Chapter 35
CHAPTER 35
P aige stepped out of the airplane and into the dry hot air. She wondered why they did this in the summer. They should totally do it in the winter when the weather was better.
She caught a cab and took it to the timeshare that her friend Emma owned. It was right on the strip and had three bedrooms. She was still nervous about sleeping alone, but she hadn’t had a nightmare since Blake started sleeping with her, and she was definitely moving on.
She grabbed a key from the front desk and took the elevator up to the twenty-first floor. Her friend had the penthouse. Which wasn’t saying much for Vegas, but it was still nice. She popped the door open and was greeted by squeals.
Donna reached her first. She was the oldest of the group. She never told them her age, but Paige guessed she was in her mid-sixties. Donna squeezed Paige tightly, and the other two waited for their turn.
Naveen and Stormy dragged her to the couch and pushed a glass of champagne into her hand. They both plopped down on either side of her, and Donna took the chair across from them, her eyes sparkling.
“So,” she started, “I’ve been tasked with asking what changed this year?”
She knew this was going to come up. These girls never pulled any punches. It was one of the things she loved about them. But she wasn’t sure she was ready to share about Blake. “Who said anything changed? Maybe I was just feeling better. Grief is weird.”
She dropped her eyes to her champagne glass, and Stormy squeezed her other hand. “Hon, we’re sorry. We don’t mean to be insensitive, but, well, you know Donna is friends with Ida, and she told her that you were living with some hunk.”
“Hunk? What decade are we in? The eighties?”
Stormy cackled. “You’re deflecting. There is a guy. Spill. We haven’t had good romance drama among us since that year Donna spent our girls’ weekend holed up in another hotel with that Casanova from Spain.”
Donna flushed.
“Whatever happened with him anyway?” Paige asked.
“Stop trying to change the subject.” Naveen shook her finger at Paige. “We want to hear about your man.”
Paige sighed and pulled up a picture of him on her phone. “Fine. His name is Blake, and he was my bodyguard and driver for the summer. I stopped driving after…” She let her words trail off.
“That is so cliché. You fell for your bodyguard. Why did you need one anyway?” Stormy asked.
“I didn’t. But I had a scare where I thought someone had been in my house, and my brother freaked out. Turns out it was just a hallucination. But Blake is one of Lukas’s friends, and he needed a place to stay for the summer since he was between jobs. Lukas volunteered him.”
She held her phone out so her friends could see a picture of them together.
“Holy mother of all things hot,” Stormy whispered. “You upgraded girl.”
Donna smacked her on the arm.
“What? We all knew Emery was no good for Paige. I just kept waiting for the divorce. I wouldn’t have wished him dead though.” Her face went serious.
“It’s still insensitive.” Donna frowned.
“It’s okay. I’ve made my peace with it. If he hadn’t died, we would’ve gotten divorced. He was cheating on me.” Anger mixed with guilt still raged every time she thought about it.
A collective gasp went through them all. Then Stormy giggled. “It’s not funny. I’m sorry. But it’s just so absurd. He cheated on you? Like he had it so good. I fully expected you to wake up one day and realize how much better you were than him. Him cheating on you just seems ridiculous.”
Paige hadn’t realized her friends felt that way about him, but it wasn’t a good marriage. She knew that now. She also knew he wasn’t a good guy. Not only was he a cheating bastard, but he was also overbearing and superficial.
“Yeah, well. I was blind.”
Stormy scooted closer to her. “Enough about him. Tell us more about Mr. Muscles there.”
“He’s everything Emery was not. He’s kind and caring. He cooks for me, and he likes my art. He never judges me for all my weird grief symptoms. He’s just there. I’m absolutely in love with him. But I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. For him to leave me or do something super douchey. I dunno. I guess I feel like I don’t deserve him.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Stormy said. “You deserve love like that more than anyone else I know.”
Paige hoped Stormy was right because she didn’t feel like she deserved it at all.