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Thirty minutes later, all of us except Gloria were half-drunk on champagne, and Bubbe had elbowed her way into the storeroom with Jenna to look at the "secret gowns" she insisted were kept back there (despite Jenna's insistence they were not). That left Jane and me to look at the inventory up front while Gloria chattered with other clients on her Bluetooth.
"Why don't you just tell him that's not what you want?" Jane asked after I'd made yet another sarcastic comment about the giant church wedding.
I pulled out a princess-shaped hoop skirt with about twenty layers of tulle and shook my head. "I can't. I'm trying to make his life easier right now, Jane, not harder. After all the shit I'm bringing into his life, I kind of owe him that, you know?"
Jane gave me a look that clearly said she did not know.
"You've done a ridiculous amount to make up for your mistakes, Sky. You can't keep sacrificing everything about yourself just because you feel guilty."
"You sound like my therapist," I muttered. Now that I was in fact seeing a therapist, I had been hearing that particular sentiment a lot.
"Smart minds..." Jane replied. "We're talking about your religion, not compromising on dinner reservations. Have you considered the fact that the majority of the problems you and Brandon have come when the two of you are not one-hundred-percent honest with each other?"
I flipped through another row of tulle-lined dresses and avoided my best friend's sharp gaze. "I'm being honest. I'm being honest about the fact that right now, I'd rather keep my reservations to myself in order to make him happy. That's my choice."
Jane rolled her eyes. "Jesus Christ. You are the Queen of Denial, lady; they should call you Cleo-fucking-patra."
"Hey! I resent that."
Jane just snorted. "Whatever you say, Cleo. But I'm not buying it." She pulled a dress off the rack and snorted. "I swear to God, I'm going to make you try on the ugliest dresses in this shop just to blackmail you later." When I wasn't full of pithy comebacks, she looked at me with concern. "You all right? I didn't want to say anything in front of Bubbe, but you don't look so good. Are the hours at Kiefer horrendous?"
I sighed and tipped back the rest of my champagne. "They're long, but nothing terrible. It's...Brandon's still having those nightmares. They...yeah. I'm not getting the best sleep."
Jane grimaced. "Jesus. Every night?"
I nodded. "Sometimes twice. I don't know, Jane...I don't think it's the abortion stuff. We've pretty much moved past that. It's just this drama in the press that keeps it going, maybe. And...I don't know. Something else I haven't figured out yet."
"Has he seen a therapist?" Jane paused, clicking her ring-laden fingers on the side of the champagne glass.
Now that she had been forced to curb her edgy fashion sense at work, outside of it she had started dressing even more like a punk video extra than before, as if to balance it out. The only thing she couldn't change was her hair, which no longer had its characteristic streaks of color through her black bob.
"From what you said, it sounds like something is triggering him," she said. "I mean...PTSD is a real thing, and it can come back with the right triggers. My dad works with guys who deal with that for decades after the fact sometimes."
Jane's father was a psychologist who often worked with veterans. I sighed. Brandon wasn't a vet, but he had grown up in a war zone of sorts. He had mentioned that he had gotten nightmares sometimes like this when he was a kid. Was that what this was?
"Not so far," I said, shaking my head. "He's pretty averse to therapy."
I don't need to be fixed, he said, over and over again. This was a man who had been running from his imperfections since he was a kid, who carried an immense amount of self-blame for the people who had neglected him, which included his mother's death by overdose. It was why he was so apt to making massive, even inappropriate gestures meant to earn the love of people around him––which I sometimes suspected was at the heart of his bid for mayor.
But other people in his youth had seen those anxieties and treated them the wrong way. He'd had terrible experiences with therapy and medication in the past. I genuinely doubted that I could get him to try that path again.
Jane interrupted my thoughts when she yanked out one of the dresses and held it up to me. "You have to try this one on."
I looked down and made a face. The "dress", if you could call it that, was absolutely covered with sequins and had a skirt that was about ten feet wide.
"Absolutely not. I'd look like a marshmallow. I wouldn't even be able to fit through a doorway."
"Precisely the point, Strawberry Shortcake. I didn't fly here on my precious weekend off to watch you be all tasteful and chic. I came here to drink champagne and heckle you in layers and layers of sequins, so let's get to it, shall we?"
With a roll of my eyes, I indicated to the assistant sales girl that I wanted to try on the marshmallow dress, then smirked back at Jane. "And here I thought it was also to make up with a certain former roommate of mine. After all, it's not like you're staying in the penthouse right now."
Jane pursed her lips, and for the first time, her normally mocking facade disappeared. Immediately, I rushed to her side.
"Hey, Janey," I said. "I'm sorry. What happened?"
She sighed and collapsed on the pink couch. "I...shit. I just...well, you know we sort of made up."
I nodded. Eric had mentioned it during Happy Hour one night after Brandon's birthday party. All I knew was that he and Jane were talking again. They were like magnets––drawn back to each other no matter what happened.
