After the Reunion by Rona Jaffe Read Free Book Online

really liked, and she realized he had been right: she had been wasting her time before.
    Cameron owned other properties besides magazines, in other cities besides New York, so she didn’t run into him often, but every time she did he made a point of having lunch with her, or a drink, and he always made her feel appreciated and special. He would ask her about her life, and although she never told him anything he shouldn’t know, she felt that he was sympathetic and that he cared, even if it was just for the hour or two they were together. He was pleased with her work, and with his quick decision to hire her. He told her he always went by his first instincts, that they were usually right, and that she ought to be more assertive. It interested her that a man, especially her boss, was telling her to be more assertive. Most men, especially those his age, were made nervous by women who seemed too pushy. But Cameron (she never thought of him as Mr. Cameron, and she couldn’t bring herself to think of him as Bill) seemed to have so much confidence that no one could make him nervous.
    Chris realized that if she had been someone else, if she hadn’t been so totally in love with Alexander, or if Alexander didn’t exist at all, that she might have been attracted to this man. But she was safe, so they could be friends. And whenever she thought that, she was amused at her presumption; because a fifty-year-old man who was married to a beautiful (she’d seen the photo on his desk), much younger woman, in a second marriage (which were said to be the happy ones), after what she’d heard was an unpleasant first one, certainly wasn’t going to be chasing her .
    She gathered the work she had to take home, said goodnight to the few people who were still finishing up, and emerged into the crowded chaos of the midtown streets below. She was grateful it was neither raining nor snowing, since it was impossible to get a taxi at this hour. She began to walk uptown, glancing around but not really looking seriously for a cab, because she knew it was good to get the exercise. When she’d first started this job she’d had virtuous intentions of walking to work and arriving at the office glowing with health. But somehow she was always late and in a rush, so she took a taxi downtown, or a bus if there were no taxis; and then at the end of the day when she was tired was when she had to walk.
    She remembered how when she had come back to live in New York the streets had seemed full of room for everyone. Now they were an obstacle course full of angry, hostile, even lunatic people. She could hardly wait to get home. A few blocks away from the apartment she began to have the warm, safe, happy feeling she always had when she knew she was going to see Alexander. Even if she got home first, it was the same feeling, like a golden glow that filled her and suffused the very atmosphere around her. Home from the wars. Safe with her love. Alexander … even the most ordinary things he did—sitting there reading the newspaper, watching the news on television, mixing a drink—were romantic to her. She would be embarrassed if people knew how absolutely besotted with love she was. And home too would be their son, Nicholas, fourteen now; a brilliant, lovely, handsome boy, not a man yet, still a shy kid, hanging around in a pack with the other boys from school, trying for two days to get up the courage to ask a girl for a date, and only if it was absolutely necessary to have a date at all. That made her a bit concerned, until she saw that most of the other boys his age were the same way. The girls they’d been so comfortable with when they were all little were suddenly scary.
    The other boys’ mothers weren’t at all concerned that they were afraid of girls. It was said to be a natural phase.
    But the other boys didn’t have a homosexual father.
    It was not really something to worry about—Alexander had been a marvelous father—but it was something Chris