Godiva’s gnarled fingers gripped either side of Jen’s seat—which meant she didn’t have her seatbelt on. As usual. “Jen! Did he or did he not ask you out?”
“He asked if he could see me again, but—”
Godiva thumped back into her seat, as if she were eighteen and not in her eighties. “That is a date!”
“Oh. I wasn’t sure.”
“What? You were married for years—”
“And we never once went out on a date, the way I understood dates were supposed to be. The boy asks you out, you both dress up, he pays for dinner and a movie, and you worry all night if you ate a food that makes your breath a turnoff in case he kisses you, and maybe make out in some car, with a gear-shift poking your spine. First base, second base, third base, will he or won’t he ask. I never missed that kind of thing—it sounded awkward and anxious. Just as well I never had the chance during high school. I towered over the boys. And while a super thin girl could be forgiven for being super tall, as my dad said proudly to me once, I’m built like a Mack Truck.”
“That was then. Good riddance to those attitudes.” Godiva dusted her hands. “But this is now, and I hope you are planning to make some whoopie with Hot Stuff’s lady-dagger—”
Doris choked.
“—before he ups and flies back to Greece.”
Doris’s laughter vanished and her hands tightened on the wheel. Jen cast a fast glance through the windshield, but there were no traffic hazards that she could see.
Godiva patted the back of Jen’s seat. “The important thing is, remember, whenever you get sick of that jacket, I get first dibs.”
“You’ve been saying that since I first met you,” Jen laughed. “Don’t hold your breath.”
“One of the few styles of the late sixties I really liked,” Godiva admitted.
“You can find them now,” Doris pointed out. “And you could afford to buy a set of them, in every color, with the royalties you rake in.”
“Not the same. There’s something about a lived-in one from the time that still has its moxie,” Godiva stated.
“This one is definitely lived-in,” Jen said. “I wore it pretty much every day, after my cousin gave it to me, back in 1975. And he only did because he grew out of it.”
She’d worn it every day until she moved in with Robert, who had pointed out that it wasn’t a practical garment for hard travel. Which was true. The suede was shiny at the elbows, worn thin in places, and the fringes along the sleeves and across the back tended to brush against things, and even get caught if she wasn’t careful. But she loved it anyway.
In recent years it had largely lived in the back of her closet, except for occasional jaunts with the Gang of Four. Today it had seemed somehow right to wear the jacket—it made her feel young and adventurous again. She smiled, letting the fringes dangle across her fingers as she thought about seeing Nikos again.
Godiva said in an uncharacteristically soft voice, “Jen, kidding aside, are you ready for something to happen? You weren’t sure the other day.”
“Yeah,” Jen said. “I’m sure. I realize it might seem kind of sudden, but . . .”
Godiva snorted, sounding more like her usual self. “After four years? If that’s sudden, I’d hate to see what you think slow is.”
“A lifetime is too soon, for some,” Doris murmured. “If that was a person’s one and only. It happens.”
Godiva sighed sharply. “In poems. Not real life.”
Jen decided it was time to cut into an old argument—Godiva had said for years that her motto was like the old rock song, “If you can’t be with the one you love, then love the one you’re with.” Godiva didn’t believe in true love.
Jen said, “I think I was frozen after Robert died.”
Shock, the therapist she’d seen twice had called it. That had made sense. So did the suggestion that her shocky freeze was becoming habit, mixed with guilt because she was st
ill here.
But when the therapist had suggested looking at what had happened, Jen had walked out angrily. Why torture herself? By forcing away that memory, she’d managed to form a scab over the wound of Robert’s sudden heart attack. Numbness was so much better than the raw pain of guilt and grief, and the torment of what-ifs. Raking over that day of horror for the entertainment of some stupid therapist who had never known either of them seemed like pointless misery.
With long practice, Jen shoved aside that train of thought, realized she’d gone silent, and said in her lightest voice, “A couple nights ago I tried sleeping in the middle of the bed for the first time, and you know what? The world didn’t end. So . . . maybe it won’t end if I try to build some kind of new life. I’m still playing it by ear.”
Doris asked, “So what is everyone reading tonight?”