Chapter One
“You should fall to your knees and thank God that you’re
single again.”
Mayson turned away from the view of the San Diego hills,
shaking long, wavy hair out of her eyes. She leaned back
against the terrace wall and squinted at her best friend
sitting
at the nearby table.
In the sharp sunlight, she could tell that Renee hadn’t slept
well the night before. Faint shadows lurked under her eyes
and the corners of her narrow mouth were tight with tension.
But a restless evening couldn’t erase her effortless beauty.
The
short, natural hair. Twin dimples in her cheeks. The slender
body in its usual weekend sundress that left her shoulders
bare.
Renee paused with the glass of grapefruit juice near her
mouth and looked at Mayson, a reluctant smile on her lips.
“Just like that, huh?”
A light breeze stirred up, fluttering the hair around Mayson’s
face. Ink-black strands against her oak-brown skin. Renee
thought briefly about going inside for her camera to capture
the contrasts of her friend. Beautiful/strong.
Jamaican/Chinese.
A centered hurricane.
“Of course,” Mayson said. “Linc didn’t deserve you. I told
you that the first day you brought that needy fucker home.”
She bent down, her body supple and graceful from over ten
years of practicing and teaching yoga, and grabbed another
strawberry out of the almost empty bowl. “Usually divorce is
a sad thing but you just dropped a big piece of shit off your
shoe when you unloaded that moron.”
“I loved him, though,” Renee said, defensive.
She swallowed more of the tart juice, lowering her lashes
against the sunlight blanketing the rooftop terrace. Her hand
fumbled on the table for her sunglasses.
“You wish you loved him.” Mayson sank her teeth into
the deep-red strawberry, sighing in brief pleasure at the
sweetness that exploded in her mouth. “One day you’ll realize
that it’s okay not to love everyone who loves you.”
The two women faced each other on the rooftop terrace of
Renee’s seventh-floor condo. Below them lay the city of San
Diego, tumbling hills dotted with other houses, other condos,
other rooftops, the green interruption of trees, the gaze
rolling down the hill until it fell into the sharp blue
water of
the Pacific.
Remnants of their Saturday brunch—a joint effort prepared
in the kitchen nearly two hours before—lay scattered
on the table. A bowl that was once full of fat red strawberries
now contained only their lonely stems. Two empty plates
with golden crumbs from the long-gone waffles, flecks of
powdered sugar, and haphazard stripes of maple syrup. A
small saucer still held half a sausage patty. It sat far away
from Mayson, who, though not a nazi sort of vegetarian,
didn’t want the meat anywhere near her. She was never in the
mood to smell pork.
“It’s a good thing I already love you or I’d be following
your advice already.” Renee gave Mayson a sour look.
Her best friend grinned. “Don’t shoot the messenger,
honey.” Her rough-soft Jamaican accent curled lovingly
around the words.
“You are being such an A-hole.”
“Ooh,” Mayson teased, grinning. “Are you actually cursing
at me?”
“Shut up.”
Mayson stuck out her tongue at Renee and grinned.
Her friend never cursed. Never. The summer they turned
eleven, the two of them had gone off to camp together. One
of the counselors at Camp Minnehawk had had the filthiest
mouth Mayson had heard before or since. She’d stood in awe
of the girl’s inventiveness with the English, and some of the
Spanish, language.
Renee’s reaction to the girl had been just the opposite. If
she’d even been thinking of uttering a curse word before
hearing Contessa Stephens swear like a drunken sailor on the
last day of leave, that summer had effectively cured her of
every single impulse.
The warm stone of the terrace pressed against Mayson
through her thin T-shirt and jeans as she leaned into it, still
smiling. “What’s up with Linc, anyway? I thought he was
dating somebody else?”
“He is.” Renee paused. “I just woke up thinking about
him this morning.” And those thoughts had led her to call
him. Bad idea. On the phone, he’d acted as if she was the one
who had asked for the divorce.
“I’ll forgive your subconscious for that lapse in judgment,”
Mayson said.
“I can’t just forget him like that. He was a big part of my
life for four years. We shared a life and a mortgage.”
“The house was in his name, Renee. You didn’t share anything
more than the burden of that pseudo-marriage.”
“I’m just not there yet, Mayson. I can’t see it as a complete
mistake. Even after everything that happened.” Her glass
clinked against an empty plate as she put it back on the table.
Linc was the future she had chosen for herself. At the time,
her choice had felt like the right one. She looked at Mayson,
then away.
“Fine. I’ll let you keep your illusions. But we both know
you’re better off now. I’d rather you be vaguely uneasy without
him than miserable with him. You may have short-term
memory loss about how things were between the two of you,
but I don’t.”
Renee winced. “Leave it alone, Mayson.”
The soft voice resonated faintly with pain. And that more
than the words themselves stopped Mayson. The last thing
she wanted to do was hurt Renee.
“Fine. Sorry. I got carried away, as usual.”
She dropped into the chair across from the bowed head, an
apology on her face. “You want to go to the movies later?
Djimon Hounsou is in a movie that just came out.”
Renee’s eyes met hers, the pain clearing from the sunlit
brown. “Okay. But you’re buying the tickets and the popcorn.”
The pressure lifted from Mayson’s chest. She sighed through
her smile. “No problem. That shouldn’t break the bank.”