Maine - J. Courtney Sullivan [183]
By the time darkness fell an hour later and the band in the gazebo began to play, three bottles were empty. Ann Marie hoped she was the only one keeping track, because she herself had had a bottle and a half. She closed her eyes, feeling faint, but in an almost pleasant way. She opened up the Tupperware that contained her homemade hummus and dipped a big hunk of pita bread right in, hardly even caring when a dollop of it fell onto the blanket.
Her eyes met Steve’s as she looked up from the spot.
“Whoops,” he said. He gave her a bright smile. “Hey, everything tastes great.”
Pat was typing away on his cell phone’s keyboard, either frantically tying up loose ends on a business deal or just trying to avoid his mother. Alice was droning on about some local newscaster who had taken up with the married head of the station, and Linda was trapped, listening and nodding along as if it were the most fascinating story in the world. Maybe she even was fascinated. Alice had a way of captivating people. She had captivated Ann Marie once too.
Ann Marie thought back to a time before the Kellehers. She had been a different girl completely. What would her life have been if she had married someone else? Of all possible paths, she had taken this one, and now she wondered how she had ever been brave or stupid or something enough to choose.
The fire station bell rang to signal there were only thirty more minutes before the fireworks began.
Steve got to his feet. “Excuse me a minute,” he said, looking straight at Ann Marie, giving her a wink. No one else was paying attention. “Save my spot?”
He walked off into the crowd and she was seized with a realization. That wink. He wanted her to follow him.
“I’d better run to the ladies’ before the festivities get going,” she said to no one in particular. She felt giddy beyond belief, like a high school girl before a big date.
She stood up on wobbly legs, only now noticing just how drunk she was. She pushed past families and young couples and old ones, unsteady on her feet. Ann Marie anchored herself on the shoulders of strangers as they passed by.
She found Steve in the long Porta-Potty line in the parking lot, standing behind a group of teenagers who were cramming glow sticks into their mouths, their cheeks lighting up in a sickly green hue.
He saw her and grinned. “Ah, thank God. Some adult company.”
Her heart was actually thumping. She needed to calm her nerves. She wished she had brought the champagne. She noticed a flag pin on his lapel and raised a finger to touch it.
“I like this,” she said, taking a step closer so that when he spoke she could feel his breath on her cheek.
“Thanks. I got it when we took the kids to D.C. Gotta show your American pride, right? But look who I’m talking to.” He gestured toward her outfit. “You’re basically Miss America tonight.”
That was her cue. Ann Marie placed her hands on his face. She leaned forward and kissed him, feeling the warmth of his lips, gently pushing her tongue between them. For a moment, it was everything she had imagined. But then he pulled back hard.
“Ann Marie,” he said. “What are you doing?”
He turned his head quickly to the left and the right, as if looking for an escape.
“I thought—” she said. And suddenly, it all crashed down around her. The house was gone and her children were disappointments. She would never be rid of her mother-in-law, or of Kathleen. There was only one person in her life who brought her any excitement anymore, and now she had ruined that too. She wanted to be able to wake up and discover that it was all a bad dream; she wanted not to exist.
“Please,” she said softly, not even sure what she was asking him for.
“You’ve had too much to drink,” he said, his face turning hard in an instant. “I’m going back to the others, okay? Will you be all right here on your own?”
She nodded, her belly filling up with dread as he rushed off. And then, at the moment when it seemed like her life could not sink