If you need me, I’ll sacrifice my own happiness in exchange for lifelong resentment toward you.That’s what her silence is saying.
The next quiet thought belongs to me.
They’ll never stay together long enough to make it down the aisle.
It’s a cruel, ungenerous opinion I’m not proud of, but it allows me to muster the strength to say, “I’m fine. I’m so happy for you.”
I hear her sigh with relief. “Thank god. I can’t tell you how worried I was. If you could see my boob sweat. Actually…” She starts to move the camera to her underboob, but thankfully,another car needs the charging station and I’m spared the indignity of FaceTiming my sister’s dampened tits.
After we end the call, I pick the Ruth’s Chris gift card out of the empty trash can because, suddenly, an expired fifty dollars’ worth of steak doesn’t seem so pathetic.
She won’t get married. I know this. Though Laurel’s never lonely, she’s always on her own. Hookups, relationships, and situationships flow in and out of Laurel’s life like sticks on a river. They can never quite handle her current, and that’s how she likes it. Between Laurel and the madness that is the wedding-industrial complex, this marriage will never come to fruition. I won’t even have to be the bad guy.
She’s fine. I’m fine. Today is like any other day, and it will be justfine.
Chapter 2
HungoverMemento
Saturday, Now
The wine wasprobably a mistake.
Well, the mistake was the three blueberry spiced mojitos I had before the wine, but adding malbec to the workload of my already struggling liver probably wasn’t wise.
I shouldn’t have introduced myself to the family celebrating their nana’s eighty-fifth birthday as “the youngest divorcée in the restaurant.” I definitely shouldn’t have kept repeating that icebreaker throughout the night after it crashed and burned the first time.
When I blink open my eyes, the sliver of light peeking out from behind my blackout curtains pierces my eyeballs like they’re little chunks of steak sliding onto a skewer. My fingers peel a crusty strand of hair out of my mouth but pause at the sight of Sharpie on my hand.
Wet Ted
It seems my night at Ruth’s Chris Steak House took a turn and the subsequent hangover has plummeted me into a detectivenovel against my will. I wander toward my master bath to piece together the victim’s final hours. The victim, in this case, is my head, which throbs like some particularly anxious soul pried my brain from its skull and squeezed it like a stress ball.
Who Ted is, why he is wet, and what “Wet Ted” is doing on my hand in Sharpie is something I cannot emotionally take on right now, but in releasing the contents of my stomach into the formerly pristine toilet bowl, the night returns to me in flashes, like hungoverMemento.
I think I cried. I don’t remember it, and I’m not typically a crier, but feelings have a way of creeping up on me when my defenses are down. I rub my forehead and massage the face muscles, which feel fatigued in the way they only do when I cry. But that might be the hangover. Or whatever I did after I put on my sports bra and leggings. And clip-in rowing shoes. Dear god, did I drink and row? Again?
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, I’m not much of a drinker. I don’t like feeling out of control, and I rarely know where my car is parked sober, let alone the morning after a night of debauchery.
I have a vague memory of leaving my car at home and Ubering both ways, but I peek out the curtains to verify that there’s a Prius in my driveway.
My little silver car is there. And so is a gigantic white cargo van.
I didn’t steal a van last night, did I?
Okay, I’m 99 percent sure I didn’t steal a van last night. People who aren’t otherwise prone to grand theft auto don’t itch for a joyride after only three blueberry spiced mojitos. And a malbec.
I grab my phone from the charger and pull up my email tolook for any clues about the provenance of the cargo van. Did I overnight a couch? I’ve been meaning to buy furniture, but I’d hoped to make a day of it at the Galleria’s Crate & Barrel—wandering the showroom, flopping into one Lounge Collection configuration after another, imagining the possible futures that come with each small, seemingly permanent decision, like choosing between the boucle fabric and the linen weave.
Though I made those same mental calculations when I purchased my Restoration Hardware custom Cloud sofa with Rich, and look where that got me: the youngest divorcée in a steak house chain, drunk-dialing Wayfair because I secretly love a flat-packed bargain.
I find no shipping confirmations in my email and finally brave the driveway, where the front wheel of the van is gently crushing my azaleas. There’s no driver behind the wheel. It doesn’tnotlook like a delivery van, but something about the scene tickles a spot in the back of my head like a tiny thread on my brain stem, waiting to be unraveled.
I knock. There’s no answer but the muffled rustle of a creature inside. I pause, and when the movement stops, I bang on the door of the van, the metal bellowing.
A male voice curses and slides open the van door with aching slowness. My limbs vibrate. It can’t be…He wouldn’t…
Hey, you.That little flicker in my chest recognizes him, and I know with devastating certainty that the person waking up in my driveway is Ethan Powell.
