Page 11 of Woman on the Verge

“I like to describe myself as a former twentysomething,” he says with a smile. That smile, those dimples.

“We’re all former twentysomethings,” she says.

“Well, I just graduated from that decade a few days ago.”

Katrina thinks of the twenties as “late adolescence,” a time for mistakes and self-absorption and aimless wandering. The fact that he’s already taken the bar exam means he must be far more mature than she was at his age.

“You can’t be much older than me,” he says.

She feels his thigh pressing against hers. Or maybe it’s not pressing. Maybe it’s just there. But it wasn’t there a few minutes ago.

“That’s a sly way of finding out my age,” she says.

“I thought so.”

“I’m thirty-five.”

He nods. There is no eyebrow raising or other facial reaction to suggest he is in any way uncomfortable with her being “an older woman.” After all, they’re just flirting. It’s not like he’s assessing her as marriage material.

“You were still in junior high when I graduated from high school,” she says.

He laughs.

The truth is really much worse. She’s forty. He was still in junior high when she graduated fromcollege.

“I’ve always had a thing for older women,” he says.

This one comment makes it clear that the interest is mutual, which is shocking. He is so far out of her league, but he doesn’t seem to realize or care. She could blame it on the booze, but he’s only had two beers. To be clear, it’s not that she’s horribly unpleasant to look at. On a good day, she might even be described as pretty. But on most days, she would be described as average.

She finishes her whiskey and places the empty glass next to his empty pint glass.

“So, Kit Kat,” he says.

“Kit Kat? You’ve already bestowed me with a nickname?”

“Too soon?”

She wants to sayToo unnecessary because I’ll never see you again. But she decides to enjoy the moment instead, to pretend that it’s not unnecessary, that they are at the beginning of something. How fun to be at the beginning of something. For so long, she has felt at the end of everything.

“It’s cute,” she says.

“Should we get one more?” he asks.

Her head is pleasantly fuzzy, her skin warm and tingly. She is at the stage of drunkenness when the world seems kind and possibilities are endless. If she has one more, she will cross the line into drunken despair or, worse, puking. No woman her age should cross that line.

“I think I’m done for the night,” she says.

“Done drinking or done talking to me?”

“I assumed the two went together.”

“They don’t have to.”

There is that twinkle in his eye again.My apartment’s just a few blocks away.

Katrina has never personally known a woman who has had an affair. Or rather, she’s never known a woman who hasadmittedto having an affair. Not that this thing with Elijah is—or would be, if she let it happen—anaffair. It would be—if she let it happen, which she won’t—a one-night stand. A dalliance. A blip on an otherwise uneventful radar. But still, she’s never known a woman who has confided in her about a blip.

She remembers listening to one of the marriage podcasts she subscribes to—because her marriage is at a point in which podcasts are needed to salvage it—and the guest, a prominent psychologist, said that about half of people have an affair at some point during their marriage. Half! One out of two. That means either Katrina or her husband is likely to cheat. She wonders if her husband has already had an affair. She can’t imagine he could manage the logistics of it. He is terrible with texting.