Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
BIANA
BACK HOME IN PORTSMOUTH, NH, ESSENTIALLY ANOTHER WORLD.
Walking in the door of the apartment I share with my best friend doesn’t feel like the homecoming I’ve been craving, the relief from all the craziness of the Vegas weekend.
Probably because I know I’m going to need to leave shortly.
Also because I’ll have to face said best friend and confess the beyond crazy situation I’ve gotten myself into.
When Kat shouts from the recesses of the apartment, I flinch, but at the same time, the normalcy of her voice settles me, and I heave a sigh.
I have someone sane and real to talk to, someone who knows me—the real me, not the poised professional or whatever the hell I was in Vegas.
And most of all, someone who cares about me—for real.
“Is that you, Bianca? Welcome home.” She appears in the hall walking towards me with a big smile. “How was Vegas?”
Loaded question. So loaded that I flinch again. Then heave another sigh.
I’m not sure if I mean to give voice to my wistful thoughts, but I do. “It’s not true that everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
She chuckles. “What happened? Knowing you, it can’t be that bad.”
I keep my flinch on the inside this time. “I guess you haven’t watched any sports news or been on social media.” Not that I’m surprised.
She laughs.
I loosen up, starting to feel like my normal self, the same one who left here a few days ago, the one whose only challenge was trying to get a bonus to pay her bills.
Now that seems like nothing because I’m teetering on the cliff of losing my job and my whole career, pivot or not.
“Of course I didn’t watch sports. Hello?”
She follows me as I wheel my luggage the last few feet of its journey into my bedroom and plop down onto my squeaky bed, lying flat on my back. I wonder why I decorated this space in shades of beige and pull the lone pop of color in the form of a red pillow over my belly and hold on.
“Guess you’re tuckered out from the excitement of Vegas. Tell me all about it. Did you follow my advice?” She grins as she bounces onto the foot of my bed, and I can’t help grinning back, though I prefer to hold off letting loose the damned-up story of my Vegas weekend for as long as possible.
There’s no question that I’m going to tell my best friend since forever the full unvarnished truth.
We grew up together in a small town called Littleton in New Hampshire, where my parents still run their diner and her father is still the minister of the church that Kat made famous with her award-winning voice in the choir.
I talked her into moving to the big city of Portsmouth, NH—we’re talking relative to our hometown of two thousand—after I graduated from law school and landed my job with the Jett Agency.
Their office is in New York, but most of us work remotely in cities where our client athletes play and live.
I was lucky to get assigned to Portsmouth and, of course, Brody Holden.
Among other duties, I was assigned to be Brody’s official hand-holder because he was only nineteen when we signed him and he was drafted.
I take in a deep breath. He’s right. We did kind of start out together. That seems like a lifetime ago instead of only a year.
She shakes my foot in impatience like she used to when we were kids to get the story out of me. I always liked to take my time and think about what to say, to control the narrative, as they say in the business. Now she’s all giddy with excitement, anticipating some wild story.
“How were the parties? I bet people were all dressed up and glamorous. Did you see anyone famous? Tell me the wildest thing you did.” This demand is the follow-up to her advice that I should do something wild. In fact, she made me promise.
My smile expands with satisfaction. Because no matter how much trouble I could be in, no matter how precariously I’m balanced on the edge between total success and total failure, I can tell my friend that I kept my promise to do something wild with spectacular success.
“What’s the one most wild thing Vegas is known for?” I ask.
She scrunches her brows. “I don’t know—quickie chapel weddings?”
I nod. “Exactly—”
She screeches and covers her mouth in shock, then horror, and then bursts into laughter, shaking me as if that will rattle the real story from me.
“You didn’t?”
I shake my head, and she snorts and swats my leg.
“You jerk! Don’t tease me like that; I nearly had a heart attack.”
“You’re right. I didn’t get married. Not exactly…” I pause as jittery nerves sneak up on me and my tummy levitates. The butterflies are back, and they all seem to have taken flight at once.
“What do you mean by not exactly?” She lowers her voice and stills.
I gulp, suddenly nervous to admit the crazy truth even to my best friend, who I know will absolutely not judge me no matter what.
“Tell me,” she prompts, her voice serious, her hand finding mine and squeezing it to reassure me.
“I faked a quickie Vegas marriage.”
She opens her mouth, then closes it, her forehead furrowing and her brows knitting together like a zipper. “That’s… something. More weird than wild—”
“That depends on who I’m pretending to be married to, doesn’t it? And depends on who we told about it—”
Her brows go back to zipped. “I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
I take a deep breath. “I’m pretending to be married to Brody Holden, and we told the press—”
She leaps off the bed and screeches. “You what?”
Because even my allergic-to-sports friend knows who Brody Holden is.