Holding Hands Read Free Page A

jealous of her
mother, who got to hold hands with Charlie. Her septuagenarian
mother was enjoying the thrill of a new love, the excitement and
wonder of it, the tickle in her belly when he looked her way, the
wash of warmth or maybe even heat when he laced his fingers through
hers. How could you admit that you envied your mother’s social life
when you were married to a gorgeous guy and your mother lived in an
assisted-living community?
    “ What about some sexy
lingerie?” Diane suggested. “French bra, thong
panties...”
    That would work only if Scott bothered to
look at her. He’d never been much for seductive underwear, but she
supposed he wouldn’t object if she splurged on a few items from
Victoria’s Secret.
    If he even noticed.
    “ Maybe what you need to do
is get away,” Diane suggested. “Whenever things start getting stale
with Pete and me, we take a long weekend somewhere with a hot-tub
or a fireplace. One time we went to this spa and got his-and-hers
massages...” Her blissful sigh implied that those massages led to a
lot more than hand-holding.
    “ Getting away would be
nice,” Meredith said wistfully. “Too bad we’re in the midst of
leaf-peeper season.” New England’s hotels and inns always filled up
during the autumn months as tourists came to admire the fall
foliage. Most of the available rooms were usually booked a year in
advance.
    Undaunted, Diane dug her
cell phone from her purse. She held up a finger as if to
say, Watch this! and dialed a number. “Hi, Cindy? It’s Diane Carlito. Yeah, hi,
how are you? Listen, my friend here needs a room for the weekend...
Any weekend. Preferably this month.”
    Meredith shook her head. This month? She
needed time to plan. Time to convince Scott.
    “ I know. ’Tis the season.
But come on, Cindy. You’re on the shore, not in the mountains. You
don’t have any trees with colorful leaves on them, and no one goes
to the Cape in October... Yeah, yeah, I know. People do go to the Cape in
October. Just a room. Two nights... Well, look again... Okay!”
Diane beamed Meredith a smile brighter than the noon sun, extended
her hand and mouthed, “Credit card.”
    Too stunned to argue, Meredith pulled her
wallet from her bag and handed her Visa card to Diane, who read the
account number and expiration date into the phone. “Excellent,” she
said when she was done. “Email address?” She handed her cell phone
to Meredith. “Give her your email address so she can send you a
confirmation.”
    Dazed, Meredith took the phone. This was
crazy. She had no idea where she’d booked a room, let alone how
much it would cost. Yet she heard herself recite her email address,
her postal address and her phone number to Cindy, whoever the hell
she was.
    “ So, we’ll see you next
Friday,” Cindy said. “I wish I had a nicer room for you, but for
one-eighty a night and on such short notice, this is the best I can
do.”
    “ Thank you,” Meredith said
weakly, then handed the phone back to Diane. “Next
Friday?”
    “ That was the only time she
had a cabin open,” Diane explained as she tapped her phone’s screen
to disconnect the call. “And that’s only because someone canceled
at the last-minute.”
    “ For one hundred eighty
dollars, it can’t be much of a cabin.”
    “ It’s probably not,” Diane
said gleefully. “She owns a B&B and a cluster of cabins a
couple of blocks from the beach in West Dennis. But you don’t need
much. Just a big bed.”
    “ Next Friday?”
    “ Be spontaneous,” Diane
advised. “Scott will love you for it.”
    ***
    SCOTT DID NOT love her for it. “What are you,
crazy?” he roared when she told him over dinner that night.
    “ No, I’m not crazy.” I’m trying to revive our moribund marriage, you
idiot.
    “ I teach on
Fridays.”
    “ I work on Fridays, too.
We’ll head out after work. We can have a late dinner when we get to
the Cape. This time of year, there won’t be too much traffic. Maybe
we can both arrange