Chapter 52
“champagne problems” - Taylor Swift
Maeve
The cork releases from the bottle with a small pop, and I toss the corkscrew aside and grab a goblet. With my free hand, I tap the phone icon next to Vivienne’s photo.
She picks up after two rings. In the background, I can hear the voices of several other girls chatting.
“Hey, Maeve,” she says, and I mentally applaud her for not including a single ounce of shock or even surprise into her voice. You’d never know from hearing her just now that we’re not the kind of sisters who talk on the phone every week. Or, rather, at all.
We’ve grown closer since Bash’s accident, though, and she’s the only person I want to talk to after everything that happened tonight.
“Is this a bad time?” I ask, sipping my wine. “I can call back.”
“No, it’s fine. Sutton and Marlowe are just talking about boys anyway.” The voices grow quieter, as if Viv is walking into a different room. “What’s up?”
I bolster my courage with a long swallow of alcohol before telling her. “Preston proposed to me tonight.”
There are exactly three beats of silence—I count—before she speaks. “That’s— Wow. That’s great, Maeve. Congratulations.”
There’s something you should know about Viv.
She doesn’t say a lot, but when she does, she says exactly what’s on her mind.
Her tongue is as sharp as her riding skills, and believe me, I’ve been on the receiving end of it more than once.
She’s no fool, so don’t even think of trying to slip something past her, because you won’t win. Trust me.
I clear my throat as I pour another glug of red into my glass. Her response worries me, because she isn’t Preston’s biggest fan, and she’s made no secret of that fact. Of course, she’s not anyone’s biggest fan, except maybe Bash’s, but that’s purely biological. So why is she congratulating me?
“I said no.” The wine burns my throat as I chug it, wishing now I had opted for something stronger.
“You said no? Why?”
Sighing as I sink down onto a barstool, I twirl my glass and watch the liquid slosh up the sides. “Why do you think?”
“Because he’s a dick who probably thinks pineapple on pizza is the hill to die on?”
Ah, there’s the real Viv. I let out a laugh. “I knew you hated him.”
“I don’t hate him. I just think the two of you together makes as much sense as a chocolate teapot.”
“Well, rest assured, I turned him down and broke up with him.” I fold my arms on the cool countertop and rest my forehead on them.
“Fuck,” she mutters. “How did that go?”
“As well as you can imagine with a guy whose cock is the size of a pencil but who thinks it’s a marvel of humankind.”
Viv snorts. “How do you feel?”
I take a minute to consider this, something I haven’t done since it happened. “Honestly, I just feel relieved,” I tell her. “Being with him was so exhausting. I had to do everything for him.”
She says nothing.
“What? Are you still there?”
“Obviously, stupid,” she says. “But how is that different from every other relationship you’ve ever been in?”
Shifting so I’m upright in my seat, I take another swig before responding. “What do you mean?”
She sighs as if I’ve said something especially exasperating. “You’ve always done everything for every single guy you’ve dated.”
“That’s absolutely not true.”
“Prove it. Name one man you’ve had a healthy relationship with where you weren’t acting like his mother.”
I frown as I flip back through my mental catalogue of past boyfriends. I know what you’re thinking, and you can knock it off. There haven’t been that many, and she’s wrong. “I can’t—”
“Exactly my point.”
“You didn’t let me finish.” I roll my eyes and drain the contents of my glass. “I can’t dissect every relationship just like that.”
“There’s no need. I’ve already done it for you.”
Without intending to, I laugh out loud. “You’re acting way too big for your britches.”
“And you’ve been watching too much Audrey again. You do realize no one says britches anymore, right?”
I shrug and refill my goblet. “I do.”
“Well, stop,” Viv orders. “So we’ve established that you create codependent relationships with men who need mothers, not girlfriends. What are you going to do about it?”
There’s a loud ting as I set my glass down a little too hard. “We haven’t established anything.”
“I’m still waiting for you to give me a single name.”
I’m so desperate to prove her wrong, to prove I’m capable of having a healthy relationship, that it slips out before I’m even aware it’s on my tongue, its journey eased by all of the wine I’ve consumed, no doubt.
“Pierce.”
“Pierce,” she parrots back, as if I’ve gone hard of hearing in my twenty-six years.
I realize my mistake thirty seconds too late. “Never mind,” I say into my drink.
“Are we talking about Pierce St. James?”
“We’re not talking about anyone,” I say. I stand up, but my legs have gone a bit wobbly, so I sit back down before they can send me to the floor. “I actually need to go.”
“Oh, no,” she says, and I’m beginning to regret calling her in the first place. Why didn’t I try Walker or Lux? They would have been much more sympathetic. “We’re definitely dissecting this.”
“Viv,” I whine into the phone. “Forget I said it. That was the wine talking.”
“I didn’t even know you and Pierce dated,” she says, completely ignoring me.
“We didn’t.” Glutton, meet punishment. “Not really.”
And then I tell her everything.
Well, not everything, of course. She’s still a sheltered twenty-year-old, for god’s sake.
But enough that at the end of it, she says “fuck” and I say “yeah” and there’s this moment of silence where neither of us says anything because what is there to say when you’ve fucked everything up and have just admitted out loud for the first time that you’ll never get it back?
“You love him,” she finally breathes. “Like, love him.”
“No, I don’t,” I scoff. “It was all sexual.”
“Maeve.”
“Viv.”
“You pushed him away because you didn’t want to give up control. But letting him be in charge made you happy. You get that, don’t you?”
She’s my sister, and I love her, even if I want to strangle her right now, so I give her question thought before I answer it. Was I happy with Pierce?
Memories flash through my mind like a movie montage—dinner with my family, the gallery, the woods, upstairs afterward, skydiving.
They’re intermingled with plenty of bad ones—him ruining my meeting, him sleeping with Loretta and flirting with Caroline, those stupid blind dates, Bash’s accident, the arguments—so many arguments.
But even during the bad moments, I felt more alive in his presence than out of it.
He may have fought me for control, but every time I gave it to him, I felt safe.
Protected. Cherished. He never let me down or made me regret my decision.
I did that to myself. Every time I realized I’d given up control, I fought to regain it, not because Pierce had proven unreliable, but because others in my past had.
“Maeve?” Viv’s voice breaks through my thoughts.
“Yeah.” I swipe at my nose. “I’m just thinking.”
“Maybe you should tell him what you’re thinking.”
The last time I saw Pierce, the night of the gala, I thought my heart was going to explode.
It had been over two months, and my eyes were devouring him on that stage.
Even though I have no doubt his speech was incredible, I didn’t hear a word of it.
I knew he was avoiding me, but when I came out of the ladies’ room and saw him on that divan, I was drawn to him by a magnetic force field I’ve never been able to explain.
Of course, I proceeded to screw it all up as usual, and if I’m being honest, watching him walk away that night was fifty times harder than watching Preston drive away tonight, even knowing he wouldn’t be back.
I pour the remainder of the wine into my glass and set the bottle back down. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” Viv asks, because when you’re twenty, everything is just so fucking easy.
“Because he doesn’t ever want to see me again.”