Mommy Tracked (8 page)

Later, long after Chloe had given up any hope that she was going to find her friends much less make the movie, she decided to head back to her dorm. She made a quick stop at the bathroom, which was so grimy, she squatted over the toilet while she peed. Chloe used a piece of toilet paper to turn on the faucet to wash her hands and then another to turn the doorknob. She pulled open the door—and walked smack into James, who had been waiting his turn.

“I’m so sorry,” Chloe said immediately.

“It was my fault,” James said genially. His eyes were a little too bright, too unfocused, but he smiled warmly at her.

“No, I wasn’t looking where I was going,” Chloe insisted.

“In that case, why don’t you apologize by buying me a beer?” James said with a grin that showed off his dimples and left Chloe feeling a little breathless.

Was he flirting with her? Because guys this good-looking didn’t flirt with Chloe. Most days she rated as a solid
cute
, although if she took extra time with her makeup and had a good hair day, she could occasionally rise to
pretty.
But not nearly pretty enough to rate this attention.

“Um…I think the beer is free,” Chloe stuttered, then gave herself a mental whack on the forehead for coming out with what might possibly be the dumbest response of all time. Handsome men always made her nervous.

“Even better,” James said. He laughed, and even though she could feel her cheeks flushing, Chloe laughed with him.

“I don’t think we’ve met. I’m James,” he said, holding out his hand.

He was drunk, she knew. Drunk and stoned. That’s why he was being so friendly.

But still
, Chloe thought,
he’s talking to me
.

“I’m Chloe,” she said.

“Are you friends with Jay?”

“Who? Oh, is that who lives here?”

James laughed. “So I guess the answer would be no.”

“Yes. I mean, yes, the answer is no,” Chloe said. “I came with some friends, and now I can’t find them, so I’m just going to head home.”

James shook his head. “You can’t go yet. Not when we haven’t even had a chance to talk.”

Chloe was flummoxed for a minute. Was he teasing her? Or did he really want to hang out with her?

“It’s late,” she said apologetically.

“It’s not that late. Promise you’ll wait here for me,” he said.

“Well…”

“Promise.”

“Okay,” Chloe said, giving in.

“I’ll be right out,” James said, walking past her into the bathroom and gently shutting the door behind him.

And Chloe had waited for him. They’d spent the rest of the party together—the platinum blonde left in tears, and Chloe couldn’t help feeling a thrill that she’d been the one chosen—and afterward James walked Chloe home to the tiny dorm suite she shared with two roommates. It was a clear, cloudless night, and a full pale-yellow moon hung low over the campus. James had casually taken her hand, lacing their fingers together, and they’d talked about a movie they’d both recently seen, and how they both regretted not spending a semester abroad, and how much they both hated cell phones.

James had kissed her good night—a soft, slow, gentle kiss that Chloe felt all the way down to her toes—and asked for her phone number. Elated, Chloe gave it to him, although she never thought he’d actually call her. Surely when he sobered up he’d go back to the thin blonde or some other flashy, sorority type.

But James surprised her: He did call. In fact, he called the very next day, wanting to see her again. And he called the day after that, and the day after that, until they were gradually and gently folded into the safe warmth of coupledom. But even then—even now, after all these years together—Chloe had never completely gotten over her surprise that he had chosen her.

On their wedding day, Chloe looked up at James while he repeated the wedding vows the minister had recited, and she had a moment of sudden clarity.

I love him more than he loves me
, she thought as she gazed at him. James looked a little nervous and stiff in the unfamiliar tuxedo, and the hair curling against his stiff shirt collar was still damp from the shower. But then James glanced down at her, and when he saw that she was watching him, he smiled and winked at her. And she thought then that maybe it was okay if she was the one who loved more. Maybe it was the price she had to pay to be with him.

“The bar’s right over there,” Grace now said to James. “My husband’s manning it. He’ll set you up.”

“Thanks,” James said, and as he ambled off, Grace fanned herself with one hand.

“Wow. Your husband is seriously dishy,” she said.

Chloe laughed. “Don’t tell him that. His head is already swollen enough as it is.”

“And that accent! So sexy!” Grace shook her head and sighed. “I’ve always loved men with accents. You’re so lucky.”

“Thanks,” Chloe said. She tried to think of something witty to say, but, as usual in unfamiliar social situations, her brain froze. “You look nice. Your skirt is pretty.”

Grace was wearing a filmy purple skirt and matching silk-knit short-sleeve sweater, and her dark hair was gathered back at her neck with a mother-of-pearl barrette.

“You’re so sweet! I can’t believe how much I’ve eaten tonight,” Grace said, staring down at the plate of chocolate cake she’d been holding. “In fact, kill me if I eat one more bite of this cake.” She looked at the dessert longingly. “Oh, fuck it,” she said, and popped the last of the cake in her mouth.

“You look great,” Chloe assured her.

“I was going to wear a sleeveless shirt, but look at my arms! They
jiggle
. Like Jell-O.”

She held up her arm and shook it to demonstrate.

Anna appeared beside them. “Hey, Chloe, I’m so glad you could make it.”

“Thanks,” Chloe said, smiling at her shyly.

“Anna, look.” Grace jiggled her arms again. “It’s my new talent.”

Anna rolled her eyes. “Will you please stop? You’re gorgeous,” she said.

“I’m huge,” Grace insisted.

“You are not. You’re curvy,” Anna replied.

Grace snorted. “That’s just a polite way of saying I’m huge.”

“It is not. Men love curvy women. Ask anyone. They’d rather have a woman with real boobs and a real butt, rather than some silly girl with anorexia who’s starved herself down to nothing,” Anna continued.

“Yes! Starved down to nothing! That’s exactly what I want to look like!” Grace enthused.

Chloe thought—although, of course, did not say out loud—that this was unlikely. Grace didn’t have the build to be skinny, no matter how much she might diet. And Chloe wanted to tell Grace that she thought she was really very pretty, sexy even, as Anna had said. If Grace had been born a hundred years ago, Renoir would have painted her as a glorious nude sprawled across a French daybed, with the sun highlighting her shiny dark hair, her mischievous dark eyes gleaming, Chloe thought.

But she couldn’t think of a way to say this without sounding sycophantic—and possibly gay—so Chloe just continued to smile at Anna and Grace and wait for a break in the conversation.

“Is your husband here, Chloe?” Anna asked.

“Yes, he’s over there by the bar,” Chloe said, nodding toward James, who was talking animatedly to Louis.

“He’s the cute one in the blue button-down and khaki shorts. And you should hear him talk. He sounds just like Matthew McConaughey,” Grace added, pointing in James’s direction with her fork. “Louis is probably talking off his ear about golf.”

“James will love that. He’s practically obsessed with the game. He plays every weekend, without fail,” Chloe said.

James was amused by something Louis had said. James laughed with his whole body—throwing his head back, his mouth grinning wide, his eyes crinkled at the edges.

“Well, those two seem to have hit it off,” Anna commented.

“I’m glad. I was just telling Louis that he needed more guy friends,” Grace said, and Chloe felt a small pang of jealousy. James made friends easily; Chloe had always envied him that. She felt like she always tried too hard with other women, was too eager to please, and they, in turn, sensed her desperation.

“Do you want to sit down?” Grace asked Chloe, suddenly concerned. “Get off your feet?”

Chloe hesitated. She was feeling tired, and the damned Braxton Hicks contractions kept washing over her, but she very much wanted to keep talking to Grace and Anna, sensing that they were exactly the sort of women she could be friends with.

Which reminded her of her interview with Juliet Cole. The memory caused Chloe’s face to flush red. God, she’d made a fool of herself. She’d been so overeager, so hopeful that the elegant, poised Juliet would want to be her friend, that she’d made that stupid comment about wanting a mommy mentor. The term had sounded cute, and not at all pathetic, when she’d practiced it in her head while she waited at the restaurant for Juliet. But then Juliet had looked at her so oddly, as though Chloe was an extraterrestrial, not yet versed in normal human discourse.

Chloe looked around to see if Juliet was there. She was. Juliet was the only woman who’d dared wear a bathing suit in front of the crowd, and she was now paddling around in the pool with a pair of giggling, dark-haired twin girls. A man was with them, who Chloe presumed must be Juliet’s husband from the way he was playing with the twins. He was good-looking and muscular and didn’t look at all like the sort of man that any woman would even jokingly refer to as her “wife.”

Chloe didn’t realize Anna was watching her until Anna said, “I heard you interviewed Juliet. How’d that go?”

Chloe flushed and looked down at her protruding stomach, hoping that the others weren’t watching her face. She’d always been too easy to read. “Your face shows everything,” her mother had always told her. “It’s like a window into your thoughts.”

“It was fine,” Chloe said brightly, hoping that the other two women would assume the stain on her cheeks was just a normal pregnancy flush.

“You interviewed Juliet? And lived to tell about it?” Grace asked, raising a disbelieving eyebrow.

“She’s not
that
bad,” Anna protested.

“Yes, she is. And I’m speaking as someone who loves her,” Grace said. She turned to Chloe. “So how bad was she?”

“No, really, it was fine. Juliet was really nice,” Chloe protested.

She
had
been nice. Well, nice enough. Just not…overly warm.

“Uh-huh. She’s pretty intimidating, huh?” Grace asked.

“Juliet intimidates everyone when they first meet her. Once you get to know her, you’ll love her,” Anna said.

Chloe smiled at Anna, but as her gaze drifted to Juliet—now playing Marco Polo with her family, all of them laughing as Juliet, eyes closed, made a lunge toward one of the twins—Chloe couldn’t imagine being friends with the lawyer. Juliet scared the crap out of her.

A few hours later, the children had abandoned the pool in favor of watching
The Incredibles
in the playroom. The thrum of the party grew louder as people drank more. Laughter was bubbling forth, and inhibitions were lowered. Grace put on an ABBA CD, and “Dancing Queen” blared from the speakers.

Chloe’s Braxton Hicks contractions had gotten worse, so she sat in a pool chair off to the side, feeling even more sober than usual. She sipped her glass of seltzer water and looked around for James.

She finally saw him standing with some of the other husbands, entertaining everyone with the story of how he and his friend Dan, a coworker at his old job in Austin, had gotten into a war of escalating practical jokes.

It had started when Dan stole James’s parking space one morning, so to get back at him, James stacked a dozen bags of garbage in the back of Dan’s truck. The next day Dan smeared toothpaste all over the receiver of the phone in James’s office—which James didn’t realize until after he answered the phone and got an earful of Colgate. James struck back by rearranging the pages on a report Dan had written just before Dan handed it in to the boss (which James ended up feeling rather bad about, especially after their boss—who had no sense of humor—called Dan into his office and reamed him out over the mix-up). But then Dan retaliated by breaking into Chloe and James’s house while they were on a weekend trip to Corpus Christi and rearranging all of the furniture in their house. They came home to find their bed in the living room, the dining table and chairs set up in the bedroom, and the couch standing on one end, squeezed into the half bath. At that point, Chloe had begged James to give it up, but James went ahead and posted Dan’s picture and home phone number at an online dating service, resulting in a flurry of interested phone calls. Dan’s wife, Angela, was the one to answer the phone when several of the women called, and she wasn’t amused. Later, when Dan and Angela divorced, Chloe couldn’t help but wonder if the personals practical joke had been partly to blame for the split.

But everyone was roaring with laughter as James recounted the ongoing feud, embellishing the story where necessary to make it even funnier. He gestured wildly, beer bottle in hand, a wide grin on his handsome face, the center of attention. James had always had a way of working a crowd.

Still…maybe I’d better get him home
, Chloe thought, worrying that if he was drunk, he’d end up doing something stupid, like throwing up in the pool.

And that’s when it happened: Chloe wet her pants.

Chloe stopped breathing and went completely still, wondering if anyone had noticed. The warm water soaked through her panties and dripped down her legs onto the paved patio.

No
, she thought wildly, so mortified she couldn’t move.
Oh, please, no! Why didn’t anyone ever tell me that pregnancy can cause incontinence?

Chloe glanced around, terrified that she’d been seen. And just how was she going to clean up herself—not to mention the patio floor—without anyone noticing? Maybe James…but another glance in her husband’s direction ruled that out.

He’s definitely drunk
, Chloe thought, with a fresh surge of horror as she realized he wouldn’t be any help to her now. She was on her own.
At least intoxication is socially acceptable. Peeing in your pants? Not so much.