Epilogue 2
JUSTINE
“Hi, Justine.” Bridget’s voice was dreamy. She was wearing her usual four-inch platforms, but she moved like she was floating on a cloud. Funny how getting good dick on the regular did that to a woman. She picked up the She deserves better button and pinned it to her dress.
“You look happy.” Her cheeks had a fresh glow. Even her hair looked shinier.
“I am.” She squeezed me in a bear hug. “I want everyone to be as happy as me.”
I tightened my arms around her and bit back a snide remark about new-relationship energy and a warning not to get engaged like Carly had done.
I supposed I’d be there to pick up the pieces when her second marriage inevitably fell apart.
And if Lucie made the same mistake, I wasn’t sure how much alimony or child support I could squeeze out of her man, considering the scruffy clientele and shabby decor of Barb’s Bar.
Especially the way he doled out free drinks to my friends and me whenever we came in, which was often.
What I eventually said was, “I’m happy for you,” which I totally was. Besides, Bridget was smart, and she’d see her relationship with clear eyes once the post-orgasmic haze cleared and real life intruded.
She looped her arm through mine and pulled me close enough to whisper, “How’s she doing?”
I glanced at Savannah, who wore a T-shirt that read Divorced AF under the open jacket of her pink tracksuit.
“Better, I think.” Her blue eyes weren’t as shadowed as they’d been while we’d been fighting her ex over every dollar he owed her, while he sat across the negotiation table and alternated puppy-dog eyes with snide remarks about how she wouldn’t survive without him, comments I knew she half-believed.
“Though she needs our support more than ever.”
“Of course. Cole and I are going to take her with us to the aquarium next weekend when he has Caitlyn. He always plans fun activities, and Savannah loves kids. She’ll have a great time.”
Would she? Or would it make her remember trips to the aquarium with her kids, back when she was still putting up with Jason’s bullshit? I shook my head. It was up to Savannah to decide what was good for her, and I hoped she’d do only things she enjoyed from now on.
“Ladies.” Lucie’s handsome fiancé, Danny, held out a tray of champagne glasses filled with something pink. “Tonight’s cocktail is the Bye-Bye-Bye Bellini.”
“Ooh!” Bridget snatched one. “Sounds delicious.”
“What’s in it?” I asked, eyeing the fizzy liquid.
“O-M-G, it’s delicious.” Bridget’s was half gone.
“Champagne, peach puree, and a dash of rose hip liqueur for color and brightness. Try it.” Danny held the glass out to me.
“Don’t be a chicken.” Lucie appeared next to me with her daughter on her hip. “What does a chicken say, Mia?”
“Buck-buck-buck!” Mia squealed.
Well, fuck. I couldn’t let that stand. I took the drink from Danny and cautiously sipped. It was sweet and acidic and slightly bubbly. “Not bad,” I said.
Mia grabbed for the tray, and Danny bobbled it dramatically, sloshing only a little out of the glasses. No one was harmed, but Lucie handed her daughter to a relative of Danny’s—there were never fewer than five of them in the bar—then called for our attention.
She raised her glass. “To new beginnings!”
We echoed her, Lucie the loudest of us as always.
Then Carly tapped her glass with a long fingernail.
“Savannah, I’d like to welcome you into the Divorce Club.
I can’t say I ever planned to be a member, but I’ll tell you, it’s pretty great.
” She lifted her cocktail toward the back corner, and fuck me if her fiancé, Andrew, wasn’t sitting in a booth with his buddies—Tessa’s boyfriend, Oliver, plus Cole and some brown-haired rando their age.
Tessa had lured me into the Goddess Gang, promising me a group of empowered, independent women, but it turned out, almost all of them quickly went from fabulously single to smitten.
Admittedly, the men were young, buff, and gorgeous, and at first, I’d been proud of my new friends for taking charge of their sexuality and going for what made them happy.
But then Carly had gotten engaged, and now, Lucie, Tessa, and Bridget were in committed relationships with guys who could’ve been the first in a series of no-strings maintenance fucks.
But marriage? Everyone—especially me, despite recent developments—knew that was for chumps.
Certainly the kind of marriage that held out hopes of unending happiness was an illusion. Look at Carly and Savannah. They’d both been duped into long marriages, thinking they’d grow old with those guys and end their days in a rocking chair, holding the gnarled hand of their forever-love.
As a divorce lawyer, I saw it every day.
The only thing more painful than divorce was a marriage that had gone ice cold, like my parents’.
Better to stay single unless circumstances mandated it in what Savannah’s tattered paperbacks called a “marriage of convenience.” I knew there was nothing convenient about marriage—it was exhausting to start and even more excruciating and expensive to end—but there could be reasons for a temporary legal union.
I should know.
“Thanks, sweetie,” Savannah said. Her drink sloshed as she held it up, and she transferred it to her other hand, then licked the booze off her skin. She cleared her throat. “Thank you all. And I want to spe—ee-spesh—um, thank my lawyer, Justine. Without you, I’d still be stuck with that butthole.”
While my friends hooted and whistled, I set my drink down. Someone needed to stay sober enough to drive her back to Tessa’s.
Savannah continued, “You got me the money I needed—”
“Deserved!” Lucie yelled.
“—to restart my life. And I hope you know how grateful I’ll always be to you.”
I raised my glass to her, hoping she was done. I’d done my job, the job I did every day. Sure, I was excellent at it, and I’d gotten Savannah a good settlement that would grant her security for many years. But I didn’t need—
She handed her drink to Tessa and wrestled with the black sash with gold lettering that draped across her chest. “Justine, I want you to have this.” She pulled it over her head and staggered toward me.
Arms reached out to steady her until she stood in front of me.
Solemnly, like she was giving me the Nobel Prize, she handed me the sash.
It read, In My Single Era. “Thank you for everything you did to secure my freedom.”
I took it and folded it in half, then in half again. “You’re welcome.”
“No, put it on,” she said. “I’m not ready to find a new man, but you should.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t.” I set the shiny polyester thing on the sticky table.
“You can,” she insisted. “It’s one-size-fits-all.”
“No, I can’t,” I repeated, and it was like someone had turned down both the music and the conversation in the bar. Although I spoke at a normal volume, my voice seemed to ring out across the room. “I’m married.”
I hope you enjoyed this tease of Justine’s story, which, as you may have guessed, is a modern marriage-of-convenience romantic comedy.
Why would a jaded divorce lawyer marry the younger guy who owns the eyesore of an animal rescue that abuts her posh neighborhood?