Chapter 6
six
“But why does a baby shower include a guided tour of the country club?” Clementine asked when we were at the mall the next day. My best friend took my phone from my hand, zooming in on the picture of the invitation with a frown on her lips.
“Beats me.” I stole the iced coffee from her, taking a long gulp. I’d only gotten a small coffee while she’d gotten a large, and I was regretting my choice.
“I bet she’s soft-launching the idea of having a wedding there,” Nora said. We stepped onto the escalator to the second floor, Nora and Clementine on the same step as they stared at my phone. “I guarantee you it’s going to happen within a year.”
Nora used to be much more shy, and even as little as six months ago, she wouldn’t have dreamed of saying something like that to my face.
We’d only really become friends in the fall, right around the time she started dating my brother, but already, she was like a sister to me and I was so happy she felt like she could talk openly.
I didn’t need people tiptoeing around me.
“I’m still surprised they didn’t elope after she found out she was pregnant,” Clementine said. She handed me back my phone and I handed her back her drink. “You know, go on a trip somewhere fancy and come back with a diamond ring on her finger.”
“Can’t get married to your mistress if you’re not divorced from your wife yet,” I said in a false-cheerful voice.
I immediately cringed at how callous my words sounded, especially when they both looked away uncomfortably, but it was the truth.
Divorce took time, and though Mum wasn’t exactly confiding in us, I did know it wasn’t finalized yet.
I wasn’t sure the exact laws on getting remarried, but I was sure the government didn’t allow there to be overlap.
“Anyway, knowing Hilary, she’s going to want it to be a big event and she will not want to be pregnant for it. ”
I sounded like I knew Hilary so well, but in actuality, I’d never met her.
I only felt like I knew her because of all of Imogen’s stories.
She’d spent a couple of months visiting Dad and Hilary behind our backs—a surprising betrayal, but one we’ve all long-since forgiven her for—and the stories she had about my father’s girlfriend made me glad I’d never been in the same room as her before.
We stepped off the escalator and Clementine spun around, her pink hair whipping around and falling over her shoulder.
“Should we go buy you a fancy dress just in case?” she asked, wiggling her eyebrows. “Unless you think she’ll make you a bridesmaid.”
I pretended to gag. “She better not. I’d have to throw hands.”
“But you still need a dress for the baby shower,” Nora reminded me. “And don’t forget—” She put on a high-pitched posh voice, “—whites or neutrals only, please.”
I rolled my eyes. “Ugh, don’t remind me.” I eyed her. “And what about you?”
“What about me?” Nora asks, her eyes running over the windows of the shops we passed.
“Are you coming to the baby shower?” That stopped her short. The people behind us grumbled as they had to flow around us in the crowded hall. I frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“You want me to go to your father’s mistress’s baby shower?” Nora asked, saying each word sounding like she’d never said them before in her life.
“Well, I wouldn’t say I want you to,” I said, awkwardly shifting the shopping bags in my hands. “More like… I just assumed that maybe you’d come along.”
“I don’t really see Sebastian deciding to go to this thing,” Clementine chimed in. “Baby showers tend to be a girls-only event.”
“Then Nora can be like his representative,” I said brightly. Nora’s face made it very clear what she thought of that plan. I sighed. “Forget it, I didn’t really think you would come.”
Heck, I wasn’t even sure if I was going.
Everything about that invitation had turned my stomach, from Hilary calling it a “fresh start” to the schedule of events looking more like a cocktail hour than anything.
My feelings on this pregnancy were decidedly negative and I had no interest in attending an event where I’d have to pretend to be happy about it.
I was surprised Hilary had even invited us at all, considering the radio silence for the last eleven months and how she’d spoken to Imogen when she found out she was pregnant, essentially casting her off as lesser because she wasn’t Hilary’s child.
A little piece of me hoped that my dad had asked—insisted, even—that she did it, but I was smart enough not to hold onto that hope.
My dad didn’t want me enough to stick around last year, and his feelings wouldn’t have changed by now.
I made my peace with it a long time ago.
“I’m surprised you’re going,” Nora said. “You were all talking a big game yesterday about how to say no.”
I ran my tongue over my teeth as I mulled over what to say.
She wasn’t wrong about that, but the discussion then had been so hypothetical.
Maybe I should have seen it as the end of all that, but the decision had been weighing on my mind ever since.
Which is partially why I showed up at Justin’s house embarrassingly early for a party just to get the invitation out of my mind.
“I’m not sure I am going,” I said finally. “I guess I’m just… thinking about it.”
“Well, let’s think about it from the bikini store,” Clementine said cheerfully. She hooked one arm through mine, jostling both our shopping bags, then through Nora’s and started tugging us forward. I rolled my eyes but was secretly happy for the distraction.
We were only in the store for three minutes before Clementine was shoving Nora into a changing room with a handful of bikinis Clem had picked out for her, prattling on about how Nora needed to look cute this summer.
She’d invited us all to go on a vacation to her boyfriend’s beach house in California—a fact that seemed incomprehensible given that her boyfriend was Will Valentine, one-third of the famous boyband the Valentine Brothers—at which point Nora had admitted she didn’t have a single cute swimsuit or any nice summer clothes at all.
Clementine was so horrified that she’d immediately shoved us both in the car and driven us here.
“Try on the pink one with the white polka dots,” Clementine instructed Nora through the closed door. “It’ll make your boobs look amazing. Trust me.”
Nora’s response was muffled by the door, but it didn’t sound especially thrilled by the comment. I chuckled and started wandering down the aisle, looking at the swimsuits on the hangers and mannequins with passing interest.
“Oh look, it’s Reese!” Clementine’s whole face lit up as she waved wildly at someone over my shoulder.
I spun around so fast I nearly took out a display of sunhats. “Rhys? Where?”
“What?” Clementine blinked at me, looking confused by my reaction. A second later, her best friend—Reese Connors, a blonde girl who had been on the swim team with us but I didn’t know as well as Clementine—walked in the store, and my heart that had been thudding a mile a minute slowed down.
“Oh,” I said, trying to act normal even as my face heated up. “I thought you meant…”
I didn’t say it but she clued in easily, then burst out laughing so hard she had to grab the shelf next to her for support.
“You think I’m going to sic your brother’s mortal enemy on you at a swimwear store,” Clementine said, still laughing, wiping under what I hoped were pretend tears.
“What would that even accomplish? ‘Surprise, here’s the boy who single-handedly ended Sebastian’s perfect season, please try on a bikini in front of him. ’”
“I’d rather never see him again in my life, so, glad it’s not that.” The words weren’t even a lie, although they were missing quite a bit of context.
I felt the knot in my chest ease in a way that said a lot about the current state of my nervous system.
Because if it had actually been him—if I’d turned around and found Rhys standing there instead, in the middle of a swimwear store, in front of Clementine and Nora and heaven knew who else—that would have been catastrophic.
There was no universe in which I wanted those two worlds anywhere near each other.
I hated him. That part, at least, wasn’t a lie I had to maintain for anyone’s benefit; it came pre-installed, the same way it had for Sebastian.
The fact that I’d also agreed to fake-date him didn’t cancel that out.
If anything it just made the hatred more complicated, more layered, more the kind of thing I couldn’t say out loud without an entire follow-up conversation I obviously never wanted to have.
“Hey,” Reese said, her Australian accent thick. She barely got her whole body into the store before Clementine was gripping her hand and yanking her toward a rack of new swimsuits on the back wall.
“You have to try this one-piece on. It has cutouts by the hips! It’ll look so good on you!” Clementine said over her shoulder as she dragged Reese through the store. Reese gave me a shrug as if to say “typical Clementine” before they wove through racks and around mannequins to get to the back wall.
I spun back around, running my fingers over swimsuits and coverups until movement in my peripheral had me freezing. For a second, I could have sworn I saw—
But no, that couldn’t be right. He wasn’t here. It was just the stress of the whole Rhys/Reese confusion from earlier causing my mind to play tricks on me. I was safe. Totally safe from—
“That’s a cute one,” a deep voice said from behind me. I nearly screamed, but at the very last second caught myself and clamped my mouth shut so hard that it hurt my jaw.
At least I didn’t almost punch him this time.