Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
LAUREN
When Jackson, Sierra, and I walk into my house, we find Paige half asleep on the couch in the living room. The lights are off and the TV volume is very low, and she has the girls’ video monitor on the ottoman in front of her, like they might escape their bedroom if she doesn’t have it close by.
“What’s going on?” she asks, clearly surprised that I’m coming home with my best friends and not my boyfriend, as planned. Is “boyfriend” even the right word? We’ve been together for, what, not even a week? It feels like so much more.
Every good thing that’s happened to me since Josh died is inextricably linked to Jameson—and I don’t want to unlink him, I just want to figure out how we move forward from here.
“It’s been a rough night,” I say, motioning my head toward the kitchen.
When I walk in, I set an entire box of liquor and mixers on my counter.
It was supposed to be a quick pit stop to grab the supplies for Jackson’s famous margaritas, but instead we basically bought enough alcohol to stock a home bar.
“Tell me what happened,” Paige says as she helps take bottles out of the box and set them on the counter.
I use my sleeve to wipe the tears from my face.
They started falling the minute we left the rink, and I haven’t even attempted to stop them.
I was clinging to this notion that Josh was in the process of redeeming himself by buying me this house where he knew I wanted to move, and all along, it was for someone else.
“Josh was cheating on me, and he bought this house and was remodeling it with the other woman before he died.”
The bottle of tequila slips out of Paige’s hand, but luckily Sierra’s right next to her and has great reflexes. She hands the bottle to Jackson, who is across the island getting out a cutting board for the limes.
“What? How is that possible? And how did you find out?”
“I . . .” I can’t finish the sentence. I look over at Jackson. “Can you explain?”
She nods, and Sierra puts her arm around my shoulders.
“After the game, we were standing around talking to Jameson. And Lauren’s neighbor came up.
She hadn’t met him yet, but apparently Jameson had the other morning.
The neighbor let it slip that a couple owned the house before, and had started the remodel, but that they guy had died in a ski accident. ”
Paige’s gasp is loud in the otherwise quiet house. “No.”
“Yes,” Jackson says. She gives me a sympathetic look, and says, “And apparently Jameson’s known for a few days and he didn’t tell Lauren.”
“He did say that he wanted to wait and tell her when he got more information, which he got last night,” Sierra adds. “And that he wanted to tell her in person.”
“Which would have been impossible to do until tonight,” Paige says. “Right? Because he was in LA?”
I can feel her prompting me to see this from his side.
“I know you wanted him to tell you right away,” Jackson says, stirring the ingredients for the margaritas in a large glass pitcher and sounding like she’s choosing her words carefully.
“But would it have been better if you’d known a couple days ago?
Especially finding out right before the biggest night of your new career? ”
“Are you suggesting it’s okay that he lied to me about this?”
“Did he lie, though?” Paige asks.
“Oh my God.” I groan. “Not telling me is a lie of omission, and it’s wrong.”
“It sounds like he was going to tell you tonight, now that he had more information. He knew how important this event was to you, and he wanted to let you get through it before dumping this on you. It’s not like he wasn’t planning to tell you,” Sierra says.
I look around at my friends. “You have a point, but I still would have wanted him to tell me immediately. I mean, my husband was a fucking cheater, and the whole time he made me think I was imagining him becoming more distant, pulling away from our marriage. We had sex so infrequently after the kids were born. I chalked it up to being new parents and being exhausted. I blamed it on myself, thinking he just wasn’t attracted to me post-pregnancy.
And all along”—I can hear my voice rising but can’t really stop it—“he was fucking someone else? And they were going to live here together?”
I look around the space, wondering how I could possibly live here now that I know the truth about why I own this house. It was never meant to be mine, it was going to be hers.
“That’s . . .” Paige says hesitantly, “a lot of information.”
There’s a knock at the door. Two quick wraps—loud enough to be heard, but not loud enough to wake up the kids. Classic Jameson.
“Please,” I say, grabbing Paige’s hand. “I’m still not ready to talk to him about this. Tell him I will call him tomorrow when I’ve calmed down a bit.”
She heads toward the door with nothing but a nod. I hear the door open, and then nothing. He doesn’t say anything. Paige doesn’t say anything. In the kitchen, Jackson, Sierra, and I just look at each other, brows knit together in confusion.
I’m about to peek into the hallway when I hear multiple sets of footsteps heading toward us.
What the hell? I spin around, ready for a confrontation with Jameson, and instead find Jules and Audrey headed straight toward me, both of them with outstretched arms. I let them pull me into a group hug, and when they finally let go, I pull back and ask, “What are you doing here?”
“Jameson thought you might need more friends after . . . you know . . . what happened earlier,” Jules says. “Morgan’s on her way too. It’s not exactly the girls’ night we were talking about having, but it’s the one you need.”
I want to be mad at him. I am mad at him.
But I asked for space, for a night with my girlfriends to process this, and he is not only honoring that by not showing up, but he sent in reinforcements to support me. Why does he have to be so damn supportive and thoughtful?
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Please say that you’re going to let us look through whatever’s in here with you?” Audrey says as she hands me a manilla envelope. My name is scrawled across the front in Jameson’s handwriting.
“What is this?” I ask, turning the envelope over and looking at it like there might be a bomb inside. Because whatever it is, I’m pretty confident it’s going to rip my life apart.
“It’s everything Jameson was going to give you tonight when he told you about Josh,” Audrey tells me.
So he wasn’t lying that he had more information and was going to talk to me about it tonight, in person. That’s a relief, but also, a ball is forming in the pit of my stomach as I consider how cold I was to him, without giving him any opportunity to explain.
“Here,” Jackson says, handing me the first margarita. “I topped yours off with extra tequila.”
“Why? It’s a Wednesday night, I can’t be hungover tomorrow. I have a job and two kids to take care of.”
“I’ll spend the night,” all five of them say simultaneously, and then Morgan’s walking into my kitchen asking if we’re having a sleepover.
“I don’t have enough beds for that.” I laugh.
“Whatever,” Jules says, “we’ll be too drunk to care where we sleep.”
“Someone has to stay sober,” I say. “In case anything happens with the girls. What if one of them wakes up sick or something?”
“It’s fine, I won’t drink,” Sierra says. I see Jackson eye her sister-in-law’s belly and wonder if it means what I think it means. But I’m not going to ask in front of people she doesn’t even know.
Paige catches Morgan up on what she missed while I introduce Jules and Audrey to Jackson and Sierra. Then we take our margaritas over to the dining room and I set the envelope in the middle of the table, where we all stare at it.
I take a deep breath, my hand hovering over the flap of the envelope. Once I open it, I’ll know things I can never forget—about my marriage, my house, and the mystery woman who was a part of both. I’ll have answers. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll also have some sense of how to move forward.
I open the flap and slide the papers out of the envelope.
“There’s a printout of an email from Derek, Jameson’s assistant,” I tell my friends, since they don’t know who he is.
I still haven’t met the man, just heard about his greatness.
My eyes scan the page. “Sophia Lennox,” I say the name out loud.
The other woman. I want to think she was just the woman Josh was sleeping with, but if they were remodeling this house together, it was so much more than that. It makes me wonder if his heart was actually here in Boston, not home in Utah with me and the girls.
“It’s a list of all of her social media,” I say, and Jackson snatches it out of my hand.
“I’m on it,” she says.
Behind that paper is a thin stack of more paper.
I take another gulp of my margarita and then flip through the pages quickly, passing each page to Morgan, on my right, as I go.
“She lives in the Back Bay, really close to you guys,” I tell Jules and Audrey as I look at the printout of the aerial view of the map, with her address starred.
“Like, I may have actually parked in front of her place when I came over for dinner the first time.”
I scan the next page, a printout of her profile on a popular professional networking site.
“Fuuuck,” I say on a sigh. “She’s a brand manager for an energy drink company.
Not only were they one of Josh’s endorsements, they have ties to the Rebels.
They were one of the sponsors for tonight’s game. She might even have been there.”
I pass that page to Morgan, and slowly the pages make their way around the table. All the while, I’m wondering if Sophia knows who I am.
“Jameson was probably right about not telling me before the game. If I’d known any of this, I’d have been so focused on figuring out who she is and if she was at the game, instead of focused on doing my job.”
I lock eyes with Paige, who’s wearing her best I told you so face.