Page 5 of Gone Before Goodbye
He looks around, notices the hostile stares. “At least I’m happy to see you.”
“Thanks, Steve.”
“You seen Barlow?”
“Have you?” she asks.
“Nope.”
“I doubt he’ll be here.”
“I heard he was showing up,” he says. “I want to talk to him about a sweet partnership deal and…” He stops, turns, gives her the full-wattage smile. “Oh, guess where I’m working now.”
She doesn’t want to, but it would be worse not to play along. “I heard Dubai.”
“Yes, butwherein Dubai?”
“I don’t know, Steve. Where?”
He leans in and whispers. “Apollo Longevity.”
Maggie tries to keep her face blank. It takes some effort.
Steve continues: “Isn’t that where you and Marc used to—?”
“I’m not involved anymore.”
Maggie tries to process this. Apollo Longevity is still active. Even now. Even after all that’s happened.
That’s not a good thing.
Steve looks her up and down, his gaze crawling all over her like earthworms after a rainstorm. “You look good, Mags.” He arches one eyebrow, before he adds, “Realgood.Sogood.”
Maggie makes a noncommittal noise like “Uh-huh.”
“Sotoned,sofit,” Steve continues, doing a bicep curl to illustrate the point. “What do you do, free weights? Pilates?” Another eyebrow arch. “Sweaty, hot yoga?”
She shakes her head. “Do these lines ever work, Steve?”
“All the time, Mags. You know why?”
“You don’t have to tell me,” Maggie says, “but I bet you will.”
He leans in toward her ear. “Because I’m a rich, successful forty-seven-year-old surgeon now. I can pull much younger tail than you.”
She makes a face. “Did you just say ‘younger tail’?”
“You’re not too good for me,” he says. Then he adds in a cruel whisper, “Not anymore.”
With that, Steve oozes away.
Steve’s trail of ooze leads to a cluster of their old classmates in the right-hand corner. She knows them all, but when she looks over, they all huddle up and do their best to pretend they don’t see her. Part of Maggie is furious and wants to confront them, but a bigger part—a more honest part—wonders whether she’d be part of that eye-avoidance huddle had another classmate been this shamed instead of her.
Screw it.
Maggie heads straight into the heart of the huddle and says, “Hey, everyone.”
Silence.
