Kim Carter stopped her white Mercedes convertible at the valet stand and put the top up as she waited for someone to take her keys. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach as they always did before a first date, and she thought about what this guy would be like. She’d seen a picture of him, of course, and he was dark-complexioned and pretty good-looking, but pictures rarely told you all that much about the person. At least that had been her experience.
An hour earlier, Kim had been sitting in her kitchen having a glass of wine with her husband Kendall, and the somewhat strange taste of the wine still lingered on her tongue, which she thought was odd. She chalked up the taste issue to the fact that it was a new wine, an Oregon chardonnay that Kendall had selected. She hadn’t mentioned it to him because he appeared to be a bit on edge. And there was something about the way he looked at her before she left. It was almost as if he suspected that she wasn’t really going out with her best friend Nikki as she had told him.
She reached for her cell phone to call Nikki. Kim and Nikki had been roommates at the University of Miami. An unlikely mix, Kim being an art major and Nikki being a computer science major, they had remained the closest of friends ever since. Kim suddenly remembered that Nikki had a date with her new boyfriend tonight, and Kim was ecstatic that Nikki might have finally found something that could develop into something serious. Nikki had struggled through string of bad relationships, none of which lasted more than a matter of weeks. The current one was approaching two months and, so far, showed signs of promise. Kim, on the other hand, had been married to Kendall for almost two years. While she loved him in the beginning, something had shifted. Maybe it was because she couldn’t get pregnant. During the first year of their marriage, Kim had a miscarriage, and while Kendall told her it was okay, Kim knew he secretly resented her. He had become cold and distant, and they were barely intimate any more.
Kim sighed, and sent Nikki a text instead. She didn’t want to spoil the mood or interrupt their romantic evening. She dabbed some blush on her cheeks, grabbed her purse, and headed out the door.
