by Mia Ford
“Right,” he said, looking like he half-believed me. “I’m sure they will be happy to have it. It’s some good stuff.”
“You want a drink?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “Thanks. I’ll probably be asleep on my desk if I do that.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty tired myself today,” I said, walking back to the chair.
“Oh, and Lindsey wanted me to make sure that you were still coming to the wedding,” he said. “We changed the seating arrangements around to avoid anything awkward. It really wouldn’t be the same without you there. We’ve known each other our entire adult life.”
“We have, haven’t we?”
“Ever since that event during college,” he said. “I knew you would be a success the first time I met you.”
“And I knew you would help get us there,” I said with a smile. “Though I am glad that you decided to get over that plaid phase that you went through. I am pretty sure Lindsey would have passed on a date had you been wearing that terrible tie you just wouldn’t let go of.”
“Plaid was in,” he said.
“No, plaid was never in.” I laughed. “But as far as your wedding, of course, I will be there. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Awesome,” he said. “Alright, I’ll let you get back to work.”
I nodded and smiled as he walked away, already thinking about excuses I could make to get out of the wedding. Unfortunately, I was so close to the groom that it would take pneumonia or a hospital stay for me to be forgiven for missing it. I could possibly stage a fall and have to be seen right away, but I knew that John would call me out on it in a heartbeat. He was such an asshole sometimes. The reality of it was, I didn’t want to see Amanda. That was a lie. I really wanted to see Amanda, which was exactly why I shouldn’t be there with her. I missed her more than I could even express, and although I still felt like I had made a mistake, that pesky little voice in the back of my head kept putting another seed of doubt into my mind. There was still a chance that everything that John had told me was right on target, and she really had been after me for my money.
I could remember the butterflies I used to get, waiting at her front door. I would get so excited and nervous to see her, but as soon as she was there in front of me, that all faded away and I felt more comfortable than I ever had before. This time, I was nervous, but it wasn’t about seeing her. It was about not wanting to let her go. I was nervous that I would either fall back in love with her, or I would get wasted and say things that I didn’t really mean. I didn’t know if control was something I was going to be able to exercise, and I didn’t want to make a scene at Jordan’s wedding.
The one thing I knew for certain was that the reception was going to have an open bar. I would prop myself up on the barstool and just drink until the event was over. That might keep my attention off of Amanda for a while, but I knew it wasn’t a foolproof plan. I knew that I was going to have to face her at the wedding, and Sarah, too, probably. I wondered how uncomfortable that would be. Maybe I would get the courage up to ask Sarah about what she told John, though I doubted she would tell me the truth if she was that manipulative of a person. What I really needed to do was stop being a coward and call Amanda. I needed to talk to her about things and find out if what Lindsey told me was the God’s honest truth. I didn’t even know at that point if she would take a phone call from me. I had made it more than clear that I wanted her out of my life. She probably would just hang up on me, and that was the last thing I needed in my day.
Everything was always so damn complicated. I didn’t understand why people couldn’t just be honest with each other. As I sat there contemplating Sarah’s part in everything, John poked his head in the door.
“Hey, dude,” he said.
“Hey,” I replied, waving him in. “I have a question.”
“What’s up?”
“Is Sarah coming to the wedding?”
“I called her yesterday actually to find out that exact thing,” he said. “I thought she’d be a good date for the event. She said she got into some sort of huge fight with Amanda and her sister. She said her sister punched her in the mouth and has now alienated her from the family.”
“Wow, over what?”
“She said they were mad at her for telling me the truth about Amanda,” he said.
“Why would Lindsey punch her in the face for telling the truth? It’s her own little sister.”
“I don’t know, man,” he said, scrunching his eyebrows together. “Why do you want to know, anyway?”
“I thought about talking to her about what she told you,” I said.
“Dude, seriously, you need to get past this shit,” he said, standing up. “Enough is enough. You need to get your shit together, and stop drinking so Goddamn much, or you are going to ruin the company and everything all of us have worked so hard to achieve. I don’t mean to be harsh, but I think it has reached the point where someone needs to tell you how it is.”
“You know, maybe you’re right,” I said, standing up and grabbing my jacket. “No, actually, you need to mind your own damn business and fuck off.”
“Whatever,” he said, turning and walking from the room.
I shook my head and sighed, kicking the empty trash can next to my desk. I left the office, telling my secretary I was leaving early for the day. I went straight home and poured myself a drink. If I was going to be fought every step of the way, I might as well just be by myself. Just me and my bottle of whiskey.
Chapter 23
Amanda
I was really happy to have Lindsey staying the night at my house. It had been ages since we had a sleepover, unless you counted the numerous times I passed out drunk on her couch after a night at the club. I had ordered take out for us to eat and got some sparkling cider to drink while she enjoyed champagne that her parents had brought over. She looked so peaceful and calm, and I wondered if the whole idea of cold feet was just something that someone made up to calm people’s nerves when they knew they were making a mistake. Either way, she didn’t have cold anything at that point.
The next day was the wedding, and we were excited that the day had finally come. Lindsey wanted to follow every wedding tradition down to the tee, including not seeing each other before the wedding. That was ultimately why she was staying at my house. Jordan had offered to rent her the penthouse at one of the hotels, but she said she wanted to feel at home and just be alone with her best friend. It made me feel good that I was still important to someone. Nathan had made me feel like I wasn’t worth anything, and that was a really hard feeling to shake away.
“You remember when we were kids, and we planned out our wedding days?” she asked.
“Yeah.” I laughed. “You were going to marry John Stamos.”
“He is still hot. I don’t care what anyone says.” She laughed. “You had decided you wanted to get married in the woods on a fall day with just me and your groom. You refused to name him because you thought it was bad luck.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, laughing. “That still would be a great wedding and not stressful to plan at all.”
We sat laughing and talking, but I still wasn’t feeling like myself. My body felt tight and stressed, and the nausea came in waves that I couldn’t tell were coming until they were right on top of me. I tried to put that all in the back of my mind, though, and enjoy the night with my best friend. It would probably be the last time we did something like this.
“Nathan told Jordan on Wednesday that he would definitely be at the wedding,” Lindsey said, peering over at me from the top of her champagne glass. “I didn’t want to tell you then, so I waited until you couldn’t back out of being my Maid of Honor.”
“Don’t count your chickens,” I said, feeling my stomach drop. “There is still plenty of time for me to back out of this thing.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” she said. “Why do you think I am spending the night? I want to make sure you don’t run.”
“Isn’t that
my job for you?”
“No, you are supposed to help me run if I choose to do it.” She laughed.
“I always get confused on that.” I smiled. “As far as Nathan is concerned, I don’t know what to say about it. I guess I should have known there was a chance he would be there. I mean, I’m not sure what I am supposed to do.”
I sat there moving the popcorn in my bowl around, thinking about the idea of actually seeing Nathan the next day. Lindsey was right. I wanted to run away, but I knew that I had to face this. If nothing else, I could find solace in knowing it was probably the last event I would have to face him at.
“You never know what will happen,” she said. “Maybe by now, he has calmed down and thought about what I told him. Maybe the two of you can sit down and talk about everything. It’s a safe space. If one of you gets mad, you can just walk away, and the mood will be positive going into it. Plus, my sister won’t be there to mess anything up.”
“I almost feel like it would be better if she were there because I could call her out in front of him,” I said. “But I think you are crazy to think that he will talk to me at all. You weren’t here when he broke up with me. He was so mad, and he wouldn’t listen to any reason at all.”
“No, I wasn’t here, but I was in his office watching him wither away with a bottle of whiskey, trying to drink you away,” she said. “And from what Jordan says, he hasn’t achieved his goal yet. Maybe because he’s worn down from missing you, he will be able to open up and listen to what you have to say. And if not, you just dance your night away and eat a layer of my cake, and you will forget all about it.”
“I really want some of that wedding cake,” I said. “Thanks for putting that in my head. I’m going to orgasm in front of your grandma tomorrow when I take a bite of it.”
“Well, considering she died several years ago, that might be weird.” She giggled.
“Meh, I’ve seen crazier things,” I said, laughing.
“I like that even through all of this, sitting on the floor, pregnant, brokenhearted, and sipping sparkling grape juice, you still have a sense of humor,” she said, smiling. “I would be eating my weight in carbs and then crying myself into a food coma every night. It would be really ugly.”
“That would be terrible,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “I really don’t like bread right now.”
“Does Nathan know about the baby yet?”
“No,” I said. “No one but you and my doctor know that I am pregnant. I haven’t even told my father yet because I don’t want to tell him the father of the baby split. He will be so disappointed in me.”
“Tell him you don’t know who the father is.” Lindsey laughed. “Then stand back and watch his eyes pop out of his head.”
“Oh, God.” I cringed. “He would go super crazy on me, like worse than the time he caught me and Billy hiding out in the tree house. He walked right up when Billy scooped up my boob. It was mortifying, and I thought my father was going to stroke out right there.”
“Yuck,” Lindsey said. “I remember Billy. I saw him about two months ago. Time has not been kind to him or his hairline.”
“Oh, gross,” I said.
“As far as the baby is concerned, I really think that maybe you should tell him, whether he wants to listen to you or not,” she said. “I know this is all really hard for you, and you don’t know exactly what to do, but I can promise you that you will feel better having everything finalized and settled. You will have closure, and I think that is what you will need in order to move forward in your life.”
“Thank you, Dr. Phil.” I laughed. “There is one serious problem with all of that.”
“What?”
“How am I supposed to tell him anything if I can’t get close enough to him to even talk to him? If he rejects my calls and ignores my texts, what makes you think that he will stand still long enough for me to tell him I’m having his baby?” I crossed my arms and sat back. “And who knows what he will do after I tell him? He might freak out and start yelling at me, calling me names and losing his mind in a whiskey-haze rage.”
“Then I would club him with a chair and toss his body in the coat room.” Lindsey chuckled. “There will be enough men there to lift his body. Then, I can let the hobo’s outside pick his pockets.”
“How did we go from telling him about the baby to assaulting him and handing him over to the homeless? I think you need to put down the champagne.” I laughed.
“I think that if he decided to drown himself in liquor and yell at a pregnant girl that he abandoned because he can’t think for himself, then he deserves the hobo treatment,” she said, nodding her head.
“You are so feisty tonight.” I laughed. “What has gotten into you?”
“I’m just tired of seeing you hurt,” she said. “I want to see you happy again, like you were a couple of months ago. That was the Amanda I remembered growing up. Not this sickly, depressed girl that needs pep talks. Not that I mind giving them.”
“I know,” I sighed. “You are totally right. I just don’t know how to pull myself out of this. I am miserable all the time, and I think about Nathan ninety percent of the day. I don’t know how I let a man get to me that badly.”
“Well, I think the first step is letting him know you are pregnant,” she said. “I know he has been a douche, but he still deserves to know you are bringing a child into this world with his DNA.”
I knew she was right. I knew that Nathan deserved to know about the baby. I wasn’t purposefully keeping it from him, but he wouldn’t take my calls or my texts. I was too afraid to go to his office and face him, so I sat back and stayed miserable. What he did to me hurt me so much, and I didn’t know if I could take letting him abandon me all over again, knowing he was abandoning his child, too. I didn’t know if I could handle being degraded over something that I never did and never had any intentions of doing. My hormones were so out of whack that there was even a possibility that I could blow up on him, or just burst into tears, losing my dignity in his office chair.
I still didn’t understand how a man that said he felt so strongly for me could believe the lies he was told so easily. He didn’t come to my house to talk to me about it, to try to see it from my point of view. He came there to break up with me. He didn’t listen to anything I said because he had already made up his mind. Sarah had poisoned John, and then John poisoned Nathan. It just kept going down the line until it landed on my damn doorstep.
I would have never reacted that way. I would have talked to him and given him a chance to explain everything. The damage had been done, and it wasn’t just a scrape or a bump. He had completely blown our relationship to smithereens. I had no idea how you could even fix things after he sat there and told me I was a gold digger. You can’t want to spend your life with someone one minute and then berate them and call them a liar the next. He was supposed to be my best friend, the person I walked through my life with, but he turned into my enemy at the drop of a hat. It was really unnerving and made me want to stay as far away from him at the wedding as possible.
After Lindsey had drank her last glass of champagne, we retired, wanting to get a good night’s sleep before the wedding. We had an early morning with hair, makeup, and a champagne breakfast before ever heading over to the event. Lindsey went to bed in my spare room, and I climbed into my bed, laying there staring out the window into the darkness. I must have laid there for hours before falling asleep, running through the different things I would say if I came face to face with Nathan. I tossed and turned all night long, getting barely any sleep at all. A beautiful event was now a place I didn’t want to be at all.
Chapter 24
Nathan
It never failed that every time there was something important going on in my life, I was more than fashionably late to it. Jordan’s wedding was probably already starting, and I was just pulling up and parking the car. I couldn’t seem to get my act together for even one day, and I knew it was all because I had to see Amanda that day.
My nerves were through the roof, and my stomach was seasick from the alcohol I was trying to get out of my system.
I stood up out of the car and untucked my pant leg out of my sock, reaching in and grabbing my coffee. I downed it, trying to sober myself up as fast I possibly could. I tossed the empty cup in the back seat and looked at my reflection in the mirror. I was really glad that I had decided to shave, although my neck looked like I was attacked by a pack of wolves.
I didn’t drink that morning. Well, I didn’t drink much that morning, but mixed with what I drank the night before, I was having a hard time keeping myself upright and walking in a straight line. I knew it would be wrong to show up at the ceremony drunk, so I took two cold showers, ate a shit ton of fried food, and drank about six cups of coffee. I was definitely feeling soberer than earlier, and now, I was awake from the amount of caffeine pulsing through my veins.
I walked quickly across the parking lot, stopping and following the signs around to the entrance on the side. I didn’t want to make a grand entrance through the main doors, so I snuck in the side door and crept through the pews until I found a seat. Lindsey glanced over from the front and rolled her eyes at me, and I waved smiling. I scanned across the front, and there she was, standing next to Lindsey and Jordan. Amanda looked stunning, but she did everything she could to avoid direct eye contact with me.
