His whole life had unraveled in a matter of weeks, and she felt like hers was just starting again. She felt reborn with Charlie. He made her feel like a very special fairy princess and as she thought it, she heard a familiar ring in her head. Someone else had made her feel that way…Nigel…and Ed in the beginning…and Ian…She wanted to be sure this wasn’t a replay of all the mistakes she’d made before. But it didn’t seem like it. He seemed perfect in every way.
She and Sam talked for a while, he was tired and irritable, and stressed by his negotiations with Tamar over money while still living with her. She wanted a hefty sum for having given up five years of her life. His mother had declared war on her, on Sam’s behalf, which complicated matters further. The baby had an earache and had kept him up all night, and Nathan had stomach flu. Tamar was doing nothing to help him with the kids. They were his problem now. In her mind, she had already left.
“Sounds like real life to me,” Coco said gently, but the good news in her life was that Bethanie had just been checked at Sloan Kettering again, and had come through with flying colors, with no sign of leukemia at all. The treatment had worked. Everything else in Coco’s life was insignificant compared to that.
She and Charlie had been dating for a month when he invited her away for a weekend at his house in Saint Bart’s. It was a loaded question, and she understood the implication, but they had seen a lot of each other, and she was dying to sleep with him. She accepted, and they were planning to go down on Friday morning on his plane. They were going to spend a night on his boat, which was docked in Antigua and he hadn’t mentioned to her. It was a two-hundred-and-fourteen-foot sailboat he’d had built by a famous shipyard in Italy, and was the envy of experienced sailors. He was taking her to a party in Palm Beach on Sunday night, and they were flying back on Monday morning in time for both of them to go to work. It all sounded perfect. On her lunch hour she bought a white silk dress at Chanel in SoHo to wear on his boat. It was just going to be the two of them all weekend, until they went to Palm Beach for the party, which was going to be a big event. She had a new dress for that too. She’d been doing a lot of shopping lately, for their busy social life. It was easy for him. He either wore suits or black tie. The lifestyle was familiar to her, although it wasn’t what she would have chosen to pursue on her own. She was happy with a simple life, doing things with Bethanie or Sam and his children. But it was exciting being out with Charlie. He made her feel beautiful, sophisticated, and young.
She spoke to Sam on Thursday night, before she left. She didn’t tell him where she was going, he had enough problems these days with Tamar and a divorce, she didn’t want to bother him with her new social life and budding romance. She had a faint suspicion he wouldn’t approve. He was negative about everything these days. And there was an unreal quality to her relationship with Charlie. Her parents hadn’t lived that way, even though they could have. They didn’t like to show off, and Coco never had either. But it was fun being with Charlie, it was all so glamorous and exciting.
“Do you want to have dinner tomorrow night? The nanny will stay late if I need her to,” Sam asked her.
“I can’t, I’m sorry, Sam.”
“Another black-tie event on the Bartlett circuit?” he asked, sounding a little snide about it, or maybe just jealous that she was having fun and he wasn’t. Nothing about his life was fun at the moment, neither his battles with Tamar about the spousal support she wanted, nor his kids, who seemed to be constantly sick now that the two oldest were in preschool and brought every bug home to the two younger ones. Sam had had a cold for two weeks, and a bout of stomach flu himself. He was run-down and tired, and discouraged. “I seem to be in purgatory at the moment,” he commented, and she laughed.