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Registering that he was dressed for the office on a Sunday, I frowned. “Where are you going?”
“I have to run an errand.”
“In a tie? What sort of errand?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
He crossed the room like a runway model for GQ and kissed my head. I was still in the wrinkled T-shirt I slept in the night before and rocking a bird’s nest sort of bed head.
“I’ll be back in a few hours.”
“But…”
He was already out the door before I could muster up a distraction to keep him a while longer. As his car pulled away, I went to get Elara from her crib.
Once I plopped her in front of the television and put on Curious George, I grabbed some dry Cheerios for her and relocated to the living room.
Where would Hale have gone? I looked at the wedding list, but everything was done. We had no appointments or anything scheduled for the day, so I called Elle, unsure if she’d even answer.
We had moved past radio silence into tepid texting. Still not ideal or anything remotely close to our old normal, but I was doing my best to push us past this funk.
“Hey.”
“Hey. Hale just left.”
“So?”
“He wouldn’t tell me where he was going. It was all very cloak and dagger.”
Elle snicked her tongue against her teeth but didn’t laugh at my joke. “He probably had to run an errand, Ray. Go back to bed.”
Sometimes I forgot that other people didn’t wake up with babies at the butt crack of dawn. Elle sounded like she was still half asleep.
“Who’s calling you this early?” I cringed at the sound of Paul’s voice. That confirmed they moved on to sleeping together.
Since apologizing, I decided to hate Paul silently. For the sake of our friendship, I supported Elle’s choices and expected her to support mine. But there was still an invisible, icky film of judgment and distrust stuck to our relationship that neither of us seemed capable of removing.
“Maybe went to pick up your wedding gift.”
I stilled. Wedding gift? What the fuck was a wedding gift?
“But… He’s the groom. We don’t buy the presents.”
“The bride and groom always send a gift to each other the morning of the wedding.”
“No one told me about this!”
“It’s sort of common sense, Ray.”
I frantically paged through my notes in the wedding binder, scanning for any mention of this stupid tradition. There it was, right after crochet hook and straws.
GIFT. FOR. GROOM.
“Why didn’t someone say something to me about this sooner? And why the hell do I need a crochet hook?”
Elle sighed. “The hook is for your dress. It helps with the bustle and the buttons.”
“My dress doesn’t have buttons or a bustle.” She would have known that if she’d attended any of my fittings like a normal maid of honor.
