Accidentally Yours by Bettye Griffin Page A

later Vivian and Glenda attended an off-Broadway revue, an outing sponsored by Glenda’s church. Two buses had been chartered for this event, all consisting of groups of women and couples. Neither Vivian nor Glenda had expected this to be a venue to meet men; they both just wanted to see the show.
    Prior to that, Vivian had begun dating Bernard, while Glenda dumped Bobby in favor of Bernard ’s friend Terry Terrell, whose real first name, she learned, was Grover.
    Relations between both couples seemed to be going relatively well, except Vivian found Bernard ’s occasional complaints of belly pain unnerving. Zack Warner’s offhand remark about her bringing bad health to the men she dated had wounded her more deeply than she’d originally thought. Could she possibly be carrying some kind of hex? But Bernard repeatedly insisted his discomfort wasn’t anything serious.
    “ So how’s Terry?” she asked Glenda.
    “ He’s good. You know, I think he was actually relieved to learn that you and I were going out tonight It’ll give him and Bernard a chance to chew the fat over a couple of beers.”
    “ They’re awfully tight,” Vivian said.
    “ Maybe too tight.”
    “ What do you mean?”
    “ As far as I can tell they talk every day.”
    “ So do we.”
    “ We work together, Vivian; it would be hard for us not to. Often on weekends we don’t talk unless we’re going somewhere together. But those two seem closer than Montgomery and Ward. Do you ever get the feeling that Bernard shares everything that goes on between the two of you with Terry, and vice versa?”
    Vivian shrugged. “It’s not like there’s anything juicy going on, but I’d like to feel I have some privacy.”
    “ There’s nothing sexually happening with Terry and me, either. I’ve stuck to my guns about keeping that out of the picture unless me and the man in my life are absolutely mad about each other.”
    “ You didn’t two years ago.”
    Glenda rolled her eyes. “David wasn’t serious, but it was steady. Besides, I didn’t want to miss my sexual peak. Can I help it if I wasn’t in love then, like you were? I was leading a lonely, shallow, and meaningless life. When I was with David it was just shallow and meaningless. And satisfying,” she added with a laugh. “No harm done.”
    Vivian averted her eyes. It was true that she ’d had strong feelings for Douglas Mathis, and he for her, but she had ultimately decided that his alcohol intake was more than she felt comfortable with. He was a mail sorter at the post office, a well-paying, but rather boring, occupation in which people had been known to go berserk in the past. She was afraid that only trouble lay ahead and in her heart she’d always known the breakup had been for the best. She never regretted it; Douglas simply wasn’t her Mr. Right.
    She felt Glenda ’s elbow gently poke her side and stopped thinking about her old flame.
    “ Talk about an audience full of females,” Glenda hissed. “Any woman with a man is over fifty and has probably been married to him for twenty years.”
    Vivian scanned the spectators in front of them, from left to right . “Not that couple.” She pointed to the right with her chin.
    “ Hmm. Interesting. I’m glad somebody out there has managed to snare a date. Maybe there’s hope for us yet eh?”
    They both found their attention held by the couple. They could only see the backs of their heads and the sides of their faces. They were deeply engrossed in conversation and seemed oblivious of their surroundings.
    A slight commotion having to do with someone being in the wrong seat just a few rows ahead of where she and Glenda were captured Vivian’s attention, and then she noticed that the couple was looking in that direction as well. The man looked even more handsome now that she saw his entire face, but she gasped when she got a closer look at the woman. To say she was not attractive was being kind. There were spaces between her upper teeth