Unforgivable Read online

  At least that’s what she told herself, not believing herself in that moment, not with knowing Mick was sitting in the back of the room. She’d fallen for him hard and fast, and the relationship itself hadn’t lasted very long . . . but the feelings . . . oh, those had lasted, hadn’t they? All these years later, and the mere sight of him had sent everything inside her swirling and tangling all over again. It wasn’t love, Alice reminded herself as the wedding video ended. It might’ve tasted a little bit like it, but in the end, it was only desire.

  The lights came up briefly while Bernie got up to switch the DVD. Cookie brought a fresh round of drinks and more snacks, and some people used the bathroom, but Alice kept to her seat. For the first time that weekend, she wished she had her phone in her pocket so she could pretend to be busy with something on it so she wouldn’t have to talk.

  “You want a refill, Alice?” Jay held out the cocktail pitcher.

  She shook her head. Gave him a smile. Jay had been one of her closest friends since college; he’d been the one to introduce her to Bernie. Jay had introduced Mick to their group, too, much later, because he and Mick sometimes worked on projects together. Everything was a chain, she thought. One link to another.

  “You sure?” Jay gave her a smile and a nudge as Cookie flicked the lights and a new DVD menu appeared on the screen.

  Alice lifted her glass, still three-quarters full. Though typically these weekends with Bernie and Cookie had always included a lot more drinking than she usually indulged in, tonight Alice wasn’t feeling it. Maybe she’d had too much to drink last night. Or maybe what had made her feel so drunk and now a little hungover hadn’t been the booze at all. She caught herself looking for Mick again, but stopped herself.

  Jay didn’t miss her glance. He looked, too, then back at her. He leaned close to squeeze her. “You okay?”

  “Fine. Hey, the movie’s starting.” She moved over so he could squeeze into the chair beside her. “Sit with me.”

  Jay, expression solemn, linked his arm through hers and then tangled their fingers. Such a simple contact. Such a comfort. It was too much, though, because it made her want to burst into horrible, wrenching sobs that Alice held back only by the fiercest force of her will.

  The universe, of course, had other plans for her. Bernie had been showing the movies in random order, and the one he’d chosen now opened with a familiar scene, similar to many of the other clips. The group of them in the kitchen, glasses and plates full. Lots of laughter. Music, dancing. Close-ups of funny faces.

  But in this one, there was Mick.

  His hair had been longer, and Alice had forgotten that he’d had a scruffy sort of beard the first time she’d met him. How could she have forgotten? Her breath caught as the camera tightened on his face.

  “And here’s our new best friend,” Bernie said in the movie. “Michael McManus . . .”

  “Mick,” he said. “You can call me Mick.”

  There in the background, an open door, and Alice coming through it. She wore that green dress, the one she’d loved and worn so much it had finally fallen, literally, to pieces in the wash. Watching this now, Alice could not remember this moment, even as it unwound in front of her. She came through the door calling for a drink and succumbed to hugs and kisses from Jay and Cookie’s niece Tanya. Alice waved at Bernie’s camera. She looked at Mick and gave him a small, hesitant smile, and just as quickly looked away to focus on hugging Cookie.

  There it was. The first moment she had ever met him. So quick it had been almost nonexistent. And ultimately nothing, right? A barely there greeting, the passing of her gaze over him, a stranger. Scarcely an acknowledgment at all.

  Yet so much had come from it, that first glance. Meeting Mick had changed everything for her. And how many people had the moment of their first meeting captured that way? Alice wanted to ask Bernie to rewind it, replay. She wanted to be greedy with it, gorge herself on it.

  That first moment when everything between them had yet to happen.

  There was more to that movie. Glimpses of the party, Mick brooding in the background. Alice accepting a glass of wine and lifting it in a toast. And one heart-thudding shot of the two of them through the French doors. She’d gone outside to the deck, she remembered that. Tipsy on wine and laughter, she’d found Mick standing with a beer.

  “I’m Alice,” she’d said, and he’d tipped his bottle toward her.

  “I know.”

  The movie didn’t show that, of course. Just the shadow of them outside and Jay’s voice asking, “Where did Mick and Alice get off to?” Bernie’s answer in the swing of the camera, a few seconds’ glimpse before the scene cut to a group shot of them playing a drinking game involving shot glasses and ping pong balls. Then it was over and the DVD returned to the menu screen. The lights came on. Jay squeezed her hand and used his other one to discreetly wipe away the tear Alice was mortified to discover had escaped the prison of her eye to slide down her cheek.

  There were no more movies after that.

  “I’m getting old,” Bernie said as they all gathered up their plates and glasses to clean up the theater. “I want to stay up and party with all of you, but I think I’m going to head off to bed with my beautiful wife.”

  “That has nothing to do with being old,” called out Paul. “That’s just called being smart!”

  Cookie laughed as Bernie hugged and kissed her. “I’d say it’s called being lucky.”

  Bernie bowed at the collective awww that went around the room. “See you all in the morning.”

  Upstairs, Paul and Jay went onto the deck to smoke cigarettes of a dubious nature while Dayna mixed another pitcher of cocktails. She poured herself one and offered a glass to Alice, who accepted though she knew she didn’t really want to drink it this late. Dayna pulled out a cheesecake from the fridge.

  “Late-night snack?”

  Alice winced. “Oh, my God. Wow. No!”

  “You sure? Bernie made it, you know it’s good.” Dayna grinned and sliced off a piece, then put it on a small plate. “Mick do you want . . . where’s Mick?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he went to bed.” Alice eyed the cheesecake and put a hand on her stomach. “I can’t believe I forgot how much we eat at Bernie’s house. And drink. Damn, I’m gonna have to roll myself home.”

  Dayna licked the tines of her fork. “No kidding. If I make it home without busting the zipper on my jeans, I count myself lucky.”

  Alice pulled the cheesecake a little closer to cut herself a sliver. “I know I shouldn’t eat this, but I’m going to anyway.”

  “What’s life without inappropriately eaten cheesecake?” Dayna dragged the fork through her cheesecake, but didn’t lick it this time. She gave Alice a long look, instead. “Pretty cool seeing those movies, huh? I’d forgotten some of that stuff. I guess we all are getting old.”

  “Bite your tongue,” Alice said lightly.

  “Lots of memories. And some regrets, no?”

  Alice looked at the other woman. They’d met at Bernie’s years ago, and since they were both girls often ended up sharing the bathroom. You learned a lot about someone else when you had to use the same shower. They both lived in Central Pennsylvania about forty minutes apart, and kept in touch through occasional texts or e-mails, but it wasn’t as though they spent hours every week chatting on the phone or anything. They got together for lunch or dinner every so often, or met at Jay’s. Alice liked her quite a bit. Dayna had a great sense of humor and a way of putting everyone around her at ease in a way Alice had always admired. But they’d never been particularly close.

  “I try not to regret things,” Alice said after it had become impossible not to say anything without this becoming weird.

  Dayna nodded. She drank, then went to the fridge for a large bottle of seltzer water. She poured them both glasses without asking Alice if she wanted one this time, and Alice took it to sip gratefully.

  “Maybe you should go talk to him,” Dayna said. “Maybe he’s waiti