One True Theory of Love (16 page)

And here was that image, working its way to the surface, from dream to reality. Nearly breathless, Meg watched for a long moment before interrupting them.

“Knock, knock,” she finally said through the screen door.

Both Henry and Ahmed looked up and smiled at her.

“Who’s there?” Henry said.

Meg grinned. “Carly.”

“Carly who?”

“Car leaves in five minutes, so hurry up and finish your game.”

“Very funny, Mom.
Not.
”

Ahmed approached to unlock the door. “How was your day, dear?”

“Lovely, thank you.” She kissed him on the cheek, deciding she didn’t need to tell Ahmed about her parents right away. The door on her parents’ relationship might be closing, but the one on theirs was just opening. The newness in the pleasure of coming home to someone at the end of the workday should be relished and protected. “And yours?”

“We had a great day, didn’t we, Henry?”

“Yep, except that meeting with the mayor got really boring.”

“You met the mayor?” Eyebrows raised, Meg walked over and gave Henry a kiss. His clip-on tie was gone, but he still looked adorably preppy. “How cool are you?”

“Very cool,” Henry said. “Ahmed, it’s your turn.”

Ahmed’s amused gaze was on Meg as he answered Henry. “Let’s take a break and catch up with your mother.”

“Chopped liver,” Meg said. “That’s all I am to him.”

When Ahmed asked if she wanted a glass of wine, she said yes and followed him into the kitchen. He first filled a wineglass with grape juice for Henry, then uncorked a bottle of merlot and poured them each a glass. She stepped close to accept hers. “Did you take good care of my boy?”

“As if my life depended on it.” Ahmed’s eyes danced with hers and they fell into a dopey-smiling moment again. She was going to bed him soon—she knew it. How could she not, when he had eyes like that? How could she not, when she found him appealing in virtually every way?

“I have a question for you,” she said.

“Ask away.”

“You said this morning that you’re uniquely American, which you are. But there’s so little in the house to suggest your Iranian background and I wonder why that is. I mean, you don’t even have a Persian rug.”

“I’d say I’m only sort of just now tiptoeing my way back into my culture,” Ahmed said. “I spent a lot of time in my youth rejecting it.”

“Did nine-eleven have anything to do with your change of heart?” Meg asked. “Awaken some new sort of pride or something?”

“Sure.” He shrugged. “Overnight, all of us had to measure every word, gesture, e-mail, phone call, trip abroad.”

“The land of the free suddenly became a lot less free,” Meg said.

“That’s right,” he agreed.

“Well, I’m sorry.” Meg quickly hugged him. “I’m sorry for every bad thing you’ve ever experienced.”

Ahmed’s hold on her was tight. “You’re so sweet. You make me feel good about who I am.”

“You
should
feel good about who you are,” Meg said. “You take care of people.”

Ahmed pulled back. “But I don’t,” he said. “Not like I want to. Until you and Henry, I haven’t had anyone—I mean, I’ve wanted to in the abstract, but—”

“You do on a community level,” Meg said. “You’re part of a group down there at city hall that works to make this town a good place to live. With the glaring exception of providing good sidewalks.”

Ahmed laughed, but quickly turned serious again. “I want to take care of you two,” he said. “Not that you can’t take of yourselves perfectly well, because you can, obviously. You’ve been doing it for a long time, but—”

“How about we’ll take care of each other?” Meg swallowed hard, barely believing this conversation was actually happening.

Ahmed nodded. “I like that. And the RTA will take care of the sidewalks.”

Meg slugged him playfully in the arm.

“People,” Henry said from the dining room. He’d used the interruption to line up all the chess pieces he’d acquired from Ahmed, but apparently he’d then run out of things to do. “We’re in the middle of a game here.”

Meg pulled back from the embrace to reprimand Henry. “Can’t you see we’re having a moment here?”

“Have it some other time,” Henry said. “Can’t
you
see that I’m waiting to make my move?”

Ahmed raised his eyebrows at Henry and then at Meg. “I do, as a matter of fact, have a Persian rug,” he said in a suggestive undertone. “It’s in my bedroom.”

“You’re such a tease!” she said.

He laughed. “I really do have one in my bedroom.”

“Do you have a Persian cat?”

“In my bedroom.” He made his voice low and husky.

“Now
that
was a line,” Meg said.

“You got me.”

“Excuse me, peoples,” Henry said. “It’s my turn.”

No,
Meg thought.
It’s my turn.

She took the wineglass of juice to her son and ruffled his hair. “Give us a minute, Henry. I want to see the rug in Ahmed’s bedroom.”

As Ahmed grinned at her, Henry crossed his arms in a pout.

“Hey, Henry, if you want, you can check in my freezer and see if I have any ice cream. You can get yourself a bowl if I do.” Ahmed turned to Meg. “If that’s okay with you.”

“Sounds like a very healthy dinner to me,” she said as she took Ahmed’s hand and began to pull him down the hall.

Cheered, Henry bolted from the table and disappeared into Ahmed’s kitchen. “Mint chocolate chip! My favorite!”

“He’s such a sucker,” Meg whispered. “Now show me that rug.”

Once in his room, Ahmed gestured toward the floor. “My token Persian rug.”

Meg looked oh so meaningfully into Ahmed’s eyes. “I don’t care about the rug.”

“What is it you care about?” He said it in that low, sexy way he had as he put his hands around her waist, making her feel all skinny.

“You,” Meg said. “Us. Me getting it right this time around.”

“Kiss me cordially,” he said. “And with passion, too.”

“I don’t think so,” Meg teased, backing him toward the bed. Ahmed’s house was at most a thousand square feet, so Henry was definitely not far out of earshot, but this was Ahmed’s
bedroom
and on the stereo Etta James was wailing out “Cry Like a Rainy Day” and how sexy was
that
?

Gamely, Ahmed half fell onto his mattress, leaving his legs dangling over the edge. “You lured me to the bedroom under false pretenses,” he protested happily.

Meg stepped into the space between his legs. She leaned over him and put her hands on either side of his shoulders so he was fake trapped. Also, so he had a decent view of her cleavage. “Do you mind?”

“Can’t say that I do.” He ran his fingertips up the back of her thighs, giving her the chills.

She traced a finger over each of his eyebrows in turn, then kissed his cheek. She kissed his forehead, then several points along his jawbone, and when she finally kissed his lips, he tasted of the merlot and of a spice she couldn’t place.

“What did you have for lunch today?” she asked.

“I took Henry to Ali Baba for Persian food,” he said.

Meg couldn’t recall Henry ever having eaten Middle Eastern food before. “Did he like it?”

“He loved it.”

“Will you cook Persian food for me sometime?” she asked.

“I don’t know how,” he said. “But for you, I’d be willing to learn.”

“Let’s learn together.” Meg kissed him again, a deep and persistent and satisfying kiss.

“I have a question for you,” he said when they came up for air. “Henry spent a good chunk of time today complaining about his soccer coach, and she really doesn’t sound competent.”

“She’s not,” Meg said. “And she never wanted to coach in the first place. It was just that no one else volunteered. And she’s been horrible to Henry. I almost feel I should let him quit and start fresh next year with another team.”

“What if I volunteered to coach?” Ahmed said. “I’d love to do it, and I think it would be good for Henry, too.”

Meg pulled back, awed and stunned. She stared at Ahmed in a daze as her father’s words came back to her.
If you want to know how a man feels about you, don’t listen to a word he says. Instead, watch what he does.

This counted, Ahmed’s offering to coach Henry’s team.

It counted for a lot.

L
ater that week, Meg was in the school office before the beginning bell, making copies of a permission slip for a field trip to Centennial Hall, when she overheard the school secretary say to someone on the phone, “Oh, Ms. Clark’s right here. Hold one moment, please.”

Meg turned from the copy machine. “Is it a parent?”

Alicia Diaz held out the receiver. She was fiftyish, short and fleshy—Meg thought of her as squishy. As long as Meg had known her, Alicia had always worn the same soft Dior J’adore perfume. “He says he’s an old friend.”

Meg’s gut kicked a warning. “Take a message, will you?”

Alicia tried, but then held the handset out again. “He says it’s important.”

Meg shook her head. “Find out who it is.”

“Just take it.” Alicia shook the handset at Meg. “I’ve got work to do.”

Meg’s chest pounded in terror as she reached for the phone. “Hello?”

“They still call you Ms. Clark, I see,” the man said.

It was like the shower scene from Hitchcock’s
Psycho,
all the way. Jonathan’s amused tone stabbed her, quick and sure.
They still call you Ms. Clark.

He’d taken every other goddamned thing from her. The least she could do was keep his name.

“Meg?” he said when she didn’t reply. “How’ve you been?”

As if he cared.

“What are you calling me for?” she demanded. “What do you want?”

“I’m coming to Tucson in a few weeks,” he said. “I’d like to see you. There are some things I need to say.”

The nerve.

The
nerve
of this guy.

“I’m all booked up.” Meg clenched the handset. “No room for cheating ex-husbands on my schedule.”

Alicia stared at Meg with her mouth open, not even pretending not to listen. She’d been there when Meg was a glowing newlywed. She’d been there during the three years Meg had put Jonathan through law school on her teacher’s salary. She’d been there when Meg learned she’d been duped, and she’d been there when Meg was dumped, and when she’d grown round with Henry and had to face person after person who congratulated her on
their
happy news when there was no
them
anymore.
It looks like it’s going to be just me raising this precious baby,
she’d say with a shaky voice and wavering smile. Alicia had been there through it all.

“Meg—”

“Don’t
Meg
me,” she snapped at Jonathan. “How dare you call me now, after all these years? How dare you? Ten years you didn’t call me, and you call now? What? Did you sense I was finally completely happy and you just couldn’t stand it? Huh? Is that why you’re calling? You’re trying to ruin me again? Well, I won’t let you.”

“But, Meg, I—”

“Don’t
Meg
me!” With that, she firmly laid the handset back on the receiver and stared at Alicia, dumbfounded. After he’d first left her, she’d expected his call on a minute-by-minute basis, the pathetic wreck that she was. Then hourly. Then daily, then weekly. And then Henry was born, and then a year had passed and then ten and Jonathan never, ever called.

Why now?

Alicia moved to comfort her, but Meg waved her off. If anyone showed her kindness, she’d fall to the floor and wail and be no better than she’d been back then. She needed to get a grip. She needed for this not to be happening. She needed . . . she needed . . .

Oh God.

Meg rushed from the office. All around, a blur of early-arriving bright-shirted kids called greetings to her, but she didn’t reply, couldn’t reply. What she needed was to make it to the bathroom, to find a toilet, because the very thought of Jonathan reappearing in their lives made her sick.