“I’m sorry,” JP says, but Amy can hear in his voice that he’s not sorry, he’s relieved. The death blow has been landed. The ten years that Amy has invested in this relationship has been dissolved with a few sentences. “You’re a wonderful girl—”
“Stop,” Amy says. “There will be no patronizing, please.” Her voice is surprisingly clear and firm, a welcome change from the singsongy tone she typically uses with JP in an attempt to sound charming, cute, lighthearted. “Does this have anything to do with Vivi’s death?”
“Kind of,” JP says. “I’ve taken a self-inventory. I don’t have the right feelings for you. You deserve to be loved and adored.”
“And you don’t love me? You don’t adore me?”
“No.”
There’s no hedging, no gray area, no room for any interpretation except one, and for this, Amy is grateful. JP is sparing her from believing there’s hope. And without hope, Amy is free to be honest.
“I should never have let you kiss me in the wineshop,” she says. “I knew it was wrong, I knew you were just unhappy in your marriage and looking for validation from an attractive female.”
“You were the answer to my prayers,” JP says. “Every day that summer, I was happy. I looked forward to waking up and going to work. You were the sun.”
“I was blinded by my feelings for you. You were older, you were sophisticated, so handsome, so…forbidden.” That was part of the allure, Amy knows—JP belonged to someone else.
“I wanted it to work, Amy. I gave it my best shot. I think when you moved in…”
Yes, three years ago when Amy moved in with JP, things became stressful, and that stress eroded the romance. The kids were older; they had opinions and allegiances. But Amy had needed a place to live, and she and JP had been together nearly seven years—it made sense. But she should have maintained her independence. She should have rented, or even purchased, her own place.
“I was always jealous of Vivi,” Amy says. “You were divorced, but the two of you were still codependent. Even after we’d been together for years, she was still the most important woman in your life. It was never me, it was always Vivi.” She expects JP to refute this, but he says nothing. “You used to tease me about being jealous of her. You said it was absurd, that I was insecure. But I was only reacting to always coming in second.” Now the anger surfaces. It feels like acid she wants to throw on him. “I shouldn’t have believed a word you said. I should have left years ago. You stole the best years of my life.”
“You’re only thirty-three. There’s still plenty of time for you to meet someone else and have a baby.”
He’s right. Now that Amy is free, she can meet someone and get pregnant, whereas with JP, that avenue was closed. He’d had a vasectomy after Leo was born.
“Do you remember the night you went to Savannah’s for dinner?” she says. “I spied on you through the back window of her house.”
“You did not.” He holds her gaze. “You did? Wow, that’s a new low for you, Aim. You do realize that Savannah and I are just friends—”
“You weren’t friends before. You hated her before.”
JP concedes this with a dip of his head. “Our relationship is complicated. Lots of history. I’ve known Savannah my whole life. Long before Vivi.”
Amy has heard it all before. JP and Savannah grew up together at the Field and Oar Club, two children of extreme privilege with shared memories of this tennis match, that sailing race, their parents laughing and drinking gin and tonics together on the patio. “You looked pretty cozy.”
“We were grieving.”
“Well,” Amy says. “When I left Union Street, I went to the Gaslight and bumped into Dennis.”
“Ugh,” JP says. “Poor you.”
“He asked me to dance,” Amy says. “We ended up making out in the front seat of his truck.”
JP recoils. Is he bothered by this? Jealous? Amy never planned on telling JP about this indiscretion, though she’s revisited the moment many times since it happened. Dennis had been surprisingly gentlemanly with Amy—respectful, kind, generous (he bought all her drinks)—and he’d also been insightful, funny, and honest. “Don’t stay with JP,” Dennis said. “He’s not good enough for you. Even Vivi used to say that you deserved someone younger, with more energy.”
And then, later in the night, while they were making out pretty heavily in his car, he whispered, “I’ve