REAL LIFE
Monday
OKAY, SO HE’S not my fiancé anymore, but (1) our friends don’t know that yet and (2) when you’re engaged to a person as long as I was to Wyn Connor, you don’t stop accidentally thinking of him as your fiancé overnight.
Or, apparently, even over the course of months. Which is how long we’ve kept up this ruse.
A ruse that was supposed to end this week, while I was here. Without him.
We’d hammered out the details over a competitively cordial email exchange, how we’d take turns on trips like our friends were the children caught in our would-be divorce.
He insisted I get the first trip. So why is he here, standing between Parth and Cleo in the kitchen like the grand prize on some ill-conceived game show?
“Sur-priiiiise!” Sabrina sings.
I gape. Gawk. Freeze, while the seesaw in my chest swings back and forth with the force of a well-manned catapult.
His hair has grown long enough to be tucked behind his ears, a sure sign that the family furniture repair business has been swamped, and he’s grown a beard too, but it doesn’t soften the hard line of his jaw or firm up his
pouty lips. I’m still painfully aware of the way the right half of his Cupid’s bow sits higher than the left. At least his dimples are somewhat hidden.
“Hello, honey.” His smoky velvet voice makes it sound like he’s feeding me lines in a salacious stage play.
This man has never once called me honey. He never even calls me Harry, like our friends do. Once, when I had a terrible flu, he called me baby in such a tender voice, my feverish brain decided it would be a good time to burst into tears. Aside from that, it’s always been strictly Harriet. Whether he was laughing or frustrated, peeling off my clothes or ending our relationship in a four-minute phone call.
As in Harriet, I think we both know where this is going.
“Awh!” Kimmy squeals. “Look at her! She’s speechless!”
More like my frontoparietal network is short-circuiting. “I . . .”
Before I can land on word number two, Wyn crosses the kitchen, ropes an arm around my waist, and hauls me up against him.
Stomach to stomach, ribs to ribs, nose to nose. Mouth to mouth.
Now my whole brain seems to be on fire, random pieces of data flying at me like Hitchcockian crows: The taste of cinnamon toothpaste. The quick thrum of a heartbeat. The rasp of an unshaven cheek. The soft brush of lips, once with purpose.
HE’S KISSING ME, I realize, full seconds after the kiss has ended. My legs are watery, all my joints mysteriously vanished. Wyn’s arm tightens around me as he draws back, his grip very likely the only thing keeping me from face-planting onto the Armases’ knotty pine floors.
“Surprise.” His gray eyes communicate something more akin to
Welcome to hell; I’ll be your host, the devil.
Everyone’s watching, waiting for me to say something a bit more effusive than I . . .
I manage to squeak out, “I thought you couldn’t get away.”
“Things changed.” His eyes flash, his mouth twisting unhappily.
“He means Sabrina bullied him,” Parth cuts in, lifting me off the ground in a bear hug so tight it makes me cough.
Sabrina tosses my bag onto the ground. “I like to think of it as problem- solving. We needed Wyn here for this. We got him here.”
People like to say opposites attract, and sure, that’s true—Wyn’s the restless and calloused son of two ex-ranchers, and I’m a surgical resident whose most torrid fantasy of late is mopping alone in the dark.
But Parth and Sabrina are one of those couples cut from the same oddly specific cloth. Like his girlfriend, Parth’s a Photoshop good-looking (thick, dark hair with a wave; strong jaw; perfect white smile), type A lawyer with a long-term signature scent (Tuscan Leather, Tom Ford). Despite all their similarities, it took the two of them a ridiculously long time to accept that they were in love with each other.
“You don’t call, you don’t write!” Parth teases. “I know, I’m sorry,” I say. “It’s been so hectic.”
“Well, you’re here now.” He tousles my hair. “And you look . . .” “Tired?” I guess.
“That’s just her new face,” Kimmy says, popping up onto a stool and stuffing her hand into a bag of Takis Fuego on the counter.
“You look gorgeous.” Cleo squeezes past Parth to hug me, her subdued lavender scent folding around me as her head tucks neatly beneath my chin. Even the height differences between Cleo, Sabrina, and me always seemed like proof we belonged together, balanced one another out.
“Of course gorgeous,” Parth says, “but I was going to say hungry. You want a sandwich or something, Har?”
“Takis?” Kimmy holds the shiny purple bag out in my direction. “I’m good!” my mouth says.
You are VERY bad, actually, my brain argues.
Cleo frowns. “You sure? You do look sort of peaked.”
Sabrina ducks her head. “They’re right, Har. You’re, like . . . milk colored. You okay?”
No, actually I feel like I’m going to puke and pass out, and I’m not sure in which order, and having everyone’s undivided attention and worry on me is making things a hundred times worse, while the feeling of his undivided attention is pure torture.
“I’m fine!” I say.
Just furiously wishing I’d opted to put on a bra before my flight, or styled my hair, or maybe even just spilled a bit less mustard down my boobs whilst eating that airport hot dog.
Oh god. He’s not supposed to be here!
The next time I saw him, I was supposed to be in a sexy Reformation dress with a hot new boyfriend and a full face of makeup. (In this fantasy, I’d also learned how to apply a full face of makeup.) Most importantly, I was supposed to have no perceivable reaction to him.
Shit, shit, shit. As badly as I’ve wanted to avoid imploding our friend group over the past few months since the breakup, I now just as badly need to get the truth out so I can get away from him.
“There’s something I need—”
“Honey.” Wyn’s back at my side, his hands catching my waist as if in preparation to throw me over his shoulder and abscond if necessary. “Sabrina and Parth have something to tell you,” he says pointedly. “To tell everyone.”
My skin tingles under his grip. I’m suddenly convinced I’m not wearing any shorts, but nope, I can just magically feel his calloused fingers through the denim.
When I try to extricate myself, his fingertips sink into the curves of my hips. Don’t move, his eyes warn.
Bite me, I try to make mine reply.
The right peak of his lips twitches irritably.
Sabrina is getting a bottle of champagne out of the stainless steel and glass refrigerator, but she doesn’t look celebratory. She looks downright melancholy.
Parth goes to stand behind her, setting his hands on her shoulders. “We have a couple of announcements,” he says. “And Wyn already knows, because, well, we had to give him the full picture so he understood why it was so essential that he’s here this week. That all of us are.”
“Oh my god!” Kimmy half screams, instantly ecstatic. “Are you two having a—”
“Oh god, no!” Sabrina says. “No. No! Definitely not. It’s—it’s the house.” She pauses for a breath, then swallows and lifts her chin. “Dad’s selling it. Next month.”
The kitchen goes pin-drop silent. Not comfortable quiet, shocked quiet. Cleo wilts onto a stool at the counter. Wyn’s hands scrape clear of me,
and he immediately puts several feet of distance between us, no longer considering me at risk of confessing, apparently.
I stand there, an astronaut untethered from her spaceship, drifting into nothingness.
I’ve already lost the person I expected to marry. I’ve already moved across the country from all my best friends. And now this house—our house, this pocket universe where we always belong, where no matter what else is happening, we’re safe and happy—that’s going away too.
All the panic I felt at finding myself trapped here with Wyn is instantly eclipsed by this new dread.
Our house.
Where, the summer after sophomore year, Cleo, Sabrina, and I slept in a row of mattresses we’d dragged to the middle of the living room floor and dubbed “super bed,” staying up most nights talking and laughing until the first rays of sunrise spilled in from the patio doors.
Where Cleo whispered, as if it were a secret or a prayer, I’ve never had friends like this, and Sabrina and I nodded solemnly, the three of us holding hands until we drifted off.
The firepit out back where, in lieu of a blood pact (which struck me as dangerously unsanitary), the three of us had burned the same spot on our pointer fingers against the hot metal, then made ourselves laugh until we cried, concocting increasingly ridiculous scenarios where we could use our fingerprint scars to frame one another for various heists.
The wooden staircase on which Parth once orchestrated an elaborate cardboard luge race for us, and the little wood-paneled library in front of whose hearth Cleo first told us about a girl named Kimmy. The nail that stuck up from the pier where, a year later, Kimmy cut her foot open, and the rickety staircase Wyn had carried her up afterward while she demanded the
rest of us chuck grapes at her open mouth, fan her with invisible palm fronds.
And Wyn.
The first time I kissed him.
The first time I touched him, period. Here.
This house is all that’s left of us.
“This will be our last trip.” Sabrina tugs her scarf from her head and tosses the slip of silk across the counter. “Our last trip here, anyway.”
The words hang in the air. I wonder if the others are also scrambling for a solution, like maybe if we pass around a hat and combine our spare change, we’ll find six million dollars to buy a vacation home.
“Can’t you—” Kimmy begins.
“No,” Sabrina cuts her off. “Wife Number Six doesn’t want Dad to have it, since he bought it with my mom, I guess. Never mind that there are four more-recent wives she could fixate her jealousy on.” She rolls her eyes. “Dad’s already got a buyer lined up and everything. It’s a done deal.”
Parth rocks Sabrina’s shoulders, trying to shake her out of the dark mood.
My gaze wanders toward Wyn, a subconscious part of me still expecting the sight of him to drain away my stress.
Instead, the second our eyes meet, my heart starts jackhammering. I look away.
“It’s not all bad news, though,” Parth says. “We actually have some good news too. Amazing news.”
Sabrina looks up from the champagne she’s been de-foiling. “Right.
There’s something else.”
“Oh, right, there’s something else,” Parth mimics, teasing. “Don’t treat our engagement like a sidebar.”
“Your what?”
At first I’m not sure who shrieked it. Me. I shrieked it.
Well, me and Cleo, who shoots up from her stool so fast, she knocks it over and has to catch it against the island with her hip.
Sabrina’s cackle is halfway between giddy and disbelieving. “Your what?” I repeat.
“Dude, I know,” she says. “I’m as surprised as you are.”
Kimmy snatches Sab’s hand and gasps at the gigantic emerald winking on her ring finger.
Which is approximately when I realize that someone’s going to notice my missing engagement ring.
I stuff my hands in my pockets. Very natural. Just a girl with her fists in her tiny, useless women’s shorts pockets.
“You said you’d never get married,” Cleo says with a scrupulous dent between her brows, eyeing the gemstone and its white-gold mount. “Under any circumstances. You said ‘not with a gun to my head.’ ”
And who could blame her? Even setting her father’s trail of ex-wives aside, Sabrina is a divorce attorney. She spends eight hours a day, at minimum, surrounded by reasons not to get married.
“Tell us the story,” Kimmy says as Cleo continues, “You once told me you’d rather spend five years in prison than one year as a wife.”
“Babe!” Kimmy pokes Cleo in the ribs. “We’re celebrating. Sabrina changed her mind. People do that, you know.”
People do; Sabrina Armas doesn’t.
Sometimes I’ll go back and forth about what I want for breakfast for so long that it’s already lunch. Sabrina eats the same exact yogurt and granola every day, the only variation being whatever seasonal fruit she adds.
Sabrina coils an arm around Parth’s waist. “Yeah, well. Finding out we’d be saying goodbye to the cottage cleared some stuff up for me.” Her voice gives the slightest waver before going steely again. “Whether Parth and I are married or not, I’m in this for the long haul, and I’m tired of trying to be smart at the expense of my own happiness. I want this to be forever, and I don’t want to pretend that’s not what I want.”
Kimmy sets a hand across her chest. “That’s beautiful.”
Parth smiles down at Sabrina, rubbing her shoulder tenderly. Her eyes light on me, a grin spreading over her classic-red lips. “And honestly, we were kind of inspired . . .”
It feels like the moment before a car accident, when the tires have started to hydroplane and you know something terrible is likely coming, but there’s still a chance the tread will find purchase and you’ll never know what agony you narrowly avoided.
And then Sabrina goes on.
“I mean, look at Harry and Wyn. They’ve been together like ten years, and they’re making it work, even while they have to be long distance. Clearly love actually can conquer all.”
“Eight years,” Wyn corrects quietly.
Kimmy squeezes his bicep. “Eight years, and you’re still never more than three feet apart.”
By my estimation, Wyn is approximately two feet eleven and three- quarters inches from me when she says this, but at the comment, he hooks an arm around my neck and says, “Yeah, well, even after all these years, Harriet has a way of making me feel like we’ve just met.”
Kimmy clutches her heart again, missing the irony he intended only for me.
A whoop goes up around the room as Sabrina pops the champagne’s cork. I feel like I’m floating over my own body. Adrenaline is doing weird things to me.
Normally, I’d rather roll down a mountainside covered in broken glass and sticky traps than create conflict, but the longer this goes on, the harder it’s going to be to get out of our lie.
“That’s amazing.” My voice lifts two and half octaves. “But I have to tell you—”
“Harriet.” And there he is again, at my side with arms coming around me from behind and his chin resting atop my head, and now, when Think of your m*****f****** happy place flashes through my mind, all I can think is, If only I were still on Sober Ray’s death trap airplane!
“That’s not,” Wyn goes on, “the end of the announcement.” Again Kimmy claps her hands together on a gasp.
“Still not pregnant,” Sabrina says. Kimmy sighs.
Parth’s beaming with his very distinct I’ve got an amazing surprise for you smile. The one that preceded the New Orleans–themed birthday he threw for Cleo, or the moment he presented me with the stethoscope he’d gotten engraved as a med school graduation present.
He and Sabrina share a knowing smirk. “Oh, come on,” Cleo says.
Kimmy throws two Takis at Sabrina’s head.
She swats them away. “Fine, fine! Tell them.” “We’re getting married,” Parth says.
Confused looks are exchanged throughout the room.
“That’s . . . usually what follows an engagement,” Cleo says.
“No, I mean on Saturday,” he clarifies. “We’re getting married. Here, with the six of us. Nothing fancy. Literally a little ceremony down on the dock, with all our best friends.”
My whole body goes icy cold, then blisteringly hot. My face and hands are numb.
Wyn releases his hold on me again, and when my gaze slices up toward his, I see my own misery reflected on his face.
We’re trapped here.
My ears ring, my friends’ voices becoming a muffled warble. A blue Estelle champagne flute is forced into my tingling fingers for a toast, and my hearing clears enough to catch Parth crying, “To everlasting love!”
And Sabrina adding, “And our best friends forever! There’s no other way we’d want to spend this last week at the cottage.”
GO TO YOUR G.D. HAPPY PLACE, HARRIET, I think, followed by,
NO, NOT THAT ONE.
Too late.
