Maxine hated to admit she’d also been thinking about that possibility. Even yesterday, when she’d woken up with the feel of his hands fresh in her memory. She went to work at the spa and he was there under every thought; his dark eyes, his sexy accent, the way his hair fell over that one eye when he looked down at her. And the tremble in her knees when his tongue first touched hers.
Everything led back to him. A client chose the nail polish called ‘French Kiss’, Beverly the receptionist, ordered Greek souvlaki for lunch, and this was the weirdest one—Maxine was handing a fashion magazine to one of her clients in the waiting area and a playing card slipped from the page it had bookmarked. It fluttered to the floor, landing between her shoes.
It was the ace of diamonds.
Maxine sighed in the fitting room. The guilt was killing her, but now that she’d let herself think about him that way, the heat had begun to grow between her legs again.
“You have to show me,” Carmine piped up.
When she stepped out with the dress on, he put a hand on a hip and took a long drag from his electric cigarette. “Your breasts are escaping.”
“What if I wore a sweater?” Then she added, “And my spandex girdle—the full body one.”
“That would be insulting to you, your breasts, and Ralph Lauren.”
“Not everything I try on the first time is going to fit!” Her unsettled emotions were beginning to surface.
Carmine swept away then returned with something cupped in his hand. “This will fit,” he said and slipped an antique comb with a white silk orchid into her hair above her right ear. He turned her around to look at the mirror. “There, you look like the Little Mermaid.”
“There’s nothing little about me.” She tilted her head to the side, imagining how the dress would look if the zipper made it all the way up. “I’ll take it. All I need is to lose twenty pounds…okay thirty, maybe thirty- five.”
Carmine gave out an exasperated sigh. He held up the herringbone skirt. “Why not take the thing that fits perfectly today?”
She pulled the dressing room curtain across. “Thirty pounds, Carmine,” she said. “It’s more than you think.” She wrestled with the zipper.
“Yes, honey. I’m well acquainted with your thirty pounds. You’ve been talking about them lovingly for the last six months.”
Six months and seven days. She started to pull on her leggings and long wool sweater.
Johnny was an accountant, a numbers man by nature, and he constantly told her thirty pounds was all she’d need to lose to fit into half of her clothes stored at the back of her closet. He even left little sticky notes in her bathroom over the scale. One day he started hiding them in the fridge, around the food—the food that wasn’t labeled with his name. He liked things spilt down the middle.
“I don’t expect you to feed me, Maxine,” he’d said, labeling the ice cream he’d brought over to her apartment. “I’ll only eat the things I buy.” Which of course meant that Maxine couldn’t eat anything he brought over.
After they broke up, she ate everything he’d labeled, everything except for the unopened container of Mayan Chocolate ice cream, it was symbolic for her. Once she lost that thirty pounds, she was going to eat Johnny’s ice cream. And she would eat it with a big spoon and add chocolate sauce and peanuts and whipped cream. Hell, she’d make one giant colossal sundae. Then she’d dip French fries in the sauce.
French fries.
French guys.
“Damn,” Maxine whispered. The fluttering in her stomach spiraled down. She could almost feel his hand there, rubbing where she ached to be touched. She shook her head to clear it then came out of the dressing room, the black dress over her arm.
“Take the flower too, honey.” “Huh?”
“Are you all right? Your face is all blotchy?” He frowned at dress in her hands. “It was dry cleaned, but maybe there’s some kind of residue left over. You should only use Patricia’s Dry Cleaning, never those same day places. They steam the crap out of clothes and the fabric is ruined.”
“Okay.”
“Listen.” He pointed his electric cigarette at her. “Don’t you dare take the green vixon dress anywhere but Patricia’s.”
Maxine raised her glance at him. And then, because the weight of everything had become too much to keep in she blurted out. “A guy spilled a drink on my dress, then I took him back to my place, we had sex…sort of, then he left, but he forgot his cell phone.
And then I found out he’s married, or at least I’m pretty sure he is. But I can’t stop thinking about him, and I feel guilty, and horny. And I just wish this stupid black dress would fit!”
Carmine took a long drag off his electric cigarette. “This calls for gin.”
****
After he’d gotten home from the game last night, Antony waited until the apartment was quiet, then snuck out to the kitchen and fired up his laptop. He leaned over the granite kitchen counter, tapping keys, feeling his stomach flip. He was surprised at how simple it was to find her apartment again. The program he used to locate his phone took less than a minute to pinpoint the address. Antony had stared at the red dot on the map, pulsating like a heartbeat.
He half expected her to have thrown his phone in the trash or tossed it on the subway tracks. Antony could only imagine what she must have thought when he disappeared out her bathroom window. He’d try and explain to her somehow, he had to—she was his good luck charm.
Chance and Luca were adamant. And even though he was a practical person by nature, Antony wasn’t taking any chances on ignoring the advice of two superstitious teammates. One thought kept piercing through his reasoning; he was only as good as his last game. And the next game was tonight. It couldn’t hurt to test their theory. Plus, he wanted to see her again. Maybe it was because he’d abstained from sex for the last two months, but he couldn’t get her off his mind.
After an arduous session with the trainers, Antony made his way to her apartment. He knocked on the door, then balanced the flowers to hide his face, a last minute flash of wisdom in case she refused to let him in. His biceps screamed in protest, fifty dollars’ worth of flowers was heavier than he expected.
Earlier, the elderly florist had looked at Antony over the top of his gold-rimmed glasses, trying to size him up. “Special occasion?” he’d asked, with a slight sarcastic ring to his tone.
“No.” Antony was wearing his sunglasses and had turned up the collar of his jacket.
The florist filled the order wordlessly, but when he handed over the massive arrangement of flowers he said, “Whatever you did, she’ll forgive you when she sees these.”
Antony raised his hand to knock again when he heard footsteps coming closer to the other side of the door. His palms started to sweat. He’d thought all morning what he was going to say, but each time he said the lines out loud, the translation seemed off, insincere, ridiculously phony.
As the door opened, Antony hoisted the bouquet up higher, watching her through the jungle of flowers. A tiny line appeared between her eyebrows. “I think you have the wrong apartment,” she said, sounding confused.
Antony smiled, hoping it would come through his voice. “Bonjour,” he started, still hiding behind the flowers. “I’m looking for the woman who is not Ms. Dior.”
There were a few seconds of silence, then she said, “Maybe you should take those flowers home to your wife instead.”
Antony lowered the bouquet. “Wife?”
She crossed her arms in front of her chest. Her mouth was set in a hard line. “Or maybe your sex slave.”