by Lexie Ray
Jane had a full-service bar in her sitting room, for heaven’s sake, and on nights like this, she appropriated one of the family’s staff members to act as bartender and errand runner and phone answerer.
As awkward as it was, tonight she’d snagged Lucy.
“Didn’t know what?” I asked, smiling at Lucy as she set a couple of martini glasses on the bathroom countertop brimming with a shimmering liquid I couldn’t identify. Lucy didn’t make eye contact, slipping back out until she was called again.
“Didn’t you ever get ready to go anywhere with your girlfriends?” Jane asked. She painstakingly applied mascara along her lower lashes wearing nothing but a thong and a strapless bra. I had tried to put on my dress first thing, but she had fussed at me. Dresses were apparently the last thing to happen before we left for the club. There were too many things that could happen to our expensive scraps of cloth, like spilled makeup or cocktails. I had, however, been allowed to don a slinky little robe of Jane’s to wear over my own underwear. I didn’t think I’d be comfortable enough to stand around in only my underwear around her.
“Not like this,” I said. “I didn’t really hang out with anyone after… well…”
“How thoughtless of me,” Jane said, tossing the tube of mascara down onto the countertop with a clatter. “You went straight to the woods after your parents died. I’m sorry, Michelle.”
“That’s all right,” I said, smiling to ease her discomfort. I looked at my reflection in the mirror and remembered that I was supposed to be sweeping a shimmery gold eye shadow over my eyelids. It matched the dress that Jane had picked out for me.
“Well, cheers,” Jane said, hoisting one of the martinis. I quickly grabbed the stem of my glass, wincing as the cocktail slopped over the sides and onto my hand. “Cheers to better times.”
“To better times,” I said, clinking my glass with hers.
The martini had cucumber in it, making it fresh and delicious. The first martini Jane had tried to ply me with was so strong that I hadn’t been able to finish it. Almost begrudgingly, Jane had been forced to instruct Lucy to make them a little less vigorous for the rest of the evening.
“Like tonight, for one,” Jane said, downing her cocktail in one swig. I didn’t know how she did it. She was already several drinks ahead of me. “I can’t believe you’ve been here all this time and no one’s taken you out on the town.”
“I’ve never really gone clubbing,” I admitted, carefully brushing on the gold powder. Even though I promised Jane I’d get ready with her, I’d applied the foundation and concealer that helped camouflage my scarring before I came down to her floor. Nobody needed to witness me hiding that part of myself.
“Tonight’s the night, then,” Jane said. “Still, though, why didn’t Jonathan ever take you?”
I shrugged. “He’s been so busy with the company —”
“Oh, fuck the company,” Jane snapped impatiently. “Company this, company that. We’re more than the Wharton Group, you know.”
“I know,” I said quickly. “But he really wanted to do a good job. He wanted them to know that he hadn’t changed.”
“But that’s the funniest thing of all,” Jane said, waving her hand. She was well on her way to getting drunk, but no surprise there. I’d witnessed all the alcohol she’d poured down her throat. “The funniest thing of all is that he has changed. Majorly.”
“In a good way or a bad way?” I said after a short pause. Maybe I shouldn’t be asking this. I’d hesitated to ask anyone close to my husband about how he used to be when his memories were intact. It almost seemed like a violation of his privacy. And it was probably even more wrong to ask Jane. She was so loosened up by the alcohol that one of her breasts had very nearly worked its way out of her strapless bra, and she hadn’t even noticed. I wondered if there was a delicate way to let her know.
“That depends on who you ask,” Jane said, reaching for her martini glass before she remembered she’d drained it. “Lucy! Another round!”
“Oh, I haven’t finished mine yet.”
“Then chug!” Jane hollered, her eyes glittering. “Chug that drink!”
I bit my lip and hoisted the glass to my lips, but this wasn’t something I could just chug. I wasn’t Jane. However, when I tried to lower my hand after taking a sizable but painful gulp, she seized my wrist and continued to tip the glass up. I did the best I could, but spluttered at the very end, coughing cucumber martini on the both of us.
“That’s why we’re not in our dresses yet!” Jane whooped, cheering and applauding as I set the now-empty glass back on the countertop. I felt a little woozy and hoped my stomach would settle.
Lucy came into the room with a fresh couple of cucumber martinis, and I gagged a little.
“I don’t think I can drink another one of those,” I admitted, my vision swimming a bit.
“We’ll switch it up after this one, then,” Jane agreed, nodding at Lucy. “You can go ahead and mix a couple of gin and tonics.”
I let out a long breath of air and struggled to apply my eyeliner in an effort to not think about more alcohol. It was difficult to tell whether the line was straight or not. Glancing up, I noticed Jane studying me over the rim of the martini glass.
“My brother used to go clubbing all the time,” she said finally, when I met her eyes in the mirror.
“That’s all right,” I said quickly, putting my stick of eyeliner down and straightening. “I don’t want to know. I shouldn’t have asked. I know he was a different person then, and I know he’s changed.”
“Here, let me finish that up for you,” Jane said, retrieving the pencil I’d dropped and standing very close to me. “I have more practice at it than you. I can’t really expect there to be a good reason to wear eyeliner in the woods, am I right?”
“You’re right,” I said, trying not to flinch as she brought the pencil precariously close to my eye.
“Look up,” Jane said softly, drawing the pencil along my lower lash line. “Jonathan has changed. Even you acknowledge it. You’re his wife now. Aren’t you at least curious about how he used to be? I could tell you everything you want to know.”
I had to hold my breath to keep still as Jane moved on to attend to my other eye with the pencil. Something about this felt wrong.
“I don’t feel good about it,” I said. “The person Jonathan was before is a stranger to me. That person was in love with Violet. He was going to marry her.”
“And so you don’t want to know that person,” Jane surmised. “Close your eyes.”
“It’s not that,” I protested, my eyes fluttering shut. Now, I couldn’t halt my flinching, especially when I couldn’t anticipate when Jane was going to jab me with the sharp end of the pencil. “It’s just strange to think about. Your brother and I — the person he is today — fell in love. The person Jonathan is today is the man I love — and the man who loves me. The person he used to be is a stranger to us both.”
“What do you think will happen once his memories return?” Jane asked, running the pencil over my eyelids again and again. “Do you think he’ll still love you, or do you think he’ll go back to Violet?”
“There’s no guarantee that his memories will come back,” I said, trying to clamp down on the old fear that was rising within me. I’d often expressed the same idea to Jonathan, but he told me nothing would ever change between us. “That’s what the doctor said.”
“But there’s no guarantee they’ll stay gone forever, either,” Jane said lightly. “You should have a contingency plan, you know. My brother was a pretty big womanizer.”
I winced and backed away from Jane’s onslaught with the eyeliner. “I really don’t want to know,” I said. “Really. I regret asking. It was silly.”
“Are you satisfied with being with a damaged man?” she asked, raising her eyebrows at me. “Are you willing to ignore the fact that he’s not all of himself?”
“What do you mean?” I asked shakily, reaching for the martini gla
ss.
“The Jonathan I know now is an incomplete person,” Jane said. “Until he gets in touch with the memories he lost, he’ll never be whole. He’ll always be missing that vital part of himself that made him Jonathan Wharton. You’re okay with that? You’re okay with him never understanding what he lost?”
“Of course I’m not okay with that,” I said, taking a small sip of the martini. It didn’t turn my stomach now like it had before. It offered me a strange comfort and courage. “And I’m also not okay with the idea that the person he was before the accident is always there, haunting us. It bothers us both. But all we can do is love each other and support each other.”
“Then cheers to that,” Jane said, beaming as she clinked glasses with me. I finished the cocktail in a few gulps. “Love is a strange thing, Michelle. I’m sort of glad I don’t love any of my boyfriends.”
“Boyfriends?” I asked, shocked. “As in, more than one?”
“I’m Jane Wharton,” she said grandly, wrapping a stray tendril of hair around a hot curling iron. “I don’t date anyone exclusively.”
“I kind of thought that you and Brock…”
“Of course not!” Jane shrieked, laughing. “Oh, he wishes. He wishes so hard sometimes. And of course, sometimes I have to give him a little taste. That’s what keeps him coming back. Keeps him in line, too.”
It was an odd picture in my head to imagine Jane stringing Brock along. He was the one who seemed like the womanizer.
“So, you date a few guys —”
“Tons.”
“You date tons of guys,” I corrected, trying to keep my face blank, “but you would never settle down with one? Never love one?”
“Love is so complicated and demanding,” Jane said dismissively, grabbing one of the highballs of gin and tonic that Lucy had delivered at some point. It must’ve been while Jane was doing my eyeliner. “I don’t understand why anyone would want to tie themselves down to just one person. What if something would go wrong? It’s too risky.”
It was too risky to sleep with a bunch of guys, I thought, but I didn’t express it. I didn’t know for sure, anyways. Jonathan had been my first and only, and I was more than content with keeping it that way.
“This way,” Jane continued blithely, “if something goes south with one of my guys, I just focus on another. If somebody starts to annoy me, I don’t have to try and work things out. I just dump him and add another.”
“I could see how that might work for you,” I said carefully. I really didn’t, but I wasn’t about to try and convince Jane that my point of view was correct. Taking my hair down from the clip I’d twisted it into to keep it out of my face while I was putting on my makeup, I shook my curls out.
“You lucky thing,” Jane remarked, watching me arrange my hair to fall over my shoulders. She had ensnared another section of her own dark hair with the curling iron. “All you have to do is toss your head and your hair is ready to go.”
“It’s about the only thing lucky about me,” I said ruefully. I would’ve given up every golden strand to have Jonathan at my side instead of his sister. I missed him acutely. “You know, maybe I shouldn’t go out after all. I don’t feel right.”
“Stop,” Jane scolded, unwinding a fresh ringlet from the iron. “Where’s this coming from? Just keep sipping on that cocktail, Michelle. We’re almost ready to leave.”
“I just wish Jonathan were here,” I said glumly, tasting the gin and tonic. It wasn’t so bad. It sort of tasted like Sprite.
“Boring,” Jane said with a wicked smile. “If Jonathan were here, he’d probably be working, and you’d probably be pining away for him. You need to take care of yourself, you know. Have a little fun. You don’t think it’s all business over there for him, do you?”
“He has to go to all of these different places to keep his job,” I said. “He’s traveling constantly. I know it’s hard for him.”
Jane scoffed and wrapped some more hair around the curling iron. “Oh, poor baby Jonathan. Has to go to Paris, London, Madrid, Monaco, boohoo! I feel so sorry for him. Amsterdam? Please, no! Shanghai? God forbid!”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying all of the cities he’s visiting are amazing,” she said. “You can bet your ass he’s wining and dining those assholes at the finest bars and restaurants money can buy. Short of sucking cock, he’s doing everything he can to keep that job, and that includes seeing the sights of all those gorgeous cities. I mean, Christ, you should’ve just gone to Paris. It would’ve been a perfect honeymoon.”
“I couldn’t go,” I said softly. “Collier and Jonathan both agreed that it would look better if it were just him.”
“Of course he couldn’t drag his new wife along,” Jane said. She was almost done with her hair. “I bet he took the Amsterdam chairman to the red light district.”
“The what?”
“Oh, you know,” Jane said, her eyes meeting mine for the briefest of moments. “Sex and drugs. Prostitution and pot. Living it up. I’m probably going to go back soon. It’s fucking Babylon, Michelle, and if you’re not debauching, you’re not doing it right.”
I was quiet, absorbing that. Was that why Jonathan hadn’t been calling me as often as I wished he was? Was he too busy “entertaining” other people, or was he too busy being “entertained?” It was a terrible thought, but one that made sense. Of course he wouldn’t want to call me if he was really doing all of that disgusting stuff to impress the chairmen. He would never want me to know.
“Aw, don’t,” Jane said, setting her curling iron down and giving me a brief hug and a slap on the ass. “You look so sad. If you cry, you’re going to smear that makeup and we’re going to have to do it all over again.”
I blinked and looked at myself in the mirror. I could apply my own makeup by now, and the only other person who’d performed such miracles on me was Rowan. But the way Jane had done my makeup was completely different from what I’d ever seen.
My eyes were so dark that I looked almost angry, but it was somehow powerful and sexy at the same time. I looked like a movie star, and I was still just in a robe.
“I think it’s time to put our dresses on, take a tequila shot, and go to the fucking club,” Jane said. “What do you think?”
“Yeah,” I agreed. I wanted nothing more than to forget the idea that Jonathan was having an incredible amount of fun without me. I deserved to have fun by myself. Jane was right about that — it was silly to sit around, wasting away while waiting for my husband to return. If he was having fun, I could have fun, too.
“I can’t hear you,” Jane said, smiling and looking away. “What was that? You want to mope around the house for the rest of the night?”
“No!”
“Then you’re ready to put your hot fucking dress on?”
“Yeah!”
“Fuck yeah,” Jane corrected. “Let’s do it, then.”
Lucy had to have heard us. She’d poured two tequila shots and had them ready at the bar, wedges of lime in a shot glass between them. There was even an ornate crystal saltshaker.
Jane and I were practically the same size, but I had to hold my breath for her to zip me into the dress she’d picked out. Its gold sequins shimmered in the light from one of the many chandeliers dotting the room, and it was shockingly short. I’d have to keep tugging it down all night to make sure my assets were completely covered.
If possible, though, hers was even shorter, but Jane didn’t seem to mind when the very bottom of her — well, bottom — made an appearance.
“Let’s take this shot and start the party,” Jane said, hoisting one of the glasses from the bar. Lucy watched us placidly, her face not giving away whatever she might be thinking of us in her head. I found that I cared not at all.
“This is my very first tequila shot,” I said, my words slurring a little.
“You can’t be serious,” Jane said, her mouth hanging open. “My very first tequila shot was when I was fifteen years old.”
“That’s young,” I said. “I was still in high school.”
“I was, too,” Jane laughed. “Well, here’s how you do it. Lick your hand, sprinkle the salt on the lick, lick the salt, take the shot, suck the lime. Got it?”
“Lick and salt and take and suck,” I said, slobbering on my finger. “Got it.”
