Chasing Charlie

by C. M. Newman

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE: GREASY AND DELICIOUS

  “So?” Sophie said once she and Angela were seated at a table at the closest restaurant to work. The cuisine didn’t matter to them. They both ordered cheeseburgers and fries.

  “So what, exactly?” Angela asked.

  “Oh, my love, anything,” Sophie said, drawing an incredulous giggle from her friend. “Anything at all you’re willing to share.”

  “You’ve got to be more specific than that,” Angela said, although she was so relieved that her friend wasn’t livid with her that she felt like telling her almost anything she might want to know.

  “Seriously, you and Vince—you and Vince—are married. This is nuts. Tell me what I’ve missed. Like your first kiss.”

  Angela arched an eyebrow to the ceiling. “Hate to break it to you, but you would’ve missed that whether or not you’d known about it. It’s not like I taped it.”

  “Don’t be a fuddy-duddy, you know what I mean. Where was it? When was it?”

  “A few days after he told us about his diagnosis.”

  “Nuh-uh! When he was still working here? You did not.” Sophie immediately brought her hands to her mouth to cover it, but nothing could disguise her enormous eyes. “I guess when I do the math, you know with the timing and all, then that means you did, but still. You kissed. While Vince was still your boss. You’re naughty.”

  “We kissed under full awareness than he wouldn’t be working with me within a couple of days,” Angela noted.

  “Did the fact that he was still your boss anyway no matter for how long make it any more exciting?” Sophie pushed.

  Angela rolled her eyes a bit while she tore open her straw wrapper. “Not really. I mean, it was an exciting kiss, don’t get me wrong, but he cut it short and said it was a bad idea. Which was true,” she said at once, holding a hand up when she saw Sophie about to protest. “We hadn’t really thought it through very well.”

  “Wait, hang on,” Sophie said, struck by an epiphany, “did this happen when you and Vince were on that custodial in Louisiana? I remember you acting kind of strangely when Fitz and Marshall got back from that case. Vince just kind of brushed it off when I asked him if something was up with you.”

  “It didn’t happen while we were in Louisiana. I stopped by his apartment over the weekend to check in, and that’s when it happened. As for his explanation for my weird behavior, it’s actually kind of funny. At the time, I was upset with him because he was all hung up on what people would think if they found out about what’d happened, and it was driving me nuts. But then I was the one who insisted on hiding the relationship from everyone once we finally got together.”

  “Things got a little too real, did they?” Sophie said with a hand over Angela’s.

  “You can say that again.”

  “So what’s it like being at his place all the time? I think I’ve been there, like…twice. Ever. Maybe thrice.”

  “Umm, clean. As you’d suspect from his office.”

  “Okay, don’t get cute with me,” Sophie said. “Can we talk about how weird it is that you married a guy before you lived with him? And now you’re married and still don’t live with him. That just…I don’t get it. Explain.”

  Besides Vince’s gradual decline trying Angela’s emotional patience and their relationship decisions trying her physical patience, Angela hadn’t really had a true test of faith yet. Was this it? Giving her close friend an explanation that might offend her? All of a sudden, she understood what Vince’s predicament had felt like when he’d set the boundaries for their relationship.

  “It’s, a, umm…faith-based decision. At first it was upon Vince’s insistence and it sounded strange to me, but I’ve actually grown to appreciate it. I mean, before we got married, when we had these boundaries in place and we knew we weren’t going to sleep together, he could tell me I was beautiful and I never had to wonder why he said it. I knew it was because he actually thought it, not because he was trying to score, you know? And I still feel that way even now, because we set that standard beforehand.”

  “You—you didn’t even…you weren’t together at all before last night?”

  Angela gave her friend a tight-lipped smile. “Nope. Trust me, at first I only agreed to it because it was important to Vince. I wasn’t excited about it. But I’ve been going to church with him and everything, really relearning a lot of stuff they tried to tell me when I was younger, and I get it now. I understand. I can’t tell you how many times I just felt like some sort of object in a relationship because I was giving that part of myself to someone without any real promise from him. I’ve never had to feel that way with Vince. And now I realize why my past relationships were always lacking something. I mean, how can I fully give myself to someone during sex—or in any way—if I’m not certain of how he feels, if he’s not willing to make those vows to me yet? And how can sex ever be perfect if I have even the tiniest doubt of where he’ll be the next day or even the next year? It was just such a different feeling this time around, so much more emotional than anything I’ve ever experienced.” She stopped when Sophie’s eyes shifted to the ground.

  “You must think I’m—” Sophie started.

  “Whatever you’re about to say, the answer is no. Not at all, Soph. I’m not interested in passing any sort of judgment. And this was a personal decision. I’m not looking down on you at all. I promise.”

  Sophie’s countenance lightened as she met Angela’s eyes again. “So how do you get that…feeling…if you’ve already been with someone?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” Sophie said, “you say you never have to wonder whether Vince is trying to play games to get something from you—besides maybe a neck rub or a cup of coffee, I suppose. You say the sex is incredible because of standards you set early on. How does one go about achieving that once the deed has already been…done? Not that I don’t believe the hubby when he tells me I look nice or anything like that. Just…hypothetically, what if a girl didn’t have that insurance policy?”

  “I don’t know, maybe those two people could…take some time off?” Angela said, digging things seemingly out of nowhere. “I guess if you had a few weeks where you knew that sex was out of the question, maybe that would work. I’m not an expert, though, Soph. All I know is it worked for us and from a spiritual perspective, too, I feel really good about it.”

  “But you wouldn’t expect someone who wasn’t a Christian to follow those same rules?”

  Angela shrugged as their waitress dropped off their food. “Like I said, I’m not an expert. There are other religions that have the same rules, so to speak, but I guess one can’t rightly expect anyone to do anything if they don’t either have a direct understanding of the consequences or they don’t hear a higher power telling them it’s the right thing to do. I mean, look at our cheeseburgers.”

  “They look greasy and delicious,” Sophie said. “Why, are we not supposed to eat them? I think I would have to draw the line at abstaining from cheeseburgers in terms of accepting your new faith, honey.”

  Angela chuckled. “We’re allowed, but a Jew who’s eating kosher isn’t supposed to. But would I stop eating meat and cheese together? Probably not. It’s not part of my belief system and it doesn’t serve any clear purpose to me.”

  “So you don’t think I’m a skank?”

  Angela’s eyes grew as wide as the burger she was about to sink her teeth into. “Sophie, no, and I mean it. Your sex life is none of my business.”

  “Is your sex life my business?” Sophie asked hopefully. “On a minimal basis, I mean.”

  Angela blushed but was glad that the worst seemed to be over. “What exactly do you want to know?”

  “I’ll only bother you with one question. Was it perfect?”

  The pink in Angela’s cheeks grew three shades deeper, but she nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “Then switching gears into cold shower mode,” Sophie said, “what’s it like spending so much time with Charlie? D
oes he know you’re even together?”

  “Yeah, he knows we’re in a relationship, but…him knowing I’m his stepmother adds another layer of complications. We have to figure out how to tell him about the marriage.”

  “Wow, stepmother…” Sophie said in awe. “I hadn’t even thought of that. I was all caught up in you and Vince and oh, by the way, he’s got a cute kid. How do you fit into Charlie’s life? Besides tucking him in, which, by the way, should’ve been a dead giveaway for me that night.”

  “It’s…different. Vince still takes care of him and keeps him under control for the most part. I’m there for backup when Vince is tired or not feeling well, and I try to cook as much as I can. And I’m there for cuddles and bedtime stories and all that wonderful sappy stuff. But Charlie has a friend with a stepfather and he understands the mechanics to a certain extent, so once we tell him we’re married, he’ll know I’m his stepmom.”

  “What’s the plan as of now? For…after Vince passes away?” Sophie asked.

  “Charlie will live with his aunt and I’ll see him as much as I can,” Angela said in a tone that said the situation was simple, even though it was painfully far from it. With every day that passed, she found their future arrangements for Charlie less and less feasible. She shoved those misgivings aside, though, because she figured they were more selfish than anything else, and that Charlie would be just fine transitioning from living with her to living with Jenna—he had to be fine.

  “That’s a lot to commit to,” Sophie said.

  Angela eyed Sophie, figuring she would understand, and smiled, her eyes distant. “That’s not really how I see it.” She checked her watch. “We really need to hurry and get back to the office, but can I ask you something?”

  “Of course.”

  “Are you seriously not going to punish me for lying to you all this time?”

  “Oh, we’re totally having a girls’ day soon, just you and me. Manis, pedis, a nice lunch, shopping…I know you hate all of that, so I think that’ll be an appropriate form of retribution.”

  —

  Angela called Vince outside the office, waving at Sophie as the latter continued inside. She couldn’t ignore Vince’s reply to her typical checking-in text message. It simply read that Marshall wasn’t happy. She stuffed her free hand in her coat pocket and soaked in the sunshine (though it was chilled by a bit of a breeze) while her phone rang.

  “Hey, sweetie,” Vince answered.

  “Hey. What do you mean, he wasn’t happy?” Angela jumped right in. “I didn’t know you even talked to him.”

  “He stopped by,” Vince said vaguely.

  “Okay…he left work in the middle of the day and dropped by your apartment unannounced. Not weird at all. And he said what, exactly?”

  “Some things that weren’t entirely false…they were all reasonable objections. Don’t worry about it. How did Sophie take it?”

  “Fine, really. I just got back from lunch with her. What about Marshall?”

  “Angie, really…”

  “No secrets,” she said tersely.

  Vince sighed, cornered. “He thinks it’s a bad idea.”

  “I gathered as much. Can you be more specific?”

  “Not without feeling like I’m tattling,” Vince replied. “If I tell you what he told me, I know exactly what you’re going to do.”

  “March inside and give him a piece of my mind?”

  “Yes,” Vince said, “and that’s not really fair, considering the fact that you hid this from the team for weeks with the fear that they’d react this way. He’s reacting this way because it’s reasonable. He raised the same concerns that you and I had before we started seeing each other. The same concerns that we still sometimes have to put aside. He needs time to get used to this.”

  “And that’s fine, but the fact that he acted—very poorly, mind you—like he was fine with it when I asked him, and then disrupted your day to tell you off…that’s just unacceptable.”

  “Who said he told me off?” Vince challenged Angela.

  “Okay, then, I’ll ask. Did he tell you off, or did he come over, sit down and join you for a cup of tea with his pinky up, and give you a well-organized outline of his concerns at a normal volume?”

  “You’re cute when you’re angry,” Vince teased. “Yes, he did…tell me off, I guess,” he said, serious once again, “but really, he’s just concerned about you.”

  “Then he needs to take it up with me. I’m a grown woman. You have enough on your plate without dealing with the consequences of my decision to keep this all a secret.”

  “He sounded like he would’ve reacted that way no matter when he found out,” Vince pointed out. “He didn’t seem angry with you for hiding it at all. His issue was with me.”

  “Why on earth should it be? What exactly did he say to you?”

  “That I’m crazy for thinking you’ll be okay after all of this. That was the gist of it. And he’s right. I can’t help but think that I am crazy, maybe this is too much, and we really didn’t think about it enough.”

  “Nuh-uh,” Angela practically growled, beyond seething already. “I don’t care whether you’re certifiably insane, Vince. That’s not his call to make. If he’s so concerned about me, he could come to me about it. I can’t believe he came to you in the middle of the day and ambushed you like that. I’m so furious I—”

  “You need to calm down,” Vince said with a quiet austerity.

  “Why? Do you think he’s right? Do you think we should call this off?” Angela asked in the heat of the moment, her heart rattling in her head.

  “Could you if you wanted to?” Vince asked.

  “What? What garbage did he sit there and feed you? That I want to leave you? Where on earth would he get that?” Angela turned around, hugging her waist and putting her back to the wind when it kicked up.

  “He never said you wanted to leave me, so relax. He merely implied that I asked you to marry me knowing you’d never divorce me because I’m dying.”

  Angela’s mouth formed a narrow o partly in reaction to Marshall’s accusations and partly in shock that Vince was revealing so much. No secrets, she reminded herself. “You say that like it’s even a remotely acceptable thing to say. I can’t believe him. I really can’t. And I can’t believe you, either. Maybe his heart is partly in the right place, but I have no idea where his brain is. Yet you’re accepting the things he said?”

  “I never said I accepted them. I just said they’re reasonable concerns.”

  “Concerns we’ve spent weeks thinking about already—concerns we’re finally learning to look past. Did you argue with him? At all?” Angela asked.

  “I didn’t put up much of a fight.”

  “Why not?” Angela saw a male agent from the floor below them come out the door, a pack of cigarettes in hand. She gazed longingly as she waited for Vince’s answer.

  “Because I don’t…have the energy. Sure, I could yell right back at him—”

  “He yelled at you?” Angela hissed as she tried to keep her voice down. “Hang on one second, okay? Don’t go anywhere.” She put her hand to the mouthpiece of her phone and walked over to the other agent. “Do you think I can bum one of those?” she murmured.

  “One of those days?” the agent asked, getting the pack out of his suit pocket.

  “One of those years, really,” she said impassively. Seeing that she had one hand occupied with holding her phone, the other agent helped her light up. “Thank you so much.”

  “Are you smoking now?” Vince asked the second Angela put her phone back to her ear.

  “You didn’t have a problem with it when I said I wanted a smoke when I was on that case in California,” Angela pointed out.

  “I didn’t say I had a problem with it now. Just…wondering.”

  “Tell me off,” Angela said after taking a long drag of her first cigarette in ages. She prayed she wouldn’t get pulled back into the dangerous and expensive habit.

  “What?”
Vince asked.

  “I said, ‘Tell me off.’ Get angry. You don’t like the idea of me smoking. And that’s fine. I agree with you. I shouldn’t be smoking right now. It’s an awful decision—no offense,” she mouthed to her smoking buddy. He grinned and shrugged her off. “Just…get mad at me. Get mad at somebody. You should’ve been mad at Marshall. It’s not like you haven’t spent enough of your time worrying about what the aftermath of this is going to be like. We both have. Him coming over there and asking you those things kind of implies that he thinks you were oblivious. That’s rather rude of him, don’t you think? For him to assume that you married somebody without thinking of the consequences? Tell me something,” she said firmly. “Did you want to get mad at him?”

  “I was mad at him. I just didn’t show it like I’m assuming you’re going to show it.”

  “Why not?” Angela asked desperately, throwing her head back. “He invaded your territory to tell you you’re not allowed to look for happiness at the end of your life just because someone else is going to get hurt. Why wouldn’t you want to defend yourself?”

  “Because, I told you, I’m exhausted. I really am. I don’t have the emotional resources to…to be a good husband to you and a good dad to Charlie and to be good to myself all at the same time. Something’s gotta give. So I let it go. This cancer already makes me feel pretty powerless as it is, so what’s one more thing?”

  “Marshall is so lucky I’m having a cigarette right now,” Angela said formidably. “Hang on. Is my confronting him going to make this powerless feeling even worse?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m worried about. What I’m worried about is you putting an important friendship at risk just for the sake of standing up for me.”

  “Then don’t think of it as me standing up for you,” Angela said.
” Think of it as me standing up for us.”

  “Sounds romantic now, but when you need his support later on, is he going to want to give it to you if you tear him to pieces today?” Vince challenged her.

  “If he really cared about supporting me, do you think he would’ve gone behind my back and done this? Honestly?”

  “Fine. His actions were misguided. But that doesn’t change the fact that he cares.”

  “You’re right, he is misguided,” Angela ranted. “And all I’m going to do is guide him back in the right direction as nicely as I can considering what I’d rather do is tar and feather him for making you doubt yourself.”

  “Am I already on the record as having said that you’re worrying me?” Vince asked.

  “Yes, you are. And I’m sorry to worry you, but if I don’t talk this out with him, I’m going to take it out on someone else. This is the lesser of many evils. I’d like to come home in a good mood today.”

  “Just…don’t get carried away,” Vince said warily.

  “Me? Get carried away? Anyway…what do you want for dinner, then, since it’s just the two of us tonight? Or is it not just the two of us? What ever happened to Mitch—is he coming this weekend?”

  “His bus gets in tomorrow morning and he’s heading out Sunday,” Vince said. “He offered to stay at a hotel but that sounded cold to me. I hope that’s okay.”

  “Of course that’s okay. I would expect nothing different from you.”

  “Am I that predictable?”

  “Yes, and I love it. It makes you much easier to live with.”

  —

  “You smoke now?” Marshall asked, of course crossing paths with Angela when she stepped off the elevator.

  “Ugh, it’s all over me, isn’t it?” Angela asked, sniffing her jacket.

  “Seriously, you know that stuff’ll kill you,” Marshall said with a somewhat forced grin.

  “I just had a couple. Didn’t even buy them. Listen, I was actually looking for you,” Angela said, following Marshall to his desk, where he’d been headed. “Think we can talk for a minute? Privately?”

  “Sure.” They found the conference room empty and shut the door behind them. “What’s up?”

  “I need to talk to you about how you reacted. Truth be told, the main reason I didn’t tell all of you about me and Vince in the first place was because I didn’t want everyone’s unsolicited advice and I didn’t want people to worry about me.”

  “We’re cool,” Marshall said with a shrug. “I’m happy for you guys.”

  Angela’s eyes narrowed to slits for a moment. “Really? Because I just talked to someone who told me a different story.”

  Marshall’s eyes shot up to the ceiling briefly. “So you’re one of those couples, huh? Tell each other absolutely everything?”

  “And what exactly is wrong with couples who tell each other everything?” Just like that, Angela’s plan to have a mature conversation with her friend was thrown out the window. “Did you really plan on sneaking this past me?”

  “I figured Vince would keep it to himself.”

  “Well, I got the gist of it out of him. Let me just say, I never dreamed you would have the audacity to go off on Vince like that. If you have any complaints whatsoever, they should be with me.” Angela spoke no more loudly than usual, just with escalating rage for which she knew she’d have to ask forgiveness later.

  “My complaint wasn’t about you keeping it a secret, so no, my complaint wasn’t with you,” Marshall said, rather sure of himself, even in the face of a wrathful Angela.

  “Yes, Marshall, your complaint was with me. Whatever your complaint was, it didn’t need to be brought to Vince. He does not deserve that. He has enough to deal with as it is—like taking his son to see a grief counselor today, and yes, you heard me right—without you barging in in the middle of the day and accusing him of being emotionally irresponsible and not thinking about me. Guess what, he did think about me. And for a while, this relationship looked like it was never going to happen because of that. And he and I have finally gotten to a point where he’s comfortable with this, where he trusts that I’ll be okay. Do you know how hard it’s been to get to this point? Do you?”

  “I don’t see how he can possibly believe that, Angela,” Marshall said, playing with his cell phone, flipping it open and pushing it shut over and over again. “I think that if he says he thinks you’ll be okay, he’s lying. To you and maybe to himself. How will you possibly be okay?”

  “Listen, I appreciate that you care. I really do. But I’m an adult. I’m not your little sister that needs looking after. I get that you think a lot of people need some sort of protector, but I’m not one of them. I’m not a victim of anything here. I am in this relationship—this marriage—of my own free will, fully understanding that I’m going to learn a whole new kind of pain when Vince dies. For you to think that he and I don’t know that is frankly insulting.”

  “If you really fully understood what’s about to happen, Angela, you’d be running for the hills,” Marshall said, sure of himself. “You haven’t lost someone close to you as an adult, correct?”

  Angela humored him but crossed her arms. “Correct.”

  “First of all, I envy you. Second, imagine how much it’s gonna hurt to lose Vince.”

  “You think that doesn’t run through my head every day?” Angela snipped.

  “Nuh-uh-uh. Stay with me. Think about how much it’s gonna hurt. Now multiply that by about a thousand.”

  “I see where you’re going with this, but what about how much I’d hurt if I didn’t do this? What if I did walk away from this, or what if I hadn’t gotten into it in the first place? Do you honestly think I’d be any happier, watching somebody I love die without him knowing how I feel? Maybe you and I have a different understanding of what love is, Marshall. Or maybe you’re a novice in love like I’m a novice in loss. Maybe you don’t know what it feels like not to care—literally not to care—how bad it’ll hurt once that love is taken away, because it feels so perfect to have that love right now and you don’t want to think about tomorrow or the next day, let alone the day when it all ends. Maybe you don’t understand what it’s
like to care about nothing else but being happy in the present with that other person.”

  “I’m not trying to insinuate that you’re dumb, Angela, just…naïve. In the best way possible.”

  Angela scowled. “Could you possibly be any more condescending?”

  “Could you?” Marshall retorted. “With all your ‘maybe you don’t understand this’ and ‘maybe you don’t understand that…’ Come on, really?”

  “Well, I need you to back down, and apparently the only way I can do that is to make you feel as self-doubting and guilty as you made Vince feel by saying whatever it was that you said to him. So just listen to me.”

  Marshall leaned further back in his chair, his hands clasped across his stomach. “I’m listening.”

  “Good.” Angela unloaded completely. “You know what else you don’t understand? What it must be like to know how much time you have left to live—you can’t even fathom that. I don’t fully understand it either, and I never will unless I’m put in a situation like Vince’s, but I’ve spent enough time with him—that’s right, I’ve actually seen him for a combined total of more than a few hours since all of this started, and don’t worry, we’ll get back to that—to know that there is absolutely nothing more conflicting. His days are numbered and he wants to spend them happy, but he knows that pretty much any happiness he can find will be at the expense of someone else. Even when it comes to Charlie—he’s pumping himself full of these drugs so he can buy the time to be the dad he didn’t feel he was before. But at the same time, Charlie hates seeing his dad sick, tired, weak….He even hates that Vince has to give himself insulin shots.”

  “Insulin shots?”

  “Vince is diabetic. He has been for three weeks now. Maybe you’d know if you’d stopped by at all or even picked up the phone, and don’t give me the busy excuse. It doesn’t have to be a big commitment. But I digress. Back to my first point. Vince wants to be happy but he’s also still Vince, meaning that he doesn’t have a selfish bone in his body—”

  Marshall widened his eyes. “You really believe that? Come on, Angela, he stayed here after Kate died, when Charlie needed him the most. We all know he should’ve walked away from this job, but he couldn’t do it. Not even for his own son. And then there’s you. Now he’s got you marryin’ him and he’s livin’ out some sort of fantasy before the curtains close. And as soon as he takes his last breath and goes off to a better place, you’re stuck here picking up the pieces. All so he could find happiness before he died. You’re right. Doesn’t sound selfish to me at all.”

  Angela felt her face grow beet red like it had at lunch, but not for nearly as pleasant a reason. “Are you saying you don’t think he deserves to be happy?”

  “He deserves to be happy, but this? Asking you to be a widow?”

  “Let me make myself clear to you, Marshall. If I didn’t want to marry him, I wouldn’t have asked him. He makes me happy and I make him happy. I’ve complicated everything else, but I didn’t complicate this. I don’t get why it’s so hard for you to understand why I would want to do this. For all the parading around you do, saying you’re so concerned about me, and for how much you love your friends and your family, I don’t get why this is so hard to understand.”

  “I just don’t wanna see what you’ll become when he goes, Angela. I can’t imagine volunteering for that.”

  “Yet another difference between us,” Angela said with a sharp jerk of her shoulders. “I’m more than happy to pay that price. I know it’s stupid. I know it’s reckless. But I’m telling you right now that I don’t care what this does to me. Not right now. I’m happily absorbed in the time I have left with him. The more I focus on the future, the less time I spend enjoying this. I got—” Angela stopped and laughed abruptly “—I got married yesterday. For a few years now I’ve thought I was past that window of opportunity. I’ve always wanted a family, but I was starting to think it really wasn’t in the cards for me. I guess that you see Vince marrying me as some diabolical scheme of his to make sure he keeps me until the very end, but I don’t see it that way at all. I’m happy. Yes, I still dread the day I have to say goodbye, but right now, I’m happy. Happier than I’ve ever been. If you wouldn’t jump at that kind of chance, then fine. But this is my life, not yours. Are we clear?”

  Marshall cocked his head to the side. “Crystal.”

  “Good. Let’s clear up some other things, while we’re at it. It took us a very long time to get past the very concerns you so rudely brought up to Vince, and then you came along and you knocked him right off his feet. So instead of relaxing at home, maybe basking in the glow of his very recent marriage, he’s doubting himself again, he’s doubting that very same marriage. He’s thinking maybe we acted too rashly after all, and he’s not thinking it because it’s true—it’s not true at all. He’s thinking it because you found the…weakest point in what little armor he has left and you dug that knife right in there and you twisted it. I’m sure you didn’t mean to cause nearly as much harm as you did. But I can’t impress upon you how fragile he is in that respect. He needed your support, and instead, you tore him down.”

  “He gets a better ending than you do, Angela,” Marshall cut in. “His suffering will end. Yours will drag out.”

  “I get it, Marshall. His life is finite and, as far as we know, mine is less so. I don’t have a clock ticking over my head like he does. But that means I get time to recover. I’ll have a life left to live. I have more days left. No matter how much this hurts, I’ll be able to move on. But when you…when you pull stunts like this, that’s another day wasted for him. And he’s already going through enough. Of course he’ll be at peace once this is over, but he’s still losing his little boy who’s already lost his mother. That eats at him every single day, even on the good ones. Tell me something, Marshall. Do you love Vince?”

  Marshall looked at Angela as if he couldn’t believe what she was saying. “Of course I do. He’s like a brother to me. But I—”

  “Stop right there. If you love him—if you even have the tiniest shred of respect for him as a human being, you’ll do anything in your power to make sure you don’t steal away his time like that, to make sure you don’t let him waste a second being upset over something you could’ve helped. I can’t pretend I’m perfect at it, but at least I make an effort. And I guess maybe we’re all missing the forest for the trees here. Maybe we’re all caught up in the intricacies and our own feelings, so let’s just remind ourselves that he’s dying, Marshall.” Angela shocked herself with her own tears, wondering how it was that she had gone so long without letting them fall. “He’s dying.”

  “I know he is,” Marshall said softly.

  “Then act like you know!” Angela cried furiously. “Get out of this state of denial. Realize that every single word you say to him means something. Every day of your life might not matter to you right now, but every day of his life matters to him. Stop ignoring the obvious. Come and see him. He’s hardly admitted it to me, but he misses you guys. Yeah, he misses the job, but he misses you guys even more, I’m sure. You were his family. And what kind of effort have you made to remind him of that? You each came over a few times and that was it. He hasn’t seen hide nor hair of you or Sophie since the night he had everyone over at his apartment, and even Fitz rarely comes to see him anymore. You all just…disappeared. Guess what, Marshall. This is real. It’s going to happen. There will come a day in the far too near future where you wonder if you did enough. And I truly think you’re still in denial about that. The sooner you get out of that state, the better, because he needs his friends. As much as I’d like to think Charlie and Mitch and I are enough, we’re not. Not really. Not when he has three other people he used to see day in and day out who can’t even spare ten minutes anymore.”

  Angela stopped and pressed her fingers under her eyes.

  “Please, get it together,” she continued. “Get angry or go through all the other stages, but no more denial. Don’t keep thinking that what
you do or don’t do, or what you say or don’t say, doesn’t have an effect. There’s not enough time left for you to keep fooling around.”

  Marshall sat in a shameful silence, staring at his feet. Feeling as if she had made her point ten times over, Angela finally decided to close things up. “I normally think fake or forced apologies are kind of a waste, but in this case, I really think you should apologize to him. Lie through your teeth if you have to. If you don’t make amends with him, then not only will he suffer, but you’ll live with that on your conscience. And…” She sniffled and wondered if she wanted to go this far. She took a moment and decided that while their reception had merely sounded like any other party when the idea had been proposed to her, she now saw it as an important evening—one for their friends to show their support. She did want Vince to believe, at least, that Marshall was sorry for what he’d said, but she didn’t want to go so far as pretending to get along with Marshall tomorrow night. “…I think that unless you’re ready to truly apologize to him, that maybe you shouldn’t come tomorrow night. And of course he’ll assume it’s because I was a witch to you, which I was, in which case you should come up with a really solid excuse. I want you there, but only if you really support this marriage. That’s what this little gathering is supposed to be about, anyway,” she added, even though she didn’t look forward to the attention overload and gladly would have gone to a party celebrating just about anything else, as long as it got her friends all in one place.

  “So you want me to fake an apology to Vince if I have to, but not before tomorrow night?”

  Angela had found her way into a corner. “Well, if you mean it, then fine. But tomorrow night is the first time everyone’s going to see us as a couple and I would rather enjoy the evening than pretend you’re not in the room. I don’t want to fake it tomorrow night.”

  “What about Vince? You don’t think he’d want me there either way?”

  Marshall had found Angela’s weak point too, now, but only because she had shown it right to him. “Fine. Do what you think is best for Vince. If you can really apologize or if you can fake it well enough, then come. But don’t you dare show up in opposition. Don’t you dare.” Angela nearly pointed a warning finger at Marshall before she left the room.