Chapter 4 #2
Despite the circumstances, I almost smile. I move toward the stall. The door is unlatched, hanging open a crack. I push it gently with two fingers. “I’m coming in, all right? Don’t throw anything at me.”
She’s on her knees in front of the toilet—a young woman, early twenties maybe, in a black dress that’s bunched up around her thighs.
Her blond curls are swept to one side, pinned loosely with a clip that’s losing the war against gravity.
Her skin is pale and flushed, and mascara tracks run down both cheeks.
One hand grips the porcelain bowl while the other clutches a tiny beaded bag like it’s a life raft.
She peers up at me with watery blue eyes and lets out a short, defeated breath. “I look unhinged.”
“All great meet-cutes are generally unhinged.” Damn, I’ve already seen a lot of mascara running today and the funeral hasn’t even started.
She manages a weak laugh, which immediately triggers another wave of nausea.
I drop to one knee beside her and gather her curls away from her face without thinking—muscle memory, years of holding Mum’s hair during her bad days, when the pain medication hit her stomach wrong and she’d spend an hour on the bathroom floor while I sat next to her reading aloud from whatever novel she was halfway through.
“Thanks,” she mutters between breaths. “Very chivalrous. Very weird that a stranger is holding my hair.”
“I’ve done weirder things for people I’ve just met.”
“How many meet-cutes have you had?”
It doesn’t seem like an appropriate time to confess to a stranger that one of my professions is fabricating romance for money, so I simply shrug.
She sits back on her heels, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her shoulders sag with the slow, cautious relief of someone who thinks the storm might’ve passed but isn’t ready to commit to the diagnosis.
“So by a nine-month hangover, you meant you’re—”
“Pregnant,” she says, matter-of-factly. “Four months. This is morning sickness. Which is a lie by the way. A filthy fucking lie. It’s not morning sickness.
It doesn’t care what time of day it is and it doesn’t care that I’m at a funeral.
It’s mean and relentless.” She braces one hand against the stall wall. “Help me up?”
I grip her elbow and guide her to standing, keeping my hand steady until she’s got her balance.
She’s small—five-three, maybe—and also wearing flats.
She barely reaches my shoulder. I guide her to the sink and turn on the cold water before grabbing two of the fancy rolled towels. I soak them then wring them out.
“Here.” I hand her one for her face and press the other gently against the back of her neck. “Cold compress. Helps with the nausea.”
She holds the towel to her face and lets out a sound that’s part relief, part surrender. “I would’ve settled for ‘not a serial killer’ but it seems my luck with men has improved. You’re a downright hero. Why are you so good at this?”
“Lots of practice.”
She peeks at me over the towel. “Lots of pregnant women in your life?”
I chuckle. “No.”
The woman eyes me up and down. “Okay. But I’m assuming looking like you do there are lots of women in your life?”
“Wow. Bit judgy of you.”
She nods in agreement. “Yes, but that was a positive judgment. A compliment.”
“Compliment adjacent,” I clarify. “You just basically called me the male version of a slut.”
Her jaw drops. “That’s a little sexist of you.”
“What?” I’m genuinely floored and confused.
“There’s no male version of a slut. A slut is a slut. Slutty is not gender exclusive.”
I blink at her. “Say slut one more time,” I deadpan.
She flashes me a wicked smile. “Slut.”
We both break face at the same time, letting free our hearty chuckles. Hers light and melodic. Mine, like a gorilla grunt echoing off the bathroom walls.
I lean against the counter, giving her space.
“My mum has severe chronic pain and has to take a lot of medication. If she put her pills in a bowl, it’d look like she was eating cereal.
It’s hard on her stomach. I’ve held more hair than a salon and I’m a whiz at making a cold compress out of anything. ”
“Anything?”
“Soak a small nappy under the sink and freeze it. Works across the forehead or behind the neck like a charm.”
“A nappy, like a diaper?” Her face twists up in disgust and a wave of nausea crosses her expression.
“Nah, yeah. But to clarify, I meant a clean, unused nappy.”
“That seems more reasonable.”
Her expression softens. She lowers the towel and dabs carefully at the mascara streaks. “I’m sorry about your mom. Why is she in so much pain?”
“Car accident. She was thrown through the front windshield.” I leave it at that because this is not my day to break down. “She’d like you. She loves anyone who makes her feel less alone in the vomiting department.”
That gets a real laugh. She extends her hand. “I’m Raven by the way.”
“Saylor.” I shake it. Her grip is firmer than I expected. “How’d you know Whitney?”
The question lands differently than I intend. Raven’s face shifts—the humor draining, replaced by something raw and tender. She turns back toward the mirror, pressing the towel against her cheeks, but I can see her reflection. Her chin is trembling.
“Whit was…” she trails off, blinking rapidly.
“I didn’t know her that well. I worked for her in a sense.
We talked about once a week over the phone and met once a month outside of my appointments.
She was…a really good person.” Raven means to tap her heart I think, except she crosses her chest with her left hand, patting the wrong side.
“Good to her core. Nothing about this makes sense. She should be here. She promised me she was going to make it.”
I don’t say anything. Some moments need space, not words.
Raven sniffs hard and straightens. “What about you? How did you know her?”
My mouth opens and then immediately shuts, because in the two and a half hours Celeste and I spent in that car, we talked about Whitney’s childhood and Celeste’s guilt and my mum’s tomatoes and whether rest stops off the Long Island Expressway are a viable food source.
Spoiler alert—they are not. What we did not discuss at all is what I’m supposed to say when someone inevitably asks how Celeste and I know each other.
Are we together? Friends? Colleagues? Lovers?
Did we meet at a gala or a gallery or a goat yoga retreat?
We didn’t cook up a single word of backstory. Brilliant.
“Friend of a friend,” I say, which is technically true. “I’m here with someone who was very close to Whitney. Celeste Brinley.”
Raven goes still.
Not the normal kind of still, where a person pauses to think. The kind of still where every molecule in the body locks into place. Her hand, still holding the damp towel, stops mid-dab. Her eyes fix on mine in the mirror, wide and searching.
“Shut the actual fuck up. You’re here with Celeste? She is in the building?”
I keep my lips closed and Raven gives me the universal look for “well, explain yourself.”
“I’m sorry, do you want me shut the fuck up or answer your question?”
Raven rolls her eyes and I take my cue.
“Yes, Celeste is here. She’s off finding Eleanor to ask about speaking during the—”
“Oh my God.” Raven presses both hands to her face. “Oh my God, it worked. I want you to know you’re speaking to an actual genius. Not on paper or anything, I barely passed high school algebra. But when it comes to schemes, I’m your girl.” She holds up her hand, begging for a high-five.
Something about the way she says it—not relieved, not surprised, but validated, like a gamble she’d been holding her breath on just paid out—trips a wire in the back of my brain. “I’m not congratulating you until I know what scheme you’re talking about.”
She drops her hand, looks at me, then looks at the bathroom door like she’s calculating whether she can make a run for it.
“Raven. What worked?”
“Okay.” She grips the edge of the sink with both hands, steadying herself. “Okay. This is going to sound insane.”
“Lucky for you, my bar for insane has been significantly raised in the last ten minutes.”
Another laugh—this one nervous, almost manic. She turns back to the mirror, fidgeting with her clip, not looking at me directly. “The baby I’m carrying. It’s not mine.”
The bathroom goes very quiet. The eucalyptus candle flickers.
“I’m Whitney’s surrogate,” she says. “This baby is Whitney’s.”
I stare at her reflection. She blinks back. The information settles into my chest with the slow, heavy weight of something that’s about to rearrange everything.
“Whitney’s,” I repeat.
“Whitney’s. She wanted a baby more than anything.
And she chose me to carry it.” Raven’s hand drifts to her stomach, protective and automatic.
“We’d been planning it for a while. She had everything figured out.
The nursery, the name shortlist, the—” Her voice breaks.
She swallows it back. “But then she died. And now I’m four months pregnant with a baby whose mother is being eulogized in the next room by a woman who I’m pretty sure she hated for her entire life. ”
“Eleanor.”
“Eleanor.” Raven’s jaw clenches. “Who is already trying to contest Whitney’s will. Who didn’t even want to invite—” She stops. Presses her lips together.
“Didn’t want to invite who?”
The stall door behind us swings lazily on its hinge like a ghost just finished and exited from it.
Raven flinches at the sound and goes quiet, her fingers white-knuckled on the countertop.
For a moment I think she’s going to be sick again.
But she steadies herself with a long breath, the kind that requires a conscious decision.