Don't Deny Me Read online

  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 waiting for you.”

  Alice didn’t pretend not to understand what Dayna meant. She rolled her eyes. “If he is, I’m sure it’s not for the conversation.”

  Dayna laughed wryly. “Maybe not. Paul and Jay out there, they’re talking about something dire. You can see it in the way they’re standing.”

  Alice looked. “And Jay’s smoking. I thought he gave that up. I guess he only does that with Paul, though to be honest, I thought he gave up Paul, too.”

  “Yeah. Me too. Did Jay say they were getting back together?” Dayna’s tone was super casual, though her expression was anything but.

  “No.” Alice sipped more seltzer, letting it settle her stomach and gave the other woman a curious look. “I asked, but he claimed he was done with Paul, done with a capital D. You know they’ve been on and off forever. They get back together, then they split up, then the next thing I know, they’re going away for some debauched weekend in the Bahamas or something. I try not to judge.”

  Dayna winced. “Paul can’t stay away from him.”

  Alice looked again through the doors, uncomfortable at watching even from this distance. It felt intrusive, even voyeuristic. “That’s how it is with some people.”

  “Yeah. Some people you can’t shut the door on, even when you should.”

  Dayna’s voice had gone raspy and rough. She gave Alice a wobbly, watery sort of grin. From the deck a brief flare of raised voices turned both women’s heads for a moment. Dayna didn’t have to say a word, but suddenly, Alice understood a whole lot more than she had before.

  “Even when you should,” Alice said by way of agreement.

  Dayna swallowed hard and lifted her chin. She took a deep breath, visibly getting herself together. “Stupid hearts, always gotta break.”

  If Alice saw Dayna only once every few months, she saw Paul even less often. She’d never been friends with him the way she’d been with any of the others, knowing him more through Jay’s eyes than anything else. And it was hard to like Paul when she knew how much he’d hurt Jay, over and over. Jay might’ve been able to forgive him, but Alice had always found it harder. Now that she had this sudden insight into the reason for at least a few of the breakups, she liked him even less.

  “Does Jay know?” Alice asked.

  Dayna shook her head. “No. And I don’t want him to know. Jay’s my friend—”

  Alice laughed sharply, unable to hold it back though it came out harsher than she’d intended.

  Dayna flinched. “He is. Believe me, that makes it all so much harder, because Jay’s my friend. But I love him.”

  The French doors opened. Paul whirled through them, Jay on his heels. Whatever had happened outside, both men were keeping it close to the vest. Jay gave Alice’s shoulder a squeeze as he passed her. Paul, very carefully, Alice thought, didn’t look at Dayna at all. Or maybe Alice was seeing things that weren’t there because she knew something she hadn’t before.

  “I’m heading to bed,” Jay said.

  Paul nodded. “Me too. Night, everyone.”

  In the silence after the men had left the kitchen, Dayna let out a long, shuddering sigh. She dug back into the cheesecake with a vengeance, and gave Alice a look. “You want coffee? I’m making coffee.”

  At this hour, coffee would keep her up until dawn, but it seemed unkind to refuse or abandon Dayna so she could also go to bed. And she didn’t want to, really, did she? Not to her own bed, anyway. Alice wanted to slip down those back stairs to Mick’s basement room and crawl in beside him, to wake him if he were sleeping with her hands and tongue and lips. For the first time this weekend, she was smart enough not to give in.

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll drink some coffee.”

  While it brewed the women bustled with cleaning the kitchen. Not saying much, the revelation of Dayna and Paul hanging between them. With full mugs, each of them took a seat at the island and sipped in silence, until at last Dayna broke the mutual quiet.

  “Does it ever go away?”

  Alice blew on the coffee to cool it and give herself a chance to reply, uncertain what, exactly, Dayna was looking for. Comfort or validation. Maybe condemnation. Alice only had one answer. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “The wanting.” Dayna added cream and sugar to her mug and stirred it, but didn’t drink again. She shrugged and gave Alice a bleak look. “I mean … I wasn’t going to come this weekend. Cookie had invited me months ago, and I figured if you could be here with Mick, I could stand to see Paul. I knew it was important. Twenty years, you know? I wanted to be here for them, but I also knew he’d be here. They’d both be here. And I didn’t want to see them together.”

  “They’re not together.”

  “I didn’t want to see him,” Dayna corrected herself. “And know there was no way he’d look at me. Not the way he used to, like there was nothing else in the world that mattered but the sight of me. Or worse, what if he did look at me that way? What would I do then, when I know that even if he still wanted me, there was no way for it to happen?”

  Alice had no answer for that.

  “I would have to pretend everything was okay when it’s not, because I look at him and my heart still breaks. So, I want to know. Does it go away? The wanting,” Dayna asked.

  Alice wrapped her hands around the mug, which was really too hot to hold, but something in the sting against her palms was somehow soothing. “No. I guess it doesn’t.”

  “Shit.” Dayna gave a shaky laugh. She went to the cupboard and pulled down the bottle of Baileys, adding a shot to her