Chapter 31
Finally clean, no longer smelling like an unholy combination of her car, sweat, and drive-through cheeseburgers, Natalie changed into fresh clothes in the small back bedroom that Gabby and Angus clearly intended to use as a nursery at some point. The walls were painted pale blue, and in the corner sat Natalie’s bed for the next week or so, a—what else?—futon topped with decorative pillows. Natalie dropped on it and attempted to breathe through the knot of anxiety in her throat. It was useless. She hadn’t been able to take a full, deep breath since she’d gotten Angus’s email.
It seemed unreal that she was here after almost a year of no contact with Gabby. She kept thinking, in the early days of the pandemic, that one of them would break the silence to check in. But the longer Gabby went without reaching out, the more Natalie felt that she couldn’t either, and their estrangement grew more and more solid, a tray of ice hardening in the freezer. She coped with her loneliness by taking long walks with her neighbor friends in the Los Angeles sunshine or talking out loud to her cat, Dolly (whom she’d left temporarily in Tyler’s care). Now, it didn’t feel right to say that she was grateful to be sitting on a futon in Gabby’s home, because the reason for it was so utterly fucked. But, God, it had been good to hold her best friend again.
Her fingers had been trembling so badly after getting Angus’s email that while trying to call Gabby, she’d nearly dropped her phone.
“I’m so sorry and I love you so much,” Natalie had blurted the moment that Gabby answered.
“Natalie?” Gabby had said, sounding slightly confused.
“Angus told me about the surgery.”
Gabby had sighed. “That sneaky bastard.”
“He is a sneaky bastard and thank God for it.”
“I love you too. I should have called you right away,” Gabby said. “I just…the last time I saw you, I said awful things about how we shouldn’t be in each other’s lives. And then I was going to reverse course the moment I needed help? I didn’t want to make myself your problem—”
“You’re not making yourself my problem. My problem would be sitting here in blissful ignorance while you were going through something hard.”
“Yeah,” Gabby said quietly. “It is hard.” She let out a rueful laugh. Natalie could imagine her shaking her head on the other end of the line. “I’d thought I was pregnant again. I was feeling a similar way, tired and achy, and we’d been trying. So, for a little while, I was happy. Walking around with a stupid grin on my face, thinking that something good might be growing inside of me instead of this.”
“Oh, Gabs. It must have been so disorienting. How’s your family doing?”
“Terrible. My parents offered to come help out, but I think they’d just create more stress. Every time I talk to my mom on the phone, she weeps and then goes through a list of everyone at her church who is praying for me. It’s so well-intentioned but also emotionally exhausting, you know? And Melinda…well, she has basically fallen off the face of the earth. When I told her the news, she said she was sorry and then spent the rest of the call asking for advertising advice on how to grow her business. Like she figured she’d better get it all out of me now just in case. So, not exactly a pillar of strength. I thought a sister’s job was to drive you crazy but to show up when shit hits the fan.”
“I’ll show up,” Natalie said.
“Thank you.”
“I mean it, literally. I want to come help.”
“But you’re all the way across the country.”
“Well thankfully it’s the twenty-first century, and we have transportation options beyond horse and buggy.”
“What about the show? Don’t you have a writers’ room?”
“We’re doing it over Zoom anyway. And I’ll take time off. Someone else can think of scrapes for Dennis to get into.” She didn’t say that she had a final-round interview to write for a different show that week, a show with much more prestige, that needed someone to join the writers’ room ASAP. Hearing Gabby’s voice again, that interview didn’t seem to matter. “I’ll isolate, I’ll drive, I’ll pee in the woods instead of going into rest stops, whatever you need me to do. But I’m showing up. Screw Melinda. I’m your sister-friend.”
“Sister-friend?” Gabby asked, amusement creeping into her voice. “Does that have anything to do with sister-wives?”
“Yes, surprise, I’m also marrying Angus.”
“After everything, I cannot imagine a universe in which that would happen.”
“What I mean is that you and I, we’re more than friends. So what if we go a long time without talking, or if sometimes we hate each other? I’ll be here for you when it counts, just like I know you would be for me.”
Gabby was silent for a moment before she said quietly, “Even when I thought I was pregnant, I wasn’t one hundred percent happy because I couldn’t tell you. I think that’s why I didn’t take a test right away. Because the last time I took a test, we were together, and…well, you know.”
“I do.”
“I love you, Natalie.”
“I love you too. I’ll see you soon.”
Now Natalie could hear someone moving around in the room next to hers. Rob, staying on the other side of a thin wall.
As soon as she’d seen his face again, framed in the doorway, a host of complicated feelings had risen up in her. Anger at him, still, for making the mistake that had denied her Gabby all these months. But anger at herself as well for reacting the way she had, plus an inconvenient lingering desire to push herself up against his chest. It all made for an incredibly awkward soup of emotions. The best course of action was not to look too hard at him, not to stand too close. Because the last thing Gabby needed right now was a bunch of extra stress and angst flying around her house. And Natalie couldn’t exactly handle extra angst either. Already, her feelings threatened to spill over and drown her each time Gabby’s prognosis entered her mind.
Three days from now, her best friend would be on the operating table. Whenever Natalie thought about that, the ground grew slippery beneath her feet, the world playing by all sorts of new rules that didn’t make sense.
“Knock knock,” Angus said, poking his head through the crack in the door. “Is now a good time for me to help you set up the futon?”
“Oh.” Natalie jumped to her feet. “Sure, thank you.”
He came into the room, smiling awkwardly. Her betrayal of him sat between them. “Hey, I’ve been thinking, and in case I haven’t said this enough, I’m sorry again,” she began, her voice faint. “About Dennis.”
“I did finally read the book. It was, uh, pretty brutal.”
“I know. It was more about me dealing with my own fear and resentment at the time than anything about you.”
“But you weren’t wrong about me entirely.” Angus shrugged. “I’ve always worried, a little bit, that I wasn’t good enough for Gabby.”
Natalie searched for any sense of vindication but couldn’t find it. Instead, her heart cracked. “Please, don’t say that.”
“I know it’s silly. But if I’m just a guy who fails upward, who gets things handed to him, when she’s so amazing and works so hard—”
“Stop that. Look at this life you’ve built together. Look at the child you made. Gabby loves you so much. And if you don’t believe me, ask Rob! You should know that he was such a fierce defender of you. He hated me for what I wrote.”
“He’s a good person to have in your life,” Angus said, and for a moment, he seemed like he was going to say more. But then his phone dinged in his pocket. He took it out, eyeing it with a furrowed expression, then quickly typed out a text back and put the phone down on a shelf by the door. “Sorry, work stuff. Let’s get you settled.”
Letting out a grunt, he sank to his knees and crawled beneath the futon. By the sound of it, he was unhooking and unsnapping various straps. “Wow,” Nat said. “This is some advanced futon technology.”
“Don’t even get me started,” Angus said. He paused for a moment, another strap pinging, then went on in a rush, “My father’s number two ordered a bunch of these for the store because they were the latest model and, well, they are just the biggest pain in the butt to set up.”
“Yikes.”
“Don’t worry, it’s very comfortable for sleeping, I give you my word on that. But you’ve got to think about the big picture when you’re deciding what to sell, you know? What good is a comfy futon if the average furniture owner can’t get it open? Anyways, I decided to take one off their hands since I don’t mind doing this stuff personally, but—”
Over on the shelf, his phone began to ring. Angus’s feet, sticking out from the edge of the futon, wriggled. “Mind checking that to make sure it’s not the doctor?”
Natalie looked at the screen. “It just says, ‘Lord of Darkness.’?”
“My boss. You can ignore.”
“Okay,” Nat said. “Can I help with this? I’m supposed to create less work for you, not more.”
“No, no, I enjoy it. It’s like meditation.”
The phone began to trill again. “Lord of Darkness really wants to get a hold of you,” Nat said.
Angus sighed. “Can you put it on speaker? I can’t stop this in the middle, or the whole thing will collapse, which Trent should have looked into before ordering so many of these.” He caught himself. “Not to be mean to Trent. He’s trying.”
Natalie did as requested. “Hello?” Angus called, his voice slightly muffled.
“Angus? I need your thoughts on the Quartz investment.” Just from the sound of his boss’s voice, Natalie would bet anything that the man had spent far too much money on hair plugs.
“Right,” Angus called. “I can email them over tonight. But as I’ve said, I’m mostly out of the office for a little while.”
“What is it again? Family?”
“Yes, my wife is having surgery.”
“Oh, of course, that’s right. Take all the time you need.”
“Thank you—”
“But you will be back in by Wednesday, yes? Because we’ll have a big client coming in, and we could really use you.”
At this, Angus wriggled partway out from underneath the futon, frustration all over his face. He took a deep breath, then said, “Well, my wife will only be two days out of surgery then, best-case scenario, so I was hoping to stay home with her. And you know I don’t feel comfortable coming into the office when she’s so vulnerable, healthwise, but I can hop on Zoom—”
“That’s going to be difficult. Why don’t you just come in, and you don’t have to go to the luncheon afterward. Face time is important if you’re hoping for that promotion we discussed.”
Natalie waved to catch Angus’s attention, then mouthed, “Rob and I can handle it.”
Angus shook his head, his jaw set, his curls wild around his head, a smudge of dust on his cheek. “But I want to be here,” he whispered.
“Sorry, Stoat, what was that?” his boss asked.
Still looking at Natalie, Angus asked, under his breath, “What am I trying to prove?”
Natalie shrugged her shoulders, gave her head the smallest shake. And from his undignified position on the floor, Angus glanced at the phone for a moment as if mystified. Then he blinked, his expression clearing. “I quit.”
“Excuse me, what?” his boss began.
Angus hauled himself to his feet with a grunt. “I said I quit.”
“Very funny, Stoat. Don’t be unreasonable—”
“I can’t keep working for a place that doesn’t respect my family. Goodbye.” Angus gestured to Natalie to hang up the phone and, her mouth hanging open, she did, plunging the room into sudden silence. This was a noble gesture, quitting for Gabby. But impulsive too, a far more serious version of the wedding zip line. What about their health insurance in the midst of this emergency? And how was Angus supposed to job hunt while caring for Gabby? And—
Angus caught Natalie’s eye and shrugged as if he’d read her mind. “Don’t worry, we’re all on Gabby’s health insurance plan. She’s raised the idea of me quitting before. And I want to run my dad’s futon store anyway. Trent is a disaster.” Then he turned and gave the futon a firm tug, and it flopped itself open into her bed.
Nat stepped forward and hugged him. This bumbling boy, now a man she trusted to take care of someone as precious as Gabby. This whole time, almost ten years now, he’d never wavered in the way he’d loved and treated her. She’d been so skeptical that Angus deserved Gabby. Now she realized not only that he did, but that Gabby deserved him too. God, Natalie thought, may we all be so lucky as to have an Angus Stoat the Third.
“I really misjudged you,” she said into his shoulder.
“Well”—Angus extricated himself; his face had turned pink—“people often do.”