“If I burned his house down and threw his dad’s signed Gil Hodges home run ball in the ocean, it wouldn’t piss him off as much as me sleeping with somebody else right away.”
“Then go get it and get it good.”
“I don’t want to get it. The last thing I can think about right now is dating somebody else.”
“Whoa there. Nobody said anything about dating. This is sex. No strings attached. Speaking to you as a twice-divorced woman, you are not allowed to date somebody new for six months. Sex is fine. Sex is good. Dating’ll get you into trouble. Also don’t buy a car, a house, a Birkin bag, or go to Vegas with five thousand dollars in your underwear.”
“Did you do all of those after your divorce?”
“Everything but the Birkin bag. Those bitches are pricey. So no bags. Unless you get one for me, too. But sex, yes.” Kira pointed her well-manicured finger right at Joey’s nose. “Have insane, hot, totally meaningless sex until you remember what a goddess you are and you’ve forgotten Ben’s name because you’ve been too busy screaming some other guy’s.”
Joey took Kira’s finger in her hand and squeezed it.
“You’re a good friend. Thank you for enabling my bad behavior.”
“It’s what friends are for.”
The drop-off lane was clogged with cars. As much as Joey hated to be alone, she couldn’t put it off any longer.
“Thanks again. I’ll text you when I land.”
“Do it. And text me when you find a new guy.”
Joey grinned. “I will. If I find a new guy.”
“You will. I know it. Just remember—it’s Oregon. That’s hipster and lumberjack territory.”
“So?”
Kira pointed at her inner thighs. “Watch out for beard rash downstairs. I speak from experience.”
* * *
JOEY BOARDED HER FLIGHT—a nonstop, thank God, which meant she’d land in Portland in under two hours. Being alone on a plane, cut off from the world with nothing but her thoughts to keep her company, was not what a woman who discovered she’d been inadvertently in love with a married man for two years needed. With no internet to distract her, all Joey could do was think about the signs she missed. Ben had been the seemingly ideal boyfriend—always attentive, always thoughtful. If he had to miss her birthday one week because he had to be in LA, he’d give her the belated birthday celebration of a lifetime the next week when he came back to Honolulu. Two nights at a five-star hotel. Room service. Wine. A helicopter tour the next day. And sex, so much sex, all night long. But no matter how much she tried to reciprocate, he wouldn’t let her. She’d offered to do her part, come visit him, even get a transfer to California. He’d have nothing of it. She was his “sanctuary,” he’d said. He couldn’t imagine Hawaii without her, he’d said. Someday he’d take over as president of the company and live in Honolulu with her, he’d said. She just had to hold on a few more years, and then they’d be set for life.
Wait a few more years? Yeah, she had to wait a few more years until he had the money or the guts to leave his wife. If that even was his plan. Maybe he’d been stringing her along. She would never forget that moment Saturday morning when she’d hopped a cab from LAX to his house in West LA. She had his address, of course. She’d seen it on his checks, on work forms, on his California driver’s license. She’d expected him to be home. And he was home. He was home and so was his wife, Shannon. Shannon answered the door with a confused smile and a “Yes? Can I help you?” Joey, equally confused, said, “I’m looking for my boyfriend. Is Ben home?”
That was the moment Ben stepped into the hallway, his Nikes squeaking slightly on the ocean-blue tile flooring. He was a handsome man, almost six feet tall, dark hair, dark eyes, a devilish grin but with a dimple that made a girl forgive the devil in him.
If she’d had any hope this was all a mistake, it
evaporated the second Ben opened his mouth.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Ben had said with unmistakable fury. He’d never looked at her like that before, talked to her like that before. He’d always been happy to see her. If he wasn’t happy to see her, it was because that pretty lady holding the door open and looking at him, then looking at her and then looking back at him, wasn’t some well-dressed cleaning lady, but his wife. And Ben’s wife was having as bad of a day as Ben’s girlfriend was.
“Surprise” was the only word Joey could think to say. Shannon had a few other choice words to say and Joey heard them all as she walked to the curb where her cab waited just in case Ben hadn’t been home. As the cab pulled away, Joey had turned around to see Ben running toward her. She couldn’t read the look on his face—not fury, but not regret, either. She didn’t care why he ran after her. Didn’t care at all. She was numb with shock and grief. She felt nothing and would never feel anything but nothing again. At least that’s what she told herself as she fixed her makeup in a bathroom in the Portland airport. If she never loved again, she’d never hurt again and wouldn’t that be lovely?
After doing the best repair job she could on her face, she picked up her luggage and the rental car. It was nice doing normal things, nice to do boring human things. Life went on. Cars still needed renting. Luggage still needed picking up. Brothers still got married. Sisters still went to their weddings. The world didn’t end just because a man told a lie. That was good. The world would have ended a long time ago and many times over if it did.
The drive from the airport to her family’s old cabin near Lost Lake on Mount Hood was about two hours. Two beautiful hours once she was out on Highway 26 and heading west. She passed over a subtle ridge and what little was left of the city disappeared. There was nothing around for miles but the mountain, a billion trees and low-hanging clouds that brushed the treetops and rolled through the forest like gentle smoke. While Oregon was known for its evergreens, the forests had deciduous trees aplenty and they’d all gone wild with autumn colors—red and orange and lemon yellow. Even in her grief, Joey admired the beauty, took comfort in it. Hawaii was beautiful like nowhere else in the world, but damn, she had missed Oregon’s forests. The scent—there was nothing like it. Clean, so clean—pure pine and fir and all so light and airy that if you didn’t stop to breathe in deeply enough you’d miss it. But if you did breathe in on a rainy, windy day you might just smell what the world smelled like right after it was born. The trees lay so thick on Mount Hood they looked like an oil painting with the paints piled in heavy layers of emerald and black.
Finally she turned onto the winding gravel road that lead to her parents’ old Lost Lake cabin. Her phone vibrated in her pants pocket and she fished it out—carefully.
“Kira, you owe me five hundred dollars if I get caught talking to you,” she said when she answered.
“What? Five hundred dollars?”
“Five-hundred-dollar fine in Oregon for talking on your phone while driving.”