33. Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Three
Emily
T he limo ride to New York City to see Lila is almost surreal.
Mia’s renewed and increased level of fame since the album release means that Pasha and one other bodyguard are in the front, and we’re being followed by a second security vehicle that’ll be with us all weekend.
We had to preselect where we were going to go for the bachelorette gathering—I can’t even call it a party—so that Mia’s team could secure a VIP area for security and privacy.
The whole thing is mind boggling. I don’t understand how she lives like this or even that my brother really enjoys all of it. But he seems to. Guess it all happened to the right person.
“When does the tour start?” I ask, though I have a vague recollection of something about the fall after Maggie’s wedding.
“November,” Mia says. “We’re mostly skirting the edges of the country, staying several days in each place, with a few stops in Missouri for the hometown fans.”
“I can’t imagine the planning for that,” Maggie says.
“It’s mostly Taryn and Rebecca who handle those details, and I just hired an HR company to deal with onboarding staff for the tour.”
“Do you work with the same people a lot?” I ask.
“My mom had a rule about changing people out every tour, but I wonder now whether that was to keep me isolated and dependent on her. If I didn’t have many friends, there wasn’t much of a chance I’d figure out Laura was more my manager than my mother, you know?
She was all I knew. Sarah’s been my best friend forever, but even she was someone my mom approved of—a workaholic like me.
” She lets out a laugh. “All that to say that I might have a couple dancers back who’ve toured with me before. ”
“I think I’d be lonely on tour,” I admit.
“It can be lonely and disorienting if you’re in a different city every night. It’s part of the reason we’re booking multiple dates in each place and hoping fans come to us. It’s exhausting to pack up and move along constantly.”
“Given how big the album has blown up, I can’t imagine you’ll struggle to fill the stadiums,” Maggie says.
“Ticket sales have been going really well so far,” Mia says. “No complaints from me.” She grins and then digs into an armrest to bring out a bottle of sparkling water. “Anyone else want one?”
“There’s water in the armrests?” I ask, lifting up mine. And sure enough, there’s a selection of beverages. When I stick my hand in, it’s surprisingly cold.
“How’s Trent?” Mia asks, her voice quiet.
“My mom says the police have closed their investigation on him and Mullen Mechanics, but I haven’t talked to him much.
” My stomach clenches at how little we’ve spoken.
We’ve exchanged a few texts about Amir, especially since he was originally going to watch him while I was on this trip.
Now that he’s cleared, he agreed to stop by my mom’s to do the Lego set with Amir.
It’s a start. We’re rebuilding a relationship from the ground up, and I keep reminding myself that I have to be patient and not despair.
The connection is there, and the love is there.
I know he loves me, and the fact he admitted that is huge.
It’s huge, and I need to hold onto the hope that at some point the love will matter more than any issues with his reputation.
The inquiry into his business, into him, was an earthquake, flattening the life we’d established.
We hadn’t been earthquake-proofed yet, and I’m not sure I really believed we needed to be, that anything could dismantle things so completely.
We felt so solid in that house together that I was starting to believe nothing would shake us.
“You two aren’t back to normal then,” Mia says, more a statement than a question. “I don’t know what I would have done if Tyler had ever pulled away. I can be a spiteful bitch.”
The way she says it makes me laugh a little. “Key his car? Slash his tires?”
Mia’s smile looks practically devious. “I would have enjoyed trying to come up with something, that’s for sure.” Then her smile fades, and she squeezes my hand. “But I wouldn’t have enjoyed the heartache. It’s the worst. Feels so hopeless, so helpless.”
It’s funny to me that Trent and I never confirmed anything to anyone, and yet everyone just seems to have assumed something was going on.
Back when we were really just friends, their disbelief over our friendship frustrated me.
But now—I don’t know—maybe they were just seeing something I was too stubborn to acknowledge, too afraid to let it be true.
“I definitely feel a little helpless,” I admit. “It’s hard when you know what you want, but you can’t make the other person see that it could work, would work.”
“Trent is ridiculously stubborn,” Maggie says.
“So am I,” I say.
“I can get Grady to talk to him,” Maggie says. “I won’t interfere if you tell me to stay out of it.”
“No,” I say. “Trent probably needs to talk to someone, and Grady understands the whole picture—mine and Trent’s.
” Whether or not he’ll listen to Grady is a whole other discussion.
Their relationship is complicated, but if Trent won’t talk to me, speaking to Grady or Maggie is likely the next best thing.
“I’ll ask him when we get back,” Maggie says.
For the last few days leading up to our trip to New York City, I’ve been queasy. Food hasn’t appealed to me, no matter what I’ve tried to eat. It’s like my stomach has gone on strike since Trent got arrested.
When we get to Lila’s apartment, her new fiancé, Henry, is already there. He’s slightly taller than Lila, with a wiry build. Lila already told us all that they’d bonded immediately over similar experiences in emigrating from China to America as little kids.
Lila’s glowing. Absolutely lit from the inside, and I couldn’t be happier for her. Henry matches Lila’s energy, cracking jokes and mixing drinks. If I could have imagined someone for her, that person would have been like Henry.
“Alright,” Maggie says as we’re all eating pizza in the apartment.
Well, they’re eating pizza. I’m picking at my slice as though it’s a toxic substance I’m being forced to consume.
“I have some news, and I wasn’t sure when the right time would be to tell everyone, but since we’re all together, I thought now?” Maggie keeps glancing at me, and I wonder what she hasn’t told me that’s clearly making her nervous.
“No vague posts,” Lila says, digging out another slice from the box on the coffee table.
“I’m pregnant.”
“Ahh!” Lila cries, dropping her slice back into the box and tugging Maggie out of her seat, practically spilling Maggie’s pizza onto the floor.
Maggie laughs and keeps her plate of pizza in one hand while she hugs Lila with the other. Mia is next to embrace Maggie, and I pull up the rear.
When Maggie and I embrace, she whispers in my ear, “I’m sorry.”
“Do not be sorry,” I whisper back. “I’m so happy for you, and if I start crying later, those are happy tears.”
Maggie steps back, and there are already tears pooling in her eyes.
“Don’t!” I point at her, my throat tightening. “Don’t you dare.”
“I can’t help it,” Maggie says, scooping up the tears as they fall.
“No!” Mia cries. “Ever since I had Victoria, something’s been unlocked in me, and I can’t see people cry alone.”
I look over and tears are streaming down her face.
“Oh, fuck,” Lila says, her voice thick with tears too. “Look what you've done.”
And then we’re all crying, and Henry seems at a bit of a loss.
“We’re happy?” he asks, uncertain.
“Yes,” I say. “Happy tears.” And maybe a bit sad, but I’d never admit that out loud.
The next night at the fancy restaurant Mia booked, we’re in a special VIP room for privacy. Pasha, as per usual, is at the door, but it’s closed, so we can’t see him.
Lila is on my left, and there’s no Henry tonight—it’s just the four of us. Maggie and Mia are deep in a conversation about town limits and figuring out whether the property Mia and Tyler bought should be absorbed by Little Falls.
“I heard about what happened to Trent,” Lila says, keeping her voice low. “He must have been devastated.”
“He was,” I say. “He is.”
“Are you doing okay?” Lila asks.
“Yeah, of course,” I say, my smile tight on my face.
“I thought with him living there…”
Part of me wants to tell her the truth, but I have no idea where her head is at when it comes to Trent.
“I was really harsh with him,” Lila says. “Meeting Henry made me realize I was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.”
“Are you going to talk to Trent?” I ask.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Lila says. “I said some pretty shitty things to him.” She hesitates for a beat and slides me a sheepish look. “About him.”
“Admitting it to me is one thing,” I say, “but I know the loss of your friendship, the iciness between you two, bothers him. I think it would mean a lot if you talked to him next time you’re home.”
Lila swallows and then takes a sip of her drink. She and Mia are the only two drinking. I’m still picking at my food, barely eating, feeling shitty and run down. I must be getting sick, or the stress is knocking me down more pegs than normal.
“He’d want to talk to me?” she asks.
“If you’re not going to call him an asshole, I think he’d probably love to talk to you.”
Lila gives a light laugh and shakes her head. “Turns out, I was the asshole.”
“Sometimes that happens.”
A comfortable silence sits between us for a beat while I cut a tiny piece of meat off my chicken and then don’t eat it, letting it sit on my fork.
“Are you doing okay?” Lila nods at my plate. “Yesterday, you basically ripped apart the one piece of pizza you took without eating it. Today, you’re eating like a bird. This is not the Emily I know.”
“I’m wondering if I’m coming down with something,” I say to cover the fact that this might just be heartbreak showing up in my stomach.
“Oh,” Lila says, seeming surprised. “I wondered if there was going to be a double announcement. You were doing those fertility treatments weren’t you?”
I can actually feel the color drain from my face as realization sets in. Oh, shit . From my purse, I dig out my phone, and I frantically check dates.
I can’t be. I can’t be. I can’t be.
Except if my calculations on my phone are correct, I could be.
I sit back in my chair and stare at the wall, trying to decide the best course of action. Logically, I need to take a pregnancy test. But the idea of seeing two lines makes the queasiness in my stomach go into overdrive. The timing could not be worse.
At Trent’s house, he basically told me he was glad I hadn’t gotten pregnant.
I’d ignored his comment because it had felt like a moot point.
I wasn’t pregnant, so there was no need to get offended that he was glad it hadn’t happened.
He was right that it would have made everything happening a thousand times more complicated.
But fuck me. Of course it had to happen now.
Maybe I’m not, though. Maybe it’s just stress. It could just be stress. And heartbreak. When Omar died, I had trouble eating for weeks, and when Dad died, I went through the same thing. While Trent hasn’t died, something between us feels like it’s withered.
“Earth to Em,” Maggie says. “You okay over there?”
“On the way back to Lila’s, I need to make a stop,” I say.
Lila squeezes my leg under the table, and when she looks at me, there’s excitement in her gaze. But I can’t match it, and I really wish I could.
At the pharmacy, Maggie helps me pick the best test to buy, and when we’re in the aisle alone, she hugs me tight.
“No matter what happens,” she says into my ear, “I love you, and I’m here for you.”
When we get back to the apartment, the only one who seems excited is Lila, and she keeps looking around at the rest of us like we’re silly for not being hopeful.
After I pee on the stick and we’re waiting for the results to show—I refuse to look before the timer goes off—Lila lets out a huff.
“What is going on? Why is everyone acting like this result is a death sentence instead of exactly what Emily wants?” She stares at each one of us, bewildered.
Mia shifts uncomfortably, and Maggie rubs her temples with her index fingers.
“If I’m pregnant,” I say, feeling the full weight of reality settle over me, “the baby is Trent’s.”
Lila’s eyes go very wide, and she stares at me for a beat before she says, “Oh my god, I knew it. He’s always looked at you like you were this precious, adorable gift. It used to make me so mad. This makes perfect fucking sense. Did he finally tell you?”
“Things are really complicated between us right now,” I say. “I just…” Can’t find the words to say any more than that.
The timer goes off, and I go into the bathroom. There, two pink lines are on the viewer of the pregnancy test, and I burst into tears.
Maggie, Mia, and Lila pile into the bathroom behind me, and they envelope me into a group hug.
“Life has a terrible sense of humor sometimes, doesn’t it?” Mia says.
“I thought this would be such a happy moment,” I say through my tears. “But I’m dreading telling him.”
Maggie’s hand is on my back, rubbing up and down. “If you need someone with you when you do that, I can be there.”
That sounds worse—a witness to how I’m sure Trent will take the news.
“No,” I say, my words garbled. “I can do it.”