My breath came out in a rush, along with my words. “He married Margot? Our Margot?”
“Yes,” Jenny said with a sigh. “Our Margot is now his Margot.”
I had met Margot Hendricks at university, in social studies class. Though we’d never been close the way Jenny and I were, she was someone I had looked up to. An outspoken feminist who didn’t only give lip service but actually showed up at protests and marched and made her voice heard. She spoke three languages fluently, thanks to her Swedish mother and Spanish father, and talked of becoming a professor before one day joining the United Nations. Whip smart as she was, Margot Hendricks never made you feel like you were anything but equal to her, even though we all knew she was the brightest of our group. And most relevant to this particular conversation today in the café, she never—in the four years we were at school together—had a boyfriend or even a whiff of a relationship.
We had stayed in casual touch after graduation, when I went to work and she started grad school, and she had come to Daniel’s and my engagement party—but that was the last time I remembered seeing her.
“Were we still friends?” I asked Jenny. Margot seemed someone I would have stayed in touch with, even if only through happy birthday posts and the occasional liking of a photo on social media. At least until she married my ex-fiancé.
Jenny shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so?” I asked, frustrated by this noncommittal answer. “Or no?”
“No. You are not friends. As far as I know.” Jenny and I had been best of friends since we were eighteen years old, and I spoke to her nearly daily. She would know if Margot and I had stayed in contact.
“Are you friends with her?” She shook her head slowly. “And you still don’t know why Daniel and I broke up?” Was it because of Margot? I wondered.
Jenny looked surprised, her eyes widening—my tone clearly suggesting I thought she might have omitted that truth, as well. “I swear to you, Lucy, I don’t know why.”
I nodded. The headache was back and I needed to go home. But I continued to push my brain, trying to grasp on to memories of Margot. How had she ended up with Daniel? They had known each other only casually, and only because he and I were dating.
What the hell had happened, to all of us, since then?
“You know, I’ve never had sex in the water,” Lucy said to Daniel, shifting her body between his legs and leaning back against his chest, the hot water in the bathtub pushing up the sides, threatening to spill over the edge. There were pink rose petals floating on the surface of the water, the heady floral scent enveloping them, seeping into their pores. Two glasses of red wine, nearly empty, were on the tub’s ledge. Daniel wrapped his arms around her, kissed the side of her face, her outstretched neck. She shivered and goose bumps prickled across her exposed arms.
“Really?” he murmured, still nibbling her neck. “How did I not know this?”
She shrugged against him. “You don’t know everything about me,” she said, smiling back at him. “I still have some secrets.”
“I’m sure you do,” Daniel said. “This revelation is giving me so many—” He stopped talking to take his mouth lower, onto the delicate skin of her collarbone. Lucy closed her eyes, felt the way his body changed under hers and wished they had more time.
In about an hour a room full of their closest friends and family would toast their engagement with champagne and far-too-pricy appetizers, and choosing this bath over quick showers had already guaranteed they were thirty minutes behind schedule. “So, so many ideas.”
“Oh, yeah? Like what?” Her heart beat quickly. She knew they needed to get out of the bath and into party clothes, but she didn’t want to. Not quite yet. Lucy moved one of Daniel’s hands lower, until it sank under the water and settled between her legs. “Maybe something like this?”
“Exactly what I had in mind,” Daniel murmured, moving his hand with precision, the gentle pressure and warm water a delicious combination. She sucked in a breath, opened her legs wider so they pressed against the sides of the bathtub, her left kneecap connecting hard with the overhanging faucet. Later, visible because of her above-the-knee cocktail dress, a crescent-shaped bruise would form on her knee, but the pain barely registered now because of what Daniel was doing to her. “I think this will get us in a more celebratory mood, don’t you?”
She couldn’t speak, was too focused on what was building between her thighs, throughout the rest of her body. As his fingers became more purposeful, she arched against him and moaned, no longer caring about the water that now splashed over the edge of the tub. Afterward, she lay breathless against him, eyes closed. “You were right,” she murmured. “I definitely feel like celebrating now.”
“Good,” he said, his mouth close to her ear. “But if we’re already late, why not a few minutes more? We could do something about your bucket list right now.” He slapped his palm down on the water’s surface gently, causing a few ripples. “We have water, and I’m sort of an expert.”
“An expert?” Lucy laughed, twisted her neck so she could look at him. “Besides, I’m not sure I’d call it a bucket list item, and we don’t have room in here for that.”
He looked down at their naked bodies filling every spare inch of the bathtub. “I’m willing to give it a try if you are.”
“Hmm, tempting, but I have a feeling we’ll end up regretting that decision. The last thing we need tonight is a pulled muscle.” She kissed him, and though she was still in the afterglow of the orgasm, she was also beginning to feel the pressure of the ticking clock. “I’d say we have about three minutes before we have to shift into panic mode.”
He groaned, laid his head back against the tub’s ledge. “Do we have to go?” He sounded like a petulant middle schooler being told to hurry because the school bell was ringing soon.
Lucy sat up and turned to face him. “Yes, we have to go. If we didn’t show, I’m not sure which mother would kill us first.”
He laughed, deep from his belly, and then grabbed her in a hug from behind. “Definitely yours.”
“You’re probably right,” she said. Lucy’s parents were fairly laid-back, liked to refer to themselves as “free range”—and that had been mostly true during Lucy’s childhood. She and Alex were allowed to play outside on the street even after it got dark, were expected to do their own laundry and make school lunches, and they never once complained about the state of Lucy and Alex’s bedroom. But along with turning the lights off when you left a room, their mother was militant about lateness. Once, Alex had slept in the day they were driving to Boston to visit their cousins and wasn’t in the car at the predetermined time—7:00 a.m. sharp—and so their mother had put the car in Drive and left fifteen-year-old Alex at home, even as Lucy cried (she was only nine and couldn’t imagine how Alex could survive the four days alone).
Lucy disentangled herself from Daniel and stood in the tub, shivering as she grabbed a towel. She plucked a few of the pink petals that clung to her wet skin, then patted her body dry before bending at the waist to wrap the towel around her hair. Daniel was right behind her, planted a kiss on the goose-bumped skin on her shoulder before grabbing his own towel and aggressively rubbing it against his arms and legs, like he was trying to exfoliate with it. “I will never understand why you use your towel for your hair when you’re so clearly freezing,” he said.
She was already applying body lotion, starting to warm up now that she was dry. “One of life’s