“Diana, do I really want to hear this?” asked Ali, my best friend of a long lifetime.

“I’m sure you don’t, but someone has to and there isn’t another soul I could admit this to without having to commit hari-kari immediately.”

“Okay, but I get to say ‘I told you not to’ at the beginning and the end.”

“You would anyway, Mother Superior.”

“Out with it. And I don’t have to be a nun to know that cheating on your husband is a bad idea. Even your husband, Rebound Rex, but that’s a whole ‘nother conversation.”

“I should have waited until next month when Rex is gone, I know that. But the agreement was signed and all the divorce details wrapped up, and suddenly Don was going to be in Palm Springs, which is thousands of miles closer than where he lives, and he’d been so romantic on the phone and I was so ready for a man who said he couldn’t wait to kiss me again and who didn’t look at his watch at precisely 7:00 PM and then meaningfully at me if it wasn’t crystal clear that dinner was heading for the table in the next thirty seconds.”

“I know all that, but somehow I’m getting the impression that Mr. Romance wasn’t quite as good a lover as he was a talker.”

“His talking score has been revised too. For one thing, he never shut up. I got to the restaurant where we met for dinner, and he was already there and had had two drinks and ordered wine. By the time I got through a glass of wine and my salad, I’d said probably ten words and he was starting to slur. Not a lot but a little, like when he called me ‘ssshweetie,’ which was when he wasn’t calling me ‘baby.’”

“Oh god. I mean, I know you guys were in high school together, so he’s closing in on 60 too, but … ‘baby’? Are you sure he’s not from Vegas?”

“Nope, the Heartland. One of those red states.”

“Tell me you didn’t fuck a Republican. No, wait. Don’t.”

“Let’s just say we stopped … short.”

“There can’t be more of this that I need to know.”

“I forgot to turn my phone ringer off, and Rex called during dinner. And then my lawyer called and sent an email, so it just kept beeping. And I was so rattled by that, I forgot again to turn it off and Rex called again. Later. You know, like later later.”

“Mr. Romance must have thought you were a very important person, what with your iPhone buzzing like a hive of angry bees all night.”

“I’m not sure he noticed.”

“Seriously?”

“And that’s both good and bad.”

“I’ll say.”

“It just, you might say, broke my concentration at some inopportune times.”

“I see.”

“And once, up in the hotel room, it was ringing in my purse on the nightstand right next to Don’s head and he sort of overreacted – well, more than ‘sort of,’ actually. He swatted it and knocked the purseand the lamp onto the floor and, well, me because – oh, I forgot to tell you: he asked if I would mind being on top because he has a bad back, and I said no, even though I do mind because of what gravity does to your skin when you’re … anyway, my knee slipped off the mattress and there wasn’t anything to grab onto, so I did like the splits onto the rug which looked like a minefield with all that stuff that spilled out of my purse.”

“You did the splits naked?” asked my horrified friend.

“Yeah. Amazing, isn’t it? Yoga. Anyway, I was down there scooping all that crap up when Don got up to help and stepped on my favorite lip gloss and broke it, dammit, and that little mirror compact, you know, the cute one, which cut his foot – though it really wasn’t that bad, but it surprised him, I guess, and he fell and smacked his elbow, which I swear he never stopped mentioning the whole rest of the time.”

“Which I’m hoping there wasn’t much more of. This is a picture I really want to stop seeing pretty soon.”

“Me too. Especially the one where he was kneeling on the floor, trying to get my phone that had gotten flung under the bed. I might have forgotten to tell you that the blackout curtains didn’t close all the way and there was a light on the building outside that was shining in right where he was bending …”

“Please stop.”

“I can’t. That wasn’t even the worst part.”

“How is that even possible?”

“Because then, after we cleaned up the lamp mess and his bleeding foot and all, he said he felt bad about his, you know, performance – and I didn’t say ‘or lack thereof’ like a snarky bitch, just so you know – and would it be okay if we got back in bed but with him on the other side so he could use his good hand.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No, he did not actually say ‘good hand.’”

“Oh, but he did.

“Well, was it? Good?” she asked.

“’Good’ is not the word that leaps to mind. Let’s see. It was … busy? Energetic? Are you getting this?” I was starting to giggle.

“I’m afraid I am,” her voice broke.

“That hand had seen a serious amount of – I think Don would call it ‘action.’” The last word came out as though I had sneezed it, ack-shun, because now I was fully laughing.  “I had to ask him to please stop. He seemed strangely happy about that and then said he loved to …”

“Wait, let me guess. Cuddle?” she spewed.

“Yep. And he flung one of his big old legs across my thighs, effectively pinning me to the mattress, and fell asleep. I spent the next half hour trying to inch out from underneath him – I was sooo HOT – and get away from all that skin, but he scooted after me like some demented windup toy every time I moved until I was perched on the far edge of the mattress, looking at the comforter on the floor and wondering how often the hotel washed the duvet. Distraction thinking, I think they call that. I was just trying not to think about what had just happened and how I was going to get out of there.”

Ali sighed. “Is that the end?”

“Almost. I had to pee, so I braved it and just got up and walked into the bathroom. God, they have the worst lights in hotel bathrooms. They always make you look fifteen years older than you already freaking are, and right then I’d added at least five with the stress of the last three hours. I mean, I looked truly terrible.”

“No offense, but I bet you did.”

“Thanks,” I said icily.

“De nada.”

“Didn’t I tell you how this whole thing started, how I couldn’t think about anything except how I am seriously old and my life is practically over? Remember when I got sick last year, me who is never eversick, and my lovely doctor told me I would have to use nasal spray before going to bed for the rest of my life? And how that whole nasal spray thing was the last straw, the absolute ‘I have devolved into one of those poor creatures who is completely undesirable and not spontaneous and assuming I ever find a man who wanted to, I would have to say, ‘Oh, excuse me before we make wild-abandon, moaning-to-the-rafters love, I have to use my nasal spray’? Do you remember that?”

“Vaguely.” She snorted, choking back a guffaw.

“Ali, you are heartless, you know that? It was a big deal, that Nasonex thing, even if they do have an ad with that cute bee guy.”

“I’m praying you’re going to weave this together for me.”

“I am. There I was, standing in a bathroom that was hanging years on my face, wondering how in the world things had come to this, that my nice, handsome husband dies five years ago and leaves me reeling, that I rebound with a golf friend who I knew I should never have married and who has turned into a total asshat and is demanding money instead of just shaking hands and calling the game, you know” – my voice is rising a little – “and now I’m in a hotel with an incipient hangover and a guy who really needs to trim his fingernails – I know, I know, I forgot that part, but that is truly the worst thing – and I need to go get my clothes on and tiptoe out to my car so I can return some phone calls, for god’s sake, and you know what? You know what happened then?”

“No, honey. What happened then?”

“I looked at the leather toiletry thing that Don left on the bathroom counter.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You know what was in there?”

“No, but you’re gonna tell me.”

“I am.”

“Go ahead.”

“Nasal spray.”

And we both burst into abs-spasming laughter, the kind that makes you gasp and say “Oh, oh, oh,” and laugh even harder, with each of us alternately screaming “Stop, stop” as if that has ever worked. We laughed like only two amazingly good friends can, the kind of friends who get each other and don’t judge and who hold each other up when there's a lot of stumbling going on. We laughed until we cried and until I didn’t feel so terrible, until I began to see that although I had made some huge mistakes, none of them were fatal, and that I was finally going to be all right.

This fiction piece was originally published on my website and was there entitled "Old Flames, Sputtering." Recent posts can be found by clicking on Adobe Soup: the Unzipped Life of Candace Mann and scrolling down the home page. Thanks for reading - either here or there.