Playing For Keeps

Joanna glanced over. “I don’t use powder…oh,” she said when she caught sight of the glittering foil packets inside the now open compact. “Jeez. You still carry them with you?”

“I still shave my legs every morning, too. A girl can never be too prepared. And the compact’s nice ’cause you can sneak a peek at your makeup while the guy’s…you know.” She clicked shut the compact again, wiggling it in her hand. “Where should I put this?”

“Back in your purse.”

“You haven’t forgotten how to use them, have you?”

“Considering who taught me? Not bloody likely. It was years before I could look at a jumbo frank without blushing. But I can’t—”

“It’s not safe to expect the man to remember, you know.”

“Yes, I do. But I’d rather take care of things on an as-needed basis, okay?”

“Okay,” Karleen said at last, finally snapping open her purse and dropping the compact back inside.

“Karleen?”

“Yeah, honey?”

“I really do appreciate what you’re trying to do, but did I ever tell you how much I hate sherbet?”

She shrugged. “Maybe you just haven’t tasted the right flavor yet.”

Joanna sighed.

A mile or so south, in the no-frills, three-bedroom apartment he’d been living in since his divorce, Bobby Alvarez leaned in the doorway to the master bedroom, trying to convince his stomach to unknot. Tori sat on the edge of the bed, her hands clamped on the mattress edge through the lacy white comforter she’d picked out, a tiny crease wedged between her brows. He’d seen that crease before. It always meant trouble.

“Hey,” he said lightly. “Jo just called, said it’s time to bring the kids back for the party. You about ready?”

Tori lifted her eyes, solemn and dark blue, outlined with some smudgy stuff that made them look even more solemn. She was almost as tall as him, but thin enough to look swallowed up in the baggy velour top she wore over a pair of jeans, an effect enhanced by her long, dark hair, which she wore loose and parted in the middle, like a teenager. “Do I have to go?”

This was no surprise. “What’s wrong, sweetheart? Don’t you feel good?”

“I’m okay. It’s just…” The corners of her mouth twitched. “All those people, your family…”

Stifling what would have been a weighty sigh, Bobby closed the few feet between them, the mattress sagging when he sat beside her. “Aw, honey,” he said, looping an arm around her shoulders and tugging her to him, her flowery-smelling hair slippery under his cheek. “They’re gonna be your family, too, you know.”

“The kids, yeah.” She twisted the brand-new engagement ring—even getting it at Sam’s Club, it had pretty much wiped out his Visa—around and around her finger. “Not your ex. Or her parents.”

God, this sucked. The whole reason he’d fallen for Tori to begin with was because their relationship required little mental effort on his part. Not like him and Jo, who were like those two cats that still lived out in back of Joanna’s house and couldn’t cross paths without spitting at each other. And he was thrilled about the baby, even if he wasn’t about to admit to Jo or anybody else that he’d nearly had a coronary when Tori’d told him she’d found a tear in her diaphragm. How they were going to manage, what with a good chunk of what he was making already going to Jo and the kids, he had no idea. So he figured he had plenty of worries without having to deal with pregnancy hormones, too.

But ready or not, he had to, didn’t he?

“Hey. We talked this all through, remember?” And since talking things through wasn’t exactly Bobby’s strong suit, the prospect of tilling the same ground ad nauseum wasn’t exactly giving him a big thrill now. “About how everybody being together is gonna be inevitable from time to time? That it’ll be easier for the kids to accept you if you’re included in family get-togethers?”

“I know. But this is just so…weird. Not what I imagined, y’know?”

Praying for the smarts to get through the minefield without blowing off his balls, he said, “You knew I had kids from the get-go, Tor. It wasn’t like I sprung ’em on you.”

“I know. But…”

He saw her hands slip over her tummy and something primitive and possessive shot through him. In a way, it was kind of sexy, knowing he’d put the baby there. But it also signaled the onset of what amounted to nine straight months of PMS. Hell, if you wanted teenage boys to abstain from having sex too early, just lock ’em up with a pregnant woman for twenty-four hours. Guaranteed to kill any chance of an erection for a good five, maybe ten years.

“It’s just I watch you and Jo together,” she was saying, “and all I can think is, I can’t compete with that. With what the two of you still have.”

He panicked for a second, afraid he wouldn’t be able to keep up. “What are you talking about? All Jo and I do is fight.”

“Not always.”

“Okay, only like ninety percent of the time. And when we’re not, we’re either recovering from a fight or gearing up for one.”

“Because you still care about each other.”

“No, because we’re from two different planets.”

“But you have this…this history together.”

“Well, yeah. We were married for nine years. We have three kids we’re raisin’ together. I can’t change that, can I?”

She blew out a quick sigh through her nose. “No, I suppose not.”

“But now it’s time for you and me to make our own history, right?”

“And I’ll always be second.”

By his estimation, he had maybe ten seconds to defuse this bomb. “That’s not how I see it, honey. Yeah, maybe you’re…second, chronologically, but…okay—you know how a movie might be number one at the box office? But then, the next week another movie comes along and that movie is number one?”

She stiffened.

“Dammit, Tor…I’m lousy at this—”

“Oh, never mind,” Tori said on another sigh. “I know what you’re trying to say. It’s just I keep thinking, if your marriage to Jo didn’t work out, what’s to say ours will? And it’s not like I’ve got a whole lot of experience to fall back on. My mother’s been married and divorced twice. I haven’t seen my real father in years. So I’m not exactly feeling real secure. Especially as…”

“What?”

Tori gave him a look that scared the crap out of him, because she looked far too much like Jo did, there at the end. Still did, come to think of it.

“Look,” she said, “I know I had nothing to do with you two breaking up, but still. I feel bad. That I’m in the middle. That you’re in the middle. That I have you, and I’m so happy, and she has…nothing.” Then she pulled her feet up onto the edge of the bed, toying with one of her toe rings, her mouth all funny.

“What?”

“I can’t say it, it’s too tacky.”

“Tori, I’m not a mind reader. Whatever you’re thinking, just say it.”

After a moment she said, “It’s not that I resent the money you give to Joanna for the house and stuff, and certainly not whatever you pay for child support, but somehow…well, I wish she didn’t need to depend on you quite so much. And that really sounds selfish and stupid and horrible, but I don’t want to start out our lives together wondering if every time we buy something for us, we’re spending money that should go to your first family instead—”

“Dad?”