Page 5 of This Is Who I Am

CASS

Suzy rises from her chair, beaming. “This couldn’t be more perfect.” She welcomes Sadie and her surfers to the deck of The Bay with her trademark authority. “Cass and I were just discussing holding a support group for menopausal women at Savor and in walks my target group.”

Suzy is the Ireland with the least qualms about anything.

“Hear, hear,” one of the ladies says. “I’m in.” She’s standing next to Estelle, who is shuffling around awkwardly, as though, out of the water and surrounded by so many people, she doesn’t quite know what to do with herself.

“No doubt there, Linda,” Suzy says to the woman. She’s probably one of her clients and if not, Suzy knows just about everyone in Clearwater Bay. She’s our town’s unofficial mayor.

“I’m going to leave you ladies to it.” Hunter rises as well, freeing up the chair next to mine. “Let you discuss your hormones in peace.”

He kisses me goodbye and offers his empty chair to Estelle.

Suddenly, Friday Woman is sitting next to me.

She looks a little forlorn without her little notebook, as well as tired from that surfing lesson.

From what I could see, she didn’t have any surprising board tricks up her sleeve at all.

I only saw her go under spectacularly a few times, always to loud cheers from her companions.

“Hi,” Estelle says, tucking a wet strand of hair behind her ear. “You don’t surf?”

“Hey.” I shoot her a smile. “No. Dry land is decidedly more my thing.”

“My treat, ladies,” Sadie shouts over our brittle conversation. “Shall I just order a couple of bottles of white wine?”

There’s lots of whooping and I glance around the rowdy group that has joined us as though it was always planned that they would once Sadie’s lesson ended. I know the other four ladies from the restaurant—and Estelle as well now, I guess.

I just came here for drinks with my two best friends on my day off, but that’s Clearwater Bay for you.

One of them, Julianne, a feisty woman in her sixties with short-cropped gray hair, also used to be my mother-in-law. Sitting here with her makes me realize, once more, why it makes sense that Sarah and I are no longer a couple—although it sure hurt like hell when she left.

The wine is served, glasses distributed, and a group conversation develops.

Estelle doesn’t interject much. She’s more a quiet observer, although it’s only logical she wouldn’t have much to contribute since most of the topics relate directly to the town.

Besides, when you’re at a table with the likes of Suzy and Linda, not much is required from anyone else in terms of conversation.

I push my chair back a little and angle it to my side—to Estelle. She’s wearing a tattered T-shirt and her hair is a wet mess, but she still easily rivals Sadie’s TV-worthy good looks.

“How’s that thing you were working on so relentlessly last Friday?” I ask.

“Oh, hm, yeah… not good.” She rolls her eyes. “It’s a math problem my father left for me just before he died, and I’m beginning to think he wanted to play one last prank on me by giving me an unsolvable problem that he knew I wouldn’t be able to let go.”

“I’m so sorry to hear about your father.”

“Thanks, um, yeah, he passed a few months ago, but I’m only just now going through all his stuff.

” Her face doesn’t betray deep sadness, but that doesn’t mean anything.

Perhaps Estelle is just very good at hiding her emotions.

Especially when sitting with a group of strangers.

“That’s why I’m back in Clearwater Bay.” She sips from her wine.

“Suzy reckons she knows you from school,” I say.

Estelle squints in Suzy’s direction. “Yeah. Goodness, that was so long ago. I never lived here again after college. My dad moved back after he retired, but that was only a few years ago, once his health didn’t allow him to teach anymore.

He would have just kept on going if his body hadn’t stopped him.

” A touch of sadness does creep into her voice now.

“Where did he teach?” I ask, gazing into Estelle’s light-brown eyes.

“Berkeley. Differential Equations.” She shrugs. “Just like me. Well, used to.”

“You were a professor at Berkeley?” I’m a little impressed, especially because numbers might as well be another language for me.

“I, um, resigned recently.” Estelle is not forthcoming with more information. This is hardly the place for it.

“How long are you planning on staying in Clearwater Bay?”

“At least until I solve this fucking problem.” When she smiles, her face opens up and her eyes catch the orange hues of the sunset—and she’s even more shockingly beautiful.

For a split second, I consider asking her on a date, so we can have a proper conversation, but then I remember what Suzy and I were talking about earlier, and the reason why Sarah and I split up, and I think better of it—much, much better.

Either way, Estelle Raymond is so incredibly out of my league, I wouldn’t even dare to ask.

“So I might be here a while,” Estelle says.

“Suzy’s turning fifty in a few months,” I say. “Even though you don’t look it, you must not be too far off.” An inconvenient blush heats up my cheeks. Damn it. But at least it’s not a hot flash—yet.

“Oh, please.” Estelle waves off my comment. She’s not good at taking compliments then. “But yes. My birthday’s only at the end of the year, though. In December.”

“Are you at all interested in joining her support group?” I pry, my blush intensifying. Suzy’s so right about how much we need this group if it’s this hard to have a casual conversation about it, with another woman no less. My cheeks are burning up, for heaven’s sake.

“Hm.” Estelle makes a noise somewhere between a groan and a scoff. “Not sure that’s for me, to be honest.”

I almost ask whether she’s a late bloomer but realize just in time that would be quite rude.

“You?” she asks, tilting her head, as though she’s taking a good look at me for the first time and only now realizes that, give or take a few years, we must be the same age.

“The other night when you were at the restaurant,” I admit, even though I have no clue why—must be brain fog, another fun symptom of the menopause—“I had to cool off outside during a massive hot flash.”

“It didn’t impact your food,” Estelle says dryly.

I have to chuckle. “Good to know.”

“Honestly, the inventiveness of your dishes floors me every time. How do you even think of putting certain flavors together? Things like that are just so completely beyond me. I don’t have a creative bone in my body so I really respect that.” Her smile lingers.

My pulse stutters, just once, before the heat rushes in like a slap.

I’ve never had a hot flash triggered by a lovely compliment from an incredibly attractive lady before, quite possibly because I haven’t been on the receiving end of those for a long time, but here we go.

The blush on my cheeks spreads to my neck and, just like that, it feels like my entire body is on fire.

“Please excuse me,” I mumble, jumping out of my chair as though I’m trying to escape an actual fire. How much more embarrassing can it get?

I duck around the building’s corner, grateful for the ocean breeze against my burning skin. I try to breathe through it, but slowing down my breathing can only do so much.

Experience has taught me one thing: there’s nothing to do but ride it out.

The only small mercy of a hot flash is that it never takes long.

It embarrasses the hell out of you. It makes you feel as though you’ve lost all control over your body.

You feel sticky and sweaty and dirty. It’s as though your insides are burning and trying to find a way out but your skin is already aflame as well.

But it doesn’t last very long. Afterward, there’s plenty of time and opportunity to face whomever you had to flee from.

At work, my staff know how to deal with it. It’s just a thing that happens now. But it’s different in a social situation like this. I certainly wasn’t flirting with Estelle—I’m in no condition to be doing anything silly like that—but we were having a nice conversation.

“Hey, Cass. Are you okay?” It’s my ex-mother-in-law, which is a blessing but also very much not.

“Hot flash,” I manage to say, wanting to rip this too-thick pair of jeans off my sweaty legs.

“Do you want some ice? A wet towel?” Julianne has been where I am. I know because she told me all about it.

“It’ll be over in a few minutes.” I expel a few deep breaths and try to catch more of the chill in the air.

But then another image of Estelle pops up in my head, of how her lips moved so sensuously while she said those wonderful things about my food, and another wave of heat crashes through me.

I’m so overheated, I have to stop myself from sprinting into the ocean.

And then, as though it never even happened, as though it was all just a figment of my imagination, it’s all over—except for my wrinkled blouse and the wet hair clinging to my forehead.

“Could you do me a favor, Julianne?” I manage a grin. “Could you get my purse from the deck? I can’t go back there, and I just want to go home.”

“Come on, Cass. You don’t have to hide from us. Suzy was just talking about a support group for women going through this very thing.”

“I know I don’t have to hide, but… I don’t have the energy to argue about this right now. Could you just do me this small favor, please?”

“Of course. I’ll be right back.”

Maybe it’s silly and, according to Suzy, certainly giving in to internalized misogyny because of the patriarchy and whatnot, but I simply can’t face Estelle after that.

“Hey.” Oh, no. Damn you, Julianne. “Here’s your bag,” Estelle says. “Are you okay?”

“God, I’m sorry.” I take my purse from her. “Thanks. You didn’t have to, um, do that.”

“I wanted to make sure you were all right.” She pulls those damned luscious lips of hers into the smoothest grin. “Hot flash?”

“Yeah. Serves me right for talking about it so brazenly.” What a stupid thing to say.

Estelle just shakes her head. “Can I walk you home? Make sure you don’t have another on the way?”

This gorgeous woman wants to walk me home? Me. Really?

It doesn’t mean anything, Cass, I tell myself. She’s just trying to make some friends in the town she left behind all those years ago.

“That would be very nice of you,” I hear myself say, because why the hell not?