Chapter 39
chapter thirty-nine
Audrey
Today's vocabulary word: presence
"Hey. I think Em's trying to get your attention."
I blinked away from the perfect cube of watermelon speared on the end of my fork and toward the young woman seated beside me.
One of Emme's sisters-in-law. I knew her name.
We'd met before. A few times. In the past couple of days, even.
But my head was somewhere else, and it'd been there since landing in Boston a week ago.
The first few days back had gone about as well as expected, all of which was to say I was barely functional as a human.
I was late to everything, responded to texts only in my head, and looked hungover at all times despite keeping to the most basic, flare-proofed diet.
I woke up throughout the night, always peering into the darkness as if I'd find him there beside me.
And I was being the worst bridesmaid ever.
I'd forgotten about my final dress fitting and then forgot to pick up my dress before leaving for Friendship.
Shay gently snatched the bachelorette bar hop away from me when I admitted I hadn't confirmed the plans—and it didn't even strike a fragile, perfectionist chord in me.
Even now, seated at this long, gorgeous table in the Twin Tulip rose garden where I was surrounded by some of the best women I knew for Emme's bridal luncheon, I couldn't drag my mind away from Arizona. From Jude. From us.
I set the fork down. "I'm so sorry. I didn't catch that."
She slung an arm around my shoulders and shifted me toward Emme. "Are you okay? You kind of zoned out there," she whispered. "Your girl's been trying to grab you for the past few minutes."
"Sorry!" I called, sending Emme a helpless shrug. "I'm still strangely jet-lagged. It's weird, I know. I'm working on it."
I murmured my thanks to the woman beside me. Her lips twisted as she said, "It's Ruth."
"I knew that," I said, cringing. "I swear, I did. I'm not usually this much of a mess."
Her answering nod told me none of this was especially believable.
"We wanted to hear all about this trip," Emme said, gesturing to her stepsister Ines on one side of her, Shay to the other. "How did I not know anything about this? I need all the details. Jamie told me you went to Arizona?"
I cut a glance to Ruth. She smothered a smile as if she understood the exact dimensions of the corner I'd been backed into. "It all came together at the last minute. An old friend needed some help. With a family thing."
Jamie cackled before slapping a hand over her mouth. "Don't mind me," she said.
Emme leaned in, her elbows braced on the white tablecloth and her chin cradled in her clasped fingers. "What kind of help?"
I went back to my watermelon. "Well."
The truth—the entirety of it—was a complicated thing.
I knew there were pieces this group would understand since they had some experience with relationships that started under curious circumstances.
But there were also pieces that felt like artifacts from another lifetime, too fine and fragile to expose to sunlight.
I felt the heat of everyone's attention on my face. If I didn't say something soon, I'd have to clutch my belly and dash for the house, claiming an irritable bowel situation. No one ever asked follow-up questions about those issues.
"An old friend," I started, "his mom, who I'd adored back when we were in high school, was diagnosed with advanced stage breast cancer."
"Oh my god," Emme said, sympathy quickly taking the place of her curiosity. "Oh, Audrey, I'm so sorry to hear that."
"She was really going through it," I went on. "And she asked my friend—Jude, his name's Jude—to promise that he'd find someone. That he'd settle down after she was gone. He was distraught, obviously, and told his mom that he was planning on proposing very soon."
Emme uncorked another bottle of champagne, saying, "I think I know where this is going."
"Me too," Shay murmured.
"Yeah, so, I went out to Arizona with him last week to visit his mom," I said, "as his fiancée."
The table was silent for a long moment while everyone shared sidelong glances. Then, Ruth asked, "Is there going to be a wedding? Or are you expecting the mother to die before it gets to that point?"
"Ruthie!" one of her sisters cried. Chloe. Maybe Amber? In my defense, they looked a lot alike.
"It's a valid question given the setup, Amber," Ruth said.
Then the other one was Chloe. Okay. This was good. Progress. I only had one other sister to identify. I wasn't completely failing as a bridesmaid.
"It's a rude question," Amber seethed.
Chloe nodded in agreement. Ruth made a low, irritable sound. Kind of like a jammed spice grinder.
"Well, fortunately for all involved," I started, "Jude's mom made an incredible recovery. She'll still need close monitoring and frequent scans, but she's not going anywhere soon."
"Then it's the wedding route?" Ruth asked.
I started to answer but stopped myself. It would've been easier to condense this into a bite-sized story if that week with Jude hadn't broken me open.
This wasn't just a favor and it wasn't just a trip to Arizona and he wasn't just an old friend.
It was a week I'd borrowed from another alternate lifetime and I still didn't know how to fold myself back into this lifetime without giving up everything I'd shoved into my pockets along the way.
"No," I said slowly. "Next month, he'll tell her we decided to call it off."
"I don't know," Grace said. "If I was dying and my kid told me he was getting married but then broke it off a month later, I'd call him on that shit. I'd play Sick Mommy until he confessed to his crimes."
"That's because you're actually an evil stepmother," Jamie said. "You just don't have any stepchildren to torment."
"I'm sure I could find some," Grace said.
"Am I correct in my understanding that this is a non-romantic friend?" Ines asked. "Or does friend imply something else in this context?"
I swallowed hard. My throat was tight, sticky. "You could say we have a bit of a romantic history."
From across the table, Jamie mouthed, Just a bit?
"Then it's possible that this construct was conceived to rekindle that romantic history," Ines went on.
"Probably not," I said, reaching for my water.
"But there's a chance," Ines said.
I drained the glass as another pang of emptiness hit my chest. "That wasn't how we left things last week."
"You're still riding the newlywed high, Mrs. Jones," Emme said, bringing a hand to her stepsister's forearm. "Not everyone is looking to get paired off." She smiled in my direction though it could've been a wince. "I hope you're okay. It sounds complicated."
"Very complicated," I said. "But I'm fine. Just fighting this jet lag. I guess it hits a lot harder at thirty-five."
The lookalike sisters offered their own jet lag stories. Beside me, Ruth rolled her eyes out loud. When I glanced at her, she said, "I'm just being petty. Ignore me. Everyone else does."
"You can be petty with me all you want if you remind me of your younger sister's name."
She ran a glance over me, her brows pinched like she'd only now discovered I was a human woman and not a woody stalk of asparagus in a sundress as she'd originally believed. "Claudia," she said. "You're diving into this thing without a plus-one, then? Are we the only ones?"
I folded my arms over my abdomen to muffle the grumbles coming from my belly. "Jamie's my date," I said, tipping my chin toward her.
"But we're big fans of threesomes so you can vibe with us this weekend," Jamie said.
"She doesn't mean—"
Jamie cut me off with, "Yes, she does."
Ruth glanced between us, her tight expression flickering through at least four different emotions while Jamie fluttered her lashes with her most feline grin.
"Okay, I don't know what I just stepped in here but let me say you're both beautiful and much less full of yourselves than I expected.
Very unfortunately, I do prefer the male apparatus.
Believe me, there's no one less impressed with that fact than me.
And not for lack of exploration, right? I went to college on a rugby scholarship.
My best friends are all over the rainbow. Nothing but love and respect from me."
"It really is unfortunate," Jamie said with a groan. "I wish I didn't enjoy dicks so much. They always come attached to the most insufferable creatures."
"Every fucking time," Ruth murmured. "It's really becoming a problem. I don't like men. I can't trust most of them. Barely respect them. Until they get their house in order, I'll be abstaining."
I wanted to agree with the sentiment but recent history wouldn't allow it. Not when I could still feel his hands trailing over my body, his growls kissed into my skin. I must've made some kind of noise because I blinked and found both of them gaping at me. "What?" I asked as heat filled my cheeks.
Jamie leaned in close. Ruth did the same. "It sounds like you left a few details out of your report," Jamie said. "We'll be getting to the bottom of that later."
"Yeah, I need to hear this," Ruth said. "You're a sweetheart but you have no poker face to speak of. You'd fold like a lawn chair in a deposition."
I glared at them though the corner of my mouth betrayed me with a twitch. "It's not fair that you're joining forces to bully me."
"Baby, I'm on a no-drinks, no-dick diet this weekend," Jamie said. "All I have keeping me going is my tenderhearted brand of bullying."
"My brand doesn't prioritize tenderness or hearts," Ruth said. "Sorry. I'm just trying to avoid my sisters because I might actually murder them if they make one more comment about how sad it is that I don't have a date."
Jamie reached across the table and patted her hand. "Something tells me you have plenty of heart," Jamie said. "Just in your own way."
Laughing, Ruth said, "That's not what everyone else says."
"We don't give a fuck about everyone else," I said.