Page 26 of Circle of Strangers
Being here is unfortunately necessary—for more reasons than one.
The early-afternoon sun glints off the cerulean pool, casting shimmering patterns across the water as Mara and I sit side by side in rattan lounge chairs, me sipping iced tea, her indulging in a 1:00 PM glass of rosé. The warmth is pleasant, but tension simmers beneath the surface—something unsaid, hovering between us.
Mara adjusts her oversized sunglasses and leans back, her body languid and relaxed as if she’s completely at home here. I observe her from the corner of my eye.
I raise an eyebrow. “Really? A hairstylist? I could see that. Your hair always looks like you just left the salon.”
She grins. “Yeah. I loved it. I was good at it, too.”
“Is that how you met Oscar?”
Mara’s smile widens.
“He was one of my clients. He came in the first time needing a cut for some big corporate event, but after that, it became a regular thing. Once a month at first. Then every two weeks.” She pauses, glancing at me over her sunglasses. “And every time he came in ... butterflies. And not just any kind. They were intense. Made my whole body warm. Made me lose my train of thought. Every time he was in my chair, it was like time stood still. I’ve been around my fair share of men and it was just different with him. I’m not usually into that woo-woo stuff, but I swear it felt like our souls were doing the talking and we were just there.”
Her voice takes on a dreamy, nostalgic quality, as if she’s talking about the love story of a lifetime and not that of a young, impressionable hairstylist and a handsome, persistent married man.
She sighs, a soft, wistful sound. “No one had ever made me feel that way before. I don’t think anyone ever will again.”
I take a slow sip of my drink, keeping my expression neutral. “He was married, though.”
“Oh, I know,” she says with a small laugh. “I asked him about his wife, you know, just making conversation like I did with all my clients. After a while, he told me he wasn’t happy, that he was planning to leave her. This was before he’d even asked me on a date. It had been strictly professional up until then.”
I raise an eyebrow. I’d love to believe her.
“The first time he asked me out, I said no,” Mara continues. “And the second time. And the third. But Oscar is very ... tenacious when he wants something.”
Her words settle heavily in the space between us.Tenacious.I’ve seen that look in his eyes—just a flicker of it—when he’s with her. A man who doesn’t take no for an answer. A man who blows up the inbox of a dating app stranger he hardly knows, begging and then all but demanding a meetup.
A man who makes threats with nothing more than a handful of words and a remarkable kind of darkness in his eyes.
Mara sighs and adjusts the strap of her skimpy lavender bikini top.
“Eventually, I gave in. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but ...” She trails off, her eyes clouding with something I can’t quite read. “He left his wife soon after. She didn’t take it well. She blamed me, of course.”
“How bad was it?” I ask, curious despite myself.
“Bad enough that we had to get a protective order. She’d follow me around, send me threats. It was scary.”
I shift in my seat, feeling the heat of the sun—and her story—press against my skin.
“Do you ever wonder if he was lying to you about planning to leave his wife? Maybe he was telling you that so you’d go on a date with him?” I ask.
“I can see why you’d think that, but no,” she says with the misplaced confidence of a lovestruck, naive woman. If only she could read the messages that were once on my phone, the ones where he reiterates how very single he currently is.
“Men say all kinds of things when they want you,” I tell her.
“Some do,” she agrees, giving a tight-lipped nod as if to imply this doesn’t apply in her husband’s case.
Mara’s face softens, and for the first time, there’s something almost vulnerable in her expression.
“There’s only one Oscar,” she says, as if that justifies everything carte blanche.
Even if I tried, I couldn’t begin to understand the logic of a woman who has built her life around one complicated, controlling man.
“Can I tell you something?” She lowers her voice. “If I ever found Oscar’s been talking to someone, I don’t know what I’d do. But it wouldn’t be pretty. And that kind of scares me because ...”
Her words taper into nothing, though they still send a chill through me—not because I’m afraid of what she’d do if she found out I was talking to Oscar online, but because I would do the same thing if Will ever betrayed me. It would be primal, that urge. Coming from the deepest parts of me.
