Ladies' Night Andrews, Kay (great novels .txt) 📖

was so disappointed our session with Paula was canceled tonight. That question she asked us Wednesday night—the one about a moment with our spouse when we were happy?” She gave a sheepish smile and pulled her journal out of her pocketbook. “I wrote ten pages! Which is hard for me to believe right now, but I did.”

“Well? Are you gonna read it?” Ashleigh asked, daring the others to shut her up.

Suzanne glanced at the table directly behind them, where two grizzled fishermen sporting three-day beards and sweat-stained T-shirts lolled backward in their chairs, obviously interested in their conversations. “It’s sort of private,” she whispered.

“Let me handle this,” Rochelle said. She stood, hands on hips and faced the table. “Miller, Bud, you guys need to pay up and move on.” She jerked her head in the direction of the door. The men scowled but pulled some rumpled bills from their pockets, threw them on the table, and ambled toward the bar.

“Nuh-uh,” Rochelle called, following in their wake. “You two are done for the night. Unless you plan to actually buy a drink or some food.”

“Oh no, Grace, make her stop,” Suzanne blurted. “I don’t want your mom to chase off paying customers for me, especially your regulars.”

Grace rolled her eyes. “They’re her regular deadbeats. That’s not even their real names. She just calls them that because that’s what they order. A Bud and a Miller. But only one. They eat a boatload of popcorn and generally annoy all our paying customers. Plus, they stink to high heavens. And they’re crappy tippers. Believe me, they’ll be back tomorrow. They’re shameless barflies.”

Rochelle shooed the men out the front door, then returned to the table. “What were you saying, Suzanne?”

Suzanne took another deep breath. “If you guys really want to hear it, I think I’m ready. Don’t worry,” she added hastily. “I won’t read all ten pages. I’ll give you the abridged version.”

She took a gulp of wine and laughed nervously. “Liquid courage, right?”

*   *   *

“It was a Saturday night, and our daughter Darby was playing in an out-of-town soccer tournament. I guess I am the ultimate soccer mom. Usually Darby and I share a room during the tournaments, because Eric rarely goes, and I love giggling and gossiping with her. We are so much closer than most moms and daughters. But this time, Darby specifically asked me not to go because she wanted to room with her two best friends, so I stayed home.

“At first, Eric and I didn’t know what to do with ourselves on a Saturday night alone! We talked about going out to a nice restaurant, but it was raining out, so instead we stayed home. Eric did something he hadn’t done since the years when we first moved in together. He fixed me my favorite dish and cleaned up the kitchen, too. After dinner, we opened a good bottle of wine, and we sat on the sofa together and dialed up a movie on Netflix, a silly little chick flick. But it made us laugh, and parts of it were so romantic. I was stretched out on one end of the sofa, with my shoes off, and Eric was giving me a foot massage. And it was just … so sweet, and tender. I just, I don’t know, got really turned on.”

Suzanne stopped reading. “I can’t … I can’t believe I am reading this out loud. My heart is pounding so hard right now, it feels like it might jump out of my chest.”

“You’re doing great,” Rochelle said, patting Suzanne’s hand.

“Thanks,” Suzanne said, her voice sounding wobbly. “I think I’ll be okay if I just don’t look at your faces while I read. Dumb, huh?”

She stared down at the notebook. “Uh, I’m going to skip over this part.” She blushed furiously, flipping the notebook pages. “And this. Nobody wants to hear this.”

Ashleigh’s hand shot up. “I do.”

“Damn, Suzanne,” Camryn drawled. “Ashleigh’s right for once. Don’t be such a scaredy-cat. You had relations with your husband? Why is that such a big deal? We’re all grown folk here. You said you were going to read, so read already and quit making us beg for the good stuff.”

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Suzanne said, fanning her face with her hands. She turned back to her starting point and began to read again.

“Eric couldn’t believe I was actually initiating sex with him. And I couldn’t either. But I did. I undressed him, right there on the sofa, and he undressed me, and we…”

She bit her lip.

“We did it! We had sex in the family room, on the same sofa where Darby does her homework every night. Eric made me leave the lights on and everything. I don’t know what came over me that night, but it was all different. I did all the things he’s been begging me to do for years. Tried different positions. I talked dirty to him. He loved it.”

Suzanne whispered, without looking up at the others. “I loved it.”

“We were different people that night. We were who we used to be, before life reshaped us. Mutated us. I can’t remember ever achieving that sense of intimacy before, even when we were dating. I thought maybe that night would change our marriage. I thought the next morning, I would get up and make us a late breakfast in bed, and we would make love again and everything would be different. But it wasn’t. Still, that was the happiest I’ve ever been with Eric. It made me remember how we used to be.”

*   *   *

Suzanne closed the notebook and folded her hands on the cover.

“Wow,” Grace breathed. “Just, wow. The next morning, after your night of grand passion. What happened?”

“Nothing. I woke up, and Eric had gone for his ten-mile run,” Suzanne said, her shoulders slumped. “When he got back, he disappeared into his office for the rest of the afternoon. Then, Darby got home from the tournament, and, well, things went right back to the way they’d been.”

“Did you ever talk about that night?” Wyatt asked. “Did