Chapter 33
Chapter Thirty-Three
IF IT FEELS REAL
LOUISA
I’m looking at my reflection, trying to see where Louisa ends and Mrs. Hudson Ellis begins, and the scariest thought is, I can’t tell anymore. He can, it’s no doubt what he wants to talk about.
The door opens behind me, and she steps in dripping with a sense of beauty that inspires those around her, and you can tell it's because of who she is, not just what she looks like.
“Hoping for someone else?” Arden asks as she pulls a red lipstick from her small clutch.
I just shake my head, but that’s a lie, and this stranger knows it as much as I do.
“Well, I’m just here for a touch up, I don’t even know why I bother anymore, lord knows it always ends up on his collar before dessert.
” She laughs to herself as she applies the cherry red across her smile, which seems to have faded, and by the sound of it, her husband is likely doing a similar cleanup in a men’s room not far.
“But, if perhaps you were thinking someone else was going to follow you in here, you should know he’s just outside.
” She cuts me a far-too-knowing look from the corner of her eye. “Seems like a rule follower, that one.”
“Usually,” I say. Knowing that yes, he does, except one example. (Or whatever you call a fake marriage for papers.)
Arden stands here, leaning against the sink with a grace and sincerity that feels entirely incomparable, just naturally glowing in a way I think people here would pay to emulate, as she hops up on the sink and watches me intently, her eyebrows raised high on her forehead as she pulls her perfectly red lips into a smirk.
I sink deeper into myself, and the tears that have been holding back, too afraid to admit what they mean, because in the recesses of my mind, in my dreams, in all the moments I have in a day, I know what it means. I just haven’t told anyone else.
“I love him,” I say to this practical stranger, whose smile lights up the space as she uses the pad of her thumb to wipe a tear from my cheek that I didn’t know had actually fallen.
“But it’s just, none of it is real,” I say with my voice shakier than I would have hoped.
“He and I, we’re too different. But then he went and did that.
He played our song, or as close to an ‘our song’ as we have.
And I love him, but love isn’t enough, not when he doesn’t… I know he doesn’t.”
She exhales a knowing breath, not questioning the logistics of what I said or why, just offering me something far more profound.
“Love is a lot of things, but above all else, it’s action.
” She doesn’t tell me it will be fine, that ‘love is enough,’ but instead tells me what is, before she continues, “Let me tell you something about men.” Her voice is stable and grounded.
“Men like Hudson, men like Will, their lives are formed by transactions, money, power, legacy, whatever it is. For some, this hardens them in ways that are impenetrable, that requires therapy and patience to get through. But every now and then,” she releases a breath, maybe from memory, “Someone gets through anyway, because they were too busy loving them.” Her eyes find mine, and it’s comforting in a way.
“That they didn't know they were supposed to find it impenetrable in the first place.”
“But what if,” I begin. “I am a transaction, this whole marriage it’s an arrangement, a deal, that’s all it is.”
“Marriage is the ultimate transaction, don’t believe anyone who tells you it isn’t,” she says, looking at me skeptically. “But loving someone, the way you love each other, that’s not a deal, that’s a promise.”
“He doesn’t feel that way about me,” I say softly.
“I’ve seen the way men look from all sides.
With possession and greed, the look of lust which is fleeting, of complacency, and of the heartbreak from which you think you’ll never heal.
So trust me, I know what love looks like, I see it every morning, like I bet you do.
Even in the worst moments of frustration that life throws at you, loving someone doesn’t dissolve with the convenience of an easy life.
That man, the one who is standing outside the women’s bathroom like it’s his job to hold up the wall? He loves you.”
“But what if we’ve been playing pretend for so long that we can’t tell the difference anymore?”
“If it feels real to you, then it’s not pretend, is it? Everyone deserves a happily ever after, but sometimes you have to be brave enough to fight for it.”
She hops down from the sink, with her dress bunched in her hand, landing perfectly on her heels.
Checking her backside for any water spots (flawless, of course), her face is one of relief when she realizes she’s still in perfect form.
Running her finger at the corner of her mouth to make sure her red pout is contained to her full lips.
As she leaves, her body is halfway out the door, I see her say something, to someone just outside, before popping her head back in to nod toward the shoulder that is leaning outside the doorframe.
The most inspiring place is a woman’s bathroom. I don’t think a sense of friendship like it exists anywhere else in the world.
HUDSON
I’ve been keeping a secret from her. More than one.
I don’t know which to start with, so of course that means I’ve told her neither.
I can’t lie to her, and this now is crossing into the boundaries of a lie.
I can tell myself it’s to protect her, but the longer all this goes on, the more of a lie it becomes.
Because it might only be to protect myself.
As I held her pressed against my body, all I could imagine is how quickly this all falls apart when she finds out.
I held her closer than any narrative required, I could feel her pulse as her hand laid in mine, she’s so close I could smell the vanilla and citrus scent of her.
We are in the final stretch of this, and I know that means that as the doomsday divorce clock ticks closer to midnight, we will sign a new contract that lets her walk away from this, leaving me drowning in my own misery.
I want to be selfish, I want to tell her how I feel in a way that doesn’t let her question if this is real. I want in my arms, in bed, in my life, in a way more permanent than anything we agreed to.
But there are two lies.
The first is the most dangerous. I love her in a way that is unrecoverable, I didn’t think loving someone felt like this.
Like a fever you don’t want to break. Hot and flushed and living in fragments of a dream state.
I watched my parents treat love like a chore, a performance of convenience that left everyone involved hollowed out.
I never wanted to put a partner through that.
I never wanted to be the reason someone’s light went out.
And she is pure light. Loving me would suffocate it.
But then there’s the second secret. The one that makes the first more than a lie, it makes it a betrayal.
As I watched her walk off the dance floor, I followed her to the large bathroom door.
I just stood there. Like a fucking creep loitering outside the women’s restroom.
Watching Arden walk towards me with an uncomfortably knowing smile.
“She in there?” she asked. The hollow ache in my chest told me the truth I’ve been trying to talk myself out of.
If I let her walk out of this marriage thinking it was all a game for gain, I’ll be the one living a lie for the rest of my life.
“You know it's weird to hang out outside a women’s bathroom,” Louisa says as she exits, and it settles something in me. The banter that seems to be the foundation of our relationship still exists, even in black tie and the black hole my heart is trying to claw its way out of.
“Well, it’s also rude to leave your dance partner mid-dance,” I reply as I hold out my arm, and she slips hers through.
But nothing else can happen between us, not until she knows the full truth.
Not until all the cards are out on the table, and I don’t mean how I feel.
The elephant in the room she doesn’t even know is there, and the longer I am silent, the worse it becomes, the elephant becomes something more akin to Godzilla tearing apart a city.
I have to tell her what I did, why I did it, but the timing never felt right.
Always like it would ruin a moment too near perfect.
It will be another rescue she didn't ask for. But what were the options?
“You did warn me you only had one move.” Her voice is full of warmth I don’t deserve from her, but I crave in a way that is unnatural.
“You mind if we skip dessert and go home?” I ask. She just pops open her small beaded purse to show off an individual bag of Nerds Clusters. “We can have dessert on the way home,” she says, and my chest tightens with her use of the word ‘home.’
“You don’t want to see who won the silent auction?”
“No, I’ve got everything I need.”
Almost.