by Liz Fenton
Max pings me back a picture of him with a line of full shot glasses, him shrugging his shoulders as if to say, “Well someone’s got to do it!” He looked happy. I click over to my Facebook feed, cringing at Jules’ incoherent status update from the night before about twerking at TAO. There are several typos, and no punctuation, so unlike her usual updates, which I know for a fact she double- and triple-checks, even sometimes asking my opinion before posting. I laugh despite myself when I see Ben’s comment telling her to stop drinking and go to bed. If he only knew what good advice that really was.
I hear Jules moan before I feel her move beside me, rolling over as if she were filled with concrete. “Oh my God,” she says as her hands shield her eyes from the daylight streaming through the slight opening in the curtain. I silently hand her the ibuprofen and bottle of water, alarmed by the green tone her skin has taken on.
“Thank you,” she whispers, and lies in silence for a few minutes, eyes closed. I watch her closely—last night playing in a loop in my head.
“Jules,” I finally say when her eyes open again.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You—”
“Yes, I remember. At least most of it—parts of the night keep flashing through my mind like a slide show. I just can’t remember how it ended,” she whispers, her bloodshot eyes fearful, and I couldn’t decide if her panic stemmed from not remembering if she had cheated on Ben, or if she was scared I’d be the one to tell him if she did.
“It ended with Liam smashing his fist into that guy’s nose and shoving your drunk ass into a taxi.”
“What?” Jules sits up quickly and then grabs her head in pain, leaning back slowly and taking a deep breath before continuing. “Liam? No way. I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it,” I say as I fill in all the blanks of the night for her, including Nikki’s appearance, her face darkening when I mention how the guy she was sitting with grabbed my arm.
“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice small. “Did I ruin your night? I really wanted you to have a great night.”
“Hey, stop. I had a great time. I’m okay. The question is, are you?”
“I don’t know,” she says, her sadness penetrating the air between us, neither of us knowing the magic words to make it dissolve.
“What’s going on with Ben? Or I should say, what’s not going on with Ben?”
Jules squeezes her eyes shut as she tries to locate the right words. “I guess I just thought, when you gave me my makeover, that Ben would go nuts. That he was going to see me as hot again.”
“You were hot before this!” I interject. “And Ben has always told you how beautiful you are. I’ve heard him.”
“I know he still thinks I’m attractive. But we’ve been in such a rut. He’s traveling more than ever, and when he is home, we’re so busy with the kids that we can’t even connect. I think I just want him to throw me up against a wall like he used to—when he was so into me that he couldn’t control himself. And when you gave me a firmer stomach and killer haircut and he barely even glanced my way, I think something snapped inside of me,” she says as the tears begin to fall down her face like a waterfall.
“What happened? Did he cheat on you?” I question, sitting up despite the pounding in my head, imagining what I’ll say to him when I see him—how dare he hurt my best friend!
She shakes her head and I breathe a sigh of relief. They were still okay.
“I started to question things—to come apart on the inside.” She takes a long pause before continuing. “But he isn’t the one who’s making the mistakes, Kate. It’s me.”
“But nothing happened last night, Jules. We stopped it before anything could—”
“You’re right,” she interrupts. “I didn’t actually cross the line. But I wanted to. And not just last night.” She shakes her head.
“I don’t understand,” I say gently, even though I think I’m starting to, the pieces of the puzzle clicking together in my mind.
“Something happened with my boss recently. The guy you saw at the restaurant yesterday.”
I remember how the energy shifted as he breezed through the kitchen, that I could feel a tension in the air as he’d sampled the fudge—an awkwardness between them I couldn’t figure out. I swallow my breath and, as I wait for her to tell me the story, squeeze her hand to let her know that whatever she’s about to reveal, I will understand. Slowly, she tells me that after a particularly stressful night at the restaurant, her boss, Tim, had grabbed a bottle of the restaurant’s best single-malt scotch from behind the bar and offered her a deep pour. They were both distraught that the L.A. Times food critic had dined there earlier, and their server had tripped and spilled an entire glass of wine all over his crisp white shirt and Burberry tie, causing him to leave abruptly. Three glasses of scotch later, they had gone from being incredibly depressed and wondering if the restaurant could survive a bad review, to laughing about the look on his face as the waiter frantically attempted to wipe the reviewer’s crotch with his napkin. Another half glass later, he’d tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, whispering how much he liked her new look as he’d leaned in so closely that she could see a light speckle of tan freckles dotting his skin that she’d never noticed before. Just as their lips began to come together, the executive chef had banged on the back door, in search of the cell phone he’d left behind. They had broken away from each other quickly, Jules grabbing her bag off the counter and rushing out the door into the cold wind without saying good-bye, shaking at what might have happened if they hadn’t been interrupted—perplexed that she had felt both excited and sickened at the same time.
“I threw up when I got home. All those years of marriage and that’s all it takes for me to want to throw it all away? Four glasses of scotch?” She cries harder.
I let her catch her breath before responding. “I get that you came close to making a big mistake—you’re human. But you chose to leave the situation. You could have stayed and picked things back up the second you were alone again, yet you didn’t. That counts for something.”
“Maybe,” she says as she wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “I felt terrible.”
“Okay. But then why almost do it again last night?” I ask gently, afraid that if I push too hard she’ll shatter into a million pieces.
She sits quietly for a moment before answering, her chest heaving up and down. “As much as I felt disgusted with myself for almost cheating on Ben, for how much I had wanted to kiss my boss, there was a part of me that loved the rush of it all—the way it felt to not be Evan’s or Ellie’s mom, to not be Ben’s college sweetheart. To be desired like that again—I can’t explain the feeling, but it’s overpowering. It’s almost like the whole world slips away for those moments. I don’t expect you to get it. I’m not sure I even understand it myself. All I know is last night, I wanted to feel that way again—no matter the consequences.”
I put my hand over hers but say nothing. It was true, I didn’t understand. I’d give anything to have what she and Ben have, problems and all. But what I did know was that whatever she was feeling, it was real. “So what happens now?” I ask slowly, still trying to sift through my own conflicted feelings—that Jules was on the brink of throwing everything away and I wasn’t sure how to stop her. Even though she was like a sister to me, I had no clue about the one thing that was eating her up inside. Was it because she knew I didn’t want to see that her relationship could be flawed—that I couldn’t accept that people’s lives were far more complicated than they let on, even my closest friend’s?
“I don’t know,” she says as she takes a small sip of water. “I need to think.”
“Where do things stand with your boss?”
“He pulled me into the freezer the next day and we both agreed that it was the scotch talking. But to be honest, there’s still something there, an undercurrent
that keeps drawing me to him. And I’m pretty sure he feels it too.”
“So what are you saying? That it’s going to happen again? Is that what you want?”
“I don’t know what I want anymore,” she spits out.
“You dodged a major bullet, Jules. I say to stop while you’re ahead.” I walk over to the bay window and lean my head against it, the sidewalks below not yet cluttered by the tourists—the people, many of them just like Jules, who are hoping to fill a void in their own lives in this City of Sin. Where the allure of the slot machines and the lights and the alcohol help people escape their own realities. “Both times, there’s been something that’s stopped you right before—maybe the universe is trying to tell you something?” I add, trying not to think about the messages the universe had been sending me about my own life.
“Maybe.” Jules materializes beside me, the blanket from the night before still wrapped tightly around her. “I know what the right answer is here. And I really want to assure you that I’ll never put myself in that position again. But you’re the one person I can be honest with—and the truth is I can’t make that promise. Not right now.”
“Okay,” I murmur without meeting her gaze.
“I’m sorry. All you want is to get married to the man you love, while I’m throwing my own marriage away. You must hate me,” she says, apprehension dancing in the backs of her eyes when I finally look up to meet them.
There was a part of me that wanted to shake her—to convince her that sex is just sex. To make her realize how rare it is to have a man like Ben, who not only loves her, but is also completely devoted to their children, even if his job was pulling him away from them at the moment. But I knew I was watching her marriage from the cheap seats, and despite what I thought I knew, she was the one living it every day. And by the way she viscerally described her pain, I knew it was slowly ripping her apart—that I needed to be there for her the way she’d been for me. She’d literally kept me standing after Max left; she’d believed me when I told her my incredible story about traveling through time; and she’d never once judged me for my own mistakes or treated my problems as trivial, even when we both knew they were.
“I could never hate you,” I say as I grab her hand, the heat from the early morning Las Vegas sun already beginning to scorch the window. “It’s all going to be okay,” I promise, gripping her palm tighter, hoping I’m right.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!” I joke as Max smirks at me over his UCLA mug, the light blue script of the word Bruins so faded you wouldn’t know what it said unless you knew he’d gone to school there, that it was his favorite mug to drink coffee from. It’s always been the subtle things like this, the little nuances that make him who he is, many of which only I know, that have made me feel connected to him. Like how he can only read a magazine from the first page to the last page, never skipping around like I do; or the fact that he talks in his sleep after he’s had a cocktail; or the way he runs his hand through his hair when he’s nervous.
“Come on! Tell me something about your night.” He reaches in and kisses me softly. “I can make it worth your while,” he says seductively.
As I drove us away from Las Vegas this morning, watching the city disappear into the hills through the rearview mirror, Jules sleeping soundly in the passenger seat, Liam high above us in the air, having texted he was flying back with Nikki on the Gulfstream jet she’d chartered, I had prepared myself for how I would answer Max’s question, for the way I could describe my night without having to lie. Jules had sworn me to secrecy about how she was feeling, and of course I would never betray her confidence. Besides the fact that she was also Max’s friend, she had told me she didn’t want to put her problems on anyone else’s shoulders. In fact, she’d repeatedly asked me if I was okay—if knowing the betraying thoughts that lingered inside her head had changed something inside of me, had altered the way I saw her or viewed marriage in general. The truth was, of course it had changed things, but I told her, if anything, it had pushed me closer to Max. It had reinforced why I didn’t ever want to lose him again.
“It was like old times!” I say brightly, because in so many ways, it was. Before Kevin and Nikki infiltrated my night, it had been just the three of us laughing and dancing the way we used to. I immediately launch into a recap of the evening, leaving out Jules’ incident, but including Nikki, a part of me wanting Max’s opinion on what her arrival meant for my friendship with Liam.
“Don’t take it personally. He’s a guy, which means he’s only thinking about one thing right now.” Max laughs and raises his eyebrows.
Maybe that’s the problem.
I smile at Max’s joke, but his words rest heavy on my mind. Did we put too much importance on our sex lives? Did we overlook other, possibly more meaningful things because our partners weren’t throwing us up against a wall? Did we let our animal instincts take over when instead we should be focusing on our emotional ones? Jules had contemplated having an affair because her husband wasn’t paying enough attention to her, but what if it was just a phase—if he really was just busy and distracted? If she’d tried talking to him about how lonely she was feeling, would things be different? And Liam. He was head over heels for a twenty-four-year-old woman who’d struggled with alcohol and drug addiction and, according to the latest gossip, had barely graduated from high school—because the sex was good? He was changing who he was and even letting his friendships fall by the wayside because he only had one thing on his mind?
“What?” Max asks when he sees me shake my head.
“Nothing,” I say, deciding I’m overthinking it. I need to take Liam’s advice and let my friends live their lives the way they want to. And I need to focus on my own life—the one right in front of me, the one I plan to live with Max.
Stella had called while Jules and I were on the way back from Las Vegas to let me know about yet another obstacle she’d run into. Apparently, all of the DJs and bands on the island of Maui were now booked on our wedding date and the only way to play music would now entail a more DIY approach. She’d wanted my approval to set up speakers and an iPod. “It’s what anyone who’s anyone is doing now anyway,” she’d squeaked, her voice sounding as tight as a drum, and I’d known better than to argue.
Not surprisingly, it turns out, when you plan a wedding, then replan it, then change everything back to the way it originally was, the only way to pull it off, or as Stella lectured, even have one at all, is to prioritize.
Having Max as my husband is priority number one, I’d thought as I’d tried to block the image of my bright pink iPod propped up next to the shrimp cocktail. That’s what’s important.
I heard myself suggesting we go back to the luau theme, and after a long pause during which I could almost hear the words Stella wasn’t saying rolling around in her mind, she’d finally spoken.
“We can’t,” she’d said slowly, exasperation creeping into her voice. “As soon as I let the dancers go, they were immediately booked by another couple. And they were the last troupe available. Same thing with Louie’s Luau, the company that was going to roast the pig, the whole nine yards. They’d done me a favor saying yes at all—” She didn’t finish her sentence, as if she knew she’d just be adding salt to the wound.
“I’m sorry, Stella.”
“It’s fine—just promise me one thing,” she’d responded, her tone suddenly lighter, and I’d found myself assuming that was a skill she’d obviously honed through her job—to be able to dance through a conversation without losing total control, no matter how frustrated she might be.
“You name it.”
“Just don’t change anything else.”
“Cross my heart,” I’d said, imagining Max in the crisp dark suit we’d originally selected for the ceremony, remembering how he’d tugged at the collar and dusted imaginary lint off the lapel as he’d examined himself in t
he mirror. I drew in a long breath as I drove past the world’s largest thermometer in the tiny town of Baker, the dial ticking up to 105 degrees, hoping that was the explanation for why I’d felt a bead of sweat forming on my brow.
• • •
“Did you see the Enquirer?” Jules asks the next morning when we meet for coffee before work, both of us still bleary-eyed from our weekend.
“Do people still read that?” I ask.
“If by ‘people’ you mean me, then yes!”
I shake my head, and she slides her hand into her bag resting at her feet and pulls it out.
“You shouldn’t have your purse on the floor!” I scold her.
“Why not?” she says as she flips through the magazine.
“Bad feng shui! The idea is that money spills out of the bottom of your purse when you leave it on the ground,” I say, remembering the look I’d given my consultant when she’d first told me. But now I was always careful to set my tote on a chair. “And, girlfriend, you don’t need any more problems!”
“Tell me about it.” She continues to turn the pages until she finds what she’s looking for. “Here it is, look.” She holds the magazine out to me.
