Feels Like Falling - Kristy Woodson Harvey Page 0,2

now they’d want to throw a party for my divorce. Or my thirty-fifth birthday, which was looming large.

Just when I felt myself start to relax, I saw her. Her. The twentysomething blonde with the MBA I had hired to be my husband’s executive assistant when I had somewhat begrudgingly promoted him to CFO of my company and given him a corner office. It wasn’t that I didn’t want my husband on my playing field. Greg just wasn’t a very hard worker, and everyone except him could see that he didn’t deserve to be a part of my C-suite. There were positives to Greg’s aversion to work, especially when it came to raising our son, but I’d always had serious qualms about his being a part of my business.

Ironically, his executive assistant was not one of them.

Suddenly I was thankful that these ladies had taken post along my route to the pool. Though we hadn’t specifically addressed the Greg and Brooke situation—thank God—I knew they were abreast of the drama. Everyone was abreast of the drama. So I nodded my head slyly toward Brooke as she approached and said, “Mrs. Jenkins, Mrs. Stoddard, would you do me the very large favor of keeping her occupied for a few minutes?”

They laughed delightedly, always glad to be caught up in a scheme.

Brooke was in full makeup, a sundress, and five-inch wedges that seriously slowed her pace. As she called “Gray!” I pretended not to hear her and crossed the final few yards of concrete pavers to the pool gate. Before she could catch me, Mrs. Jenkins and Mrs. Stoddard descended on her with small talk. They were so good; it didn’t even seem suspicious. But just when I thought the worst was over, I heard a muffled “how humiliating” from a “friend” as I walked by. I’m sure she thought I couldn’t hear her, but I have ears that rival a bat’s. So I turned, shot her my most genuine smile, and said, “You have absolutely no idea.”

“Oh, no,” she stammered. “I wasn’t talking about you.”

But I was already gone, lifting the safety latch on the iron gate and walking past the elaborate hut with its Bermuda shutters that served as the pool bar. There were a dozen or so sunbathers lounging around the perimeter of the pool, some in full sun and others under the club’s black-and-white-striped umbrellas. Children splashed and played in the water. Even in my state, I couldn’t help but smile at their joy.

Palm trees swayed above the white wooden cabanas. The trees weren’t native to this area, but the club kept them alive by wrapping them through the winter. The view across the pool of the otherworldly blue ocean was transportive, and it made this little oasis in Cape Carolina feel like a tropical mini-vacation. Not that I was eager to return to the tropics after last time.

“Gray,” I heard Brooke calling again from behind me, louder than before. Good Lord, leave me alone, I thought. I was being immature, I knew. Still unable to locate Marcy, I quickly and calmly removed my sunglasses, hat, flip-flops, and pareo and set them in a pile by the edge of the pool. There was one place I knew Brooke wouldn’t follow me. She would never ruin a perfectly good blowout, which, to be fair, I respected.

I had been mature when Greg told me, on our trip to the British Virgin Islands, as we were sipping mimosas on the stern of our boat—still sex-sticky, no less—that he was leaving me. I had been mature when he moved out of my house and straight into Brooke’s the day after we buried my mother. I had been mature when they asked to take my only child on a three-week vacation to Europe, which they were leaving for tonight. I was done being mature.

As I heard Brooke’s footsteps behind me, I flashed back to the BVIs, to Greg looking me in the eyes and saying, “Gray, you are the mother of my child, and I will always love you. But I think it’s time for us to go our separate ways.”

Ten years of holding his hand and smelling his particular brand of morning breath and feeling his cold feet underneath our sheets. Ten years of his bad jokes at my office and even worse show tunes in the shower. My husband—the man I had made love to less than thirty minutes earlier, the man who had held my leg in the delivery room, who