the apartment. He doesn’t waste another second before kissing me. His wife will be expecting him home soon, so there isn’t a ton of time for foreplay. I might be his first affair, but he’s not my first married man. Not even close. I know the score.
“When is Debbie expecting you back?” I ask him as he kisses my neck. I hate to talk about her when we’re having sexy time, but I need to be practical. I want to know how long we’ve got.
“I’ve got about an hour.”
Long enough.
Cooper doesn’t waste any time. He picks me up easily, because he’s been working out. Good thing he has, because that’s where we met. At the gym. When I saw him doing laps on that treadmill, I couldn’t help myself.
As he carries me to the bedroom, I can’t help but think to myself that one of these days, at the end of the hour, he’s going to decide that this time, he’s not going back to her.
21
I know what you’re thinking. I’m a terrible person. A home-wrecker.
And you wouldn’t be wrong.
But the truth of the matter is that humans are not meant to be monogamous. Especially men. Biologically, they have a compulsion to spread their seed to as many women as possible. And also biologically, Debbie is past her childbearing years, whereas Cooper, at forty-six years old, has many reproductive years ahead of him.
Biologically, Cooper is designed to want me.
Cooper and I are lying together in bed. He has his arm around me, and we’re plastered together with sweat. He plants a kiss on my forehead, and it’s so sweet, it almost kills me that he’s going to have to run out of here in another few minutes.
“What if you stayed?” I suggest.
He lets out a pained sigh. “I wish I could. Believe me. Debbie and I are like strangers who are forced to live together.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“It is.” He swallows. “I was losing my mind until you came along, Harley. I wish I didn’t have to pretend anymore.”
“Then don’t. She doesn’t own you.”
“Uh, she sort of does.” Cooper holds up his left hand with the wedding ring on his fourth finger. “A divorce would be rough. She’d take everything.”
“Just half of everything.”
But Cooper shakes his head. I’ve dated a lot of married men, and I know they’ll tell me what they think I want to hear, but I truly believe he doesn’t love Debbie anymore. He hasn’t in a long time. He’s been sleeping in the guest room for years, but he still can’t leave. She’s not stable, and a divorce would send her off the deep end.
And now that I’ve gotten to know Debbie, I know what he means. The woman poisoned her neighbors after all.
It was not my intention to befriend the wife of the man I’m hooking up with. I mean, I’m not a complete psychopath. But then one morning, I was talking to Cindy at the front desk of the gym, and a fortyish woman with a pleasant but somewhat angular face and hair pulled back into a neat ponytail swiped her card, and the name Debra Mullen popped up on the computer.
So of course, I was curious. I’m only human. It’s not like I went to her house and stalked her.
I’m not a stalker in general. But to be fair, Cooper is impossible to stalk. The man has no social media presence, which isn’t uncommon among men his age. When I couldn’t stalk him online, the only way to learn more about him was to do some real-life reconnaissance.
Even so, I just meant to have a conversation with her. But every time she mentioned Cooper’s name, I found myself hanging on her every word. She seemed to have no idea how much trouble her marriage was in. Or else she was trying to hide it from me. After all, you don’t go around telling strangers that you haven’t had sex with your husband in two years.
So I figured if we were better friends, she might be willing to confide in me about Cooper. That was when I invited her to get coffee with me.
One thing led to another, and suddenly we were getting coffee regularly, and then she was inviting me to her book club, and now suddenly we are best friends. I get the feeling she doesn’t have a lot of friends, and the truth is, neither do I. Cooper would be furious if he knew I was spending time with his wife, so I have been careful not to mention it.
