Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
SIERRA
I hold up the two ties I’ve purchased against the white dress shirt with the French cuffs that I know Peter prefers.
I have a clear favorite—the rose gold tie that matches the color of my bridesmaid dress.
But because I can guess how Peter is going to react to the color, I bought the tie in black too, as a backup.
My suitcase is already zipped up and sitting in front of the closet door.
Sure, we’re not leaving for thirty-six hours, but I like to be prepared.
Peter’s in Seattle for work and doesn’t get back to Park City until tomorrow night, so I figured it’d take some of the stress off if I packed for him too.
But I’m not sure which tie to bring. Normally I wait for him to call me when he’s on business trips so I don’t interrupt work, but it’s late enough that he might be done. I shoot him a quick text.
Sierra
Hey, are you free for a quick question?
Peter
Sure, I’ve got a couple minutes, what’s up?
I know he had a big dinner with clients tonight, so I’m surprised his reply is instantaneous. I hit the button to video call him, knowing that I have a better chance of getting him to wear the tie if he sees that it’s not too pink. If I describe it, he’ll veto it on principle.
“Hey,” he says, as he sinks into a chair in his hotel room.
His voice is quiet but rough, and his eyes are weary.
Behind him, I can see the lights of Seattle twinkling through the enormous wall-to-wall windows.
He runs his hand through his thick black hair, a sure sign that he’s stressed.
How long has it been since I’ve run my hands through that hair?
It feels like maybe it’s been forever. Peter is always tired from work or from working out, the two things he prioritizes these days. “What’s up?”
I glance around our bedroom. It kind of looks like a bomb went off with all the clothes I have strewn about—the ones that didn’t make the cut for the trip.
“I’m just trying to get everything ready for Jackson and Nate’s wedding.
I bought you a tie, and I wanted to show it to you and make sure you like it,” I tell him, and I flip the camera so he’s looking at the tie draped over the neck of the white shirt hanging off the handle of the chest of drawers in our bedroom.
I reach out and run my hand over the silk printed fabric, admiring the way my engagement ring sparkles and wondering if that will ever get old.
“It’s the same color as my bridesmaid dress. ”
“Pink,” he says and then sighs, while running his hand along the stubble that’s already covering his face—he always has a five o’clock shadow by the end of the day.
“It’s not pink, it’s rose gold. It’s like if rosé and champagne had a baby,” I say, the smile evident in my voice.
But the way his face contorts into more of a grimace makes it clear that my description didn’t help soften him to the color.
I flip the camera back toward me so he can see my big brown eyes, the ones he always says he can’t resist. “It’d be really nice if we coordinated, you know? ”
He sighs again. I feel like there have been a lot more sighs this past year and a half that we’ve been engaged and living together, compared to the two years we were dating before that.
I assume it’s just because of the stress of his job, but he never seems to want to talk about it.
I know he likes to keep work at the office, but I wish I could do more to support him when he gets home.
That’s hard when he travels so much and won’t let me in on what’s causing the stress.
“Should I add it to your suitcase?”
“My suitcase,” he says, his brows furrowing, “is here with me.”
“I mean the one I packed for you for our trip. I wanted to make things easy when you got home since we’re leaving again like twelve hours later.”
“Jesus, Sierra,” he says, his eyes rolling to the ceiling. “I can pack my own damn suitcase.”
“Fine,” I say, my eyes narrowing at his ridiculous response. “I was just trying to be helpful.”
“The thing is,” he says, but then I hear a door open and a woman calls his name. His eyes go a little wide as he looks up, past the phone, and says, “Just a second, I’m on a call.” Then he’s back looking at me. “It’s Jane. She stopped by with some paperwork for me to sign.”
“Oh,” I say, the word reflecting how deflated I feel that his administrative assistant seems to get so much more of his attention than I do, and apparently she even has a key to his hotel room.
Wait, why does she have a key to his room?
Then in the glass behind him I catch her reflection as she leans casually against the doorframe of the bathroom with one hand on her hip and her legs crossed at the ankle.
It’s not a super clear image, but it looks like she’s wearing a black bra and panty set, with a black lace garter belt and thigh-high stockings leading to black stilettos.
“Oh,” I repeat, but this time it’s the sound of a woman who knows she’s just become the jilted fiancée.
“Here’s the thing, Peter.” My voice is angry, and I can tell by the look in his eyes that he’s surprised.
I’m never angry. “I can see Jane’s reflection in the window behind you, and there’s not a piece of fucking paperwork in sight. ”
In the reflection, I see Jane dash back into the bathroom, and Peter’s eyes are wide. I can’t tell if he’s surprised by my response, or just surprised to have been caught cheating.
“I was going to tell you,” he says quickly.
“Oh yeah?” My voice, like my anger level, is rising quickly. “When, exactly? At Jackson’s wedding?” I’m doing nothing to hide my anger and I know I sound practically hysterical.
Maybe this explains why he’s been incapable of committing to a wedding date for us, even though we were engaged well before Jackson and her fiancé, Nate.
“No. Tomorrow, actually.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m not coming home, and I won’t be going to Jackson’s wedding. I need to go to San Francisco for work.”
“That’s right you’re not coming home!” I’m so mad I can’t even look at him. “I can’t believe you, Peter. Sleeping with your admin. How fucking cliché.”
I have the sinking realization that I’m Jackson’s maid of honor, and I sure as hell was not planning to show up back in my hometown without my fiancé. Marrying Peter was going to be my proof that I’m not my mother, that I’ll never be like her.
“Sierra, don’t make this harder than it has to be,” he says, his hand running through his hair again.
I thought that was a signal he was stressed, but maybe instead he does it when he’s guilty.
For all the times he got home from work long after dinnertime, I now have to wonder if it was because he was with her instead.
“Things haven’t been good with us for a long time. ”
“Yeah,” I say, “maybe because instead of working on us, you’ve been banging her.”
“I’m sorry I’ve hurt you, but I’m not sorry about Jane,” he says.
“You are an asshole,” I tell Peter as I bring my fingers to my throat like I can hold back the bile rising up there. “I hope she gives you syphilis!”
“I’ll be back in ten days,” he says, his voice eerily calm despite my reaction. “That should give you time to move out after you’re back from the wedding.”
I throw the phone on the bed when he hangs up on me. Then, I pick up one of the pillows, cover my face with it, and let out the scream that’s been building since I first saw Jane’s reflection in the window.
“You’re going to be fine,” Petra insists as she pours some vodka into the plastic cup of orange juice and sets it on the tray table in front of me.
I watch it bounce as our plane hits a little turbulence, but I don’t reach out to steady it.
I’ve never consumed alcohol for breakfast, but Petra insists it’ll help me “calm the fuck down” about my life imploding.
“In fact, you are going to be so much better off without that wanker.”
I snort out a laugh at her Briticism. Petra looks like a Russian princess and she speaks four languages. She went to a British international school in Austria until her junior year of high school, and periodically these British phrases sneak into her English.
“My fiancé just left me for a younger woman who looks like a freaking underwear model. The bitch has a flat stomach and the tits of a twenty-year-old. No offense,” I say, because Petra’s original reason for moving to the States was her modeling contract, and I basically just described her body.
“None taken.” She shrugs.
“I am such an idiot. There were so many signs,” I say, because now that I’ve had a day to think about it, I’m ashamed I didn’t see that he was cheating sooner.
Always showering the minute he got home from work or the gym, business trips that lasted through the weekend, lack of interest in having sex with me—I should have recognized those signs for what they were.
“And you ignored them?”
“Ignorance is bliss, you know?” In response to my question, Petra shakes her head.
I can imagine what she’s thinking—poor pitiful Sierra, knowing something wasn’t right and choosing to look the other way.
“I wanted so badly for us to work. I kept telling myself I was being ridiculous and that there was no reason not to trust him.”
“Had he ever given you a reason not to trust him?”
My eyebrows dip as I consider her question. “No. I mean, obviously he wasn’t trustworthy, but I’d never caught him doing anything that made me think I shouldn’t trust him.”
“Then stop beating yourself up about it,” Petra says. “What he did, that’s on him. It’s easy to see the signs in hindsight, but don’t feel bad that you didn’t see it sooner.”
Don’t feel bad? Right, like it would be possible not to feel bad about this.
“And now not only am I down one fiancé, I’m also going to be homeless.”