The Status of All Things: A Novel

by Liz Fenton

  “You think?” she says shyly before turning my way. “But look at you,” Courtney purrs as she eyes me. “That is one hot dress, mama, is it new? Did you sneak out of work and hit Nordstrom without me? Meow.” She holds her hands up as if they’re claws.

  “Thanks,” I say, deliberately not answering her question. The truth was, this outfit was courtesy of a status I’d posted earlier. I’d wished for a dress that would make me look two sizes smaller and six inches taller and accentuate every curve—without the use of Spanx. I’d mused at the time that due to my newfound magical powers, I’d never again have to go through a dozen outfit changes to escape the frumpiness I was feeling. But I still felt inadequate now and also hadn’t succeeded in getting Max’s attention earlier. He’d barely looked away from SportsCenter as I’d descended the stairs. And now he only glances over at me briefly before burying his nose in the menu, asking if we want to order the spinach dip.

  As I watch Max flag down the waitress, I decide that even though my wish for Courtney backfired, I am still the one with an engagement ring on my finger. I need to remind Courtney of something I had with Max that she couldn’t compete with—history. We took the trip to Barcelona last year and sat in a café on that quaint cobblestone street and talked about how many kids we’d like to have. We had registered for the chef’s knives and the Dutch oven and the waffle maker because we like to cook together. And we had fallen in love that night in Big Bear as we’d sat in the ski lodge and sipped hot toddies while sharing stories about our childhoods—me confiding how I’d let my mom’s insecurities become my own; Max revealing that he was adopted, and even though his parents had been everything he could ever ask for, he still often wondered why he hadn’t been good enough for the woman who gave birth to him.

  I turn to Max. “You know what I was just thinking about?”

  “What’s that?” he says.

  “That time we went to Big Bear—we should go again.”

  “What made you think of that?” he asks, and a flicker of concern flashes in his eyes so quickly I tell myself I must have imagined it.

  I press on anyway. “Well, with the wedding only a month away, I’ve been working on my vows and was remembering where we first said I love you.” I smile. “Sorry to get all sappy in front of you, Courtney!” I say, resting my hand possessively on top of Max’s arm.

  Courtney hides the beginning of a frown by taking a huge gulp of her mojito.

  Okay, so clearly she already feels something. But what was Max feeling?

  “So what do you think?” I ask Max. “I’ll book us the cabin we stayed at—remember, it had the most gorgeous view of Big Bear Lake and we had those delicious crab cakes at that restaurant in town?”

  “Sure,” Max says noncommittally and takes a long drink of his scotch. I bite my tongue so I don’t make the sarcastic remark sitting on the edge of my lips: You seem about as excited as a guy going in for a vasectomy. But realizing it’s going to take more than one day to snap him back to our reality, I decide to change ­tactics—and focus on Courtney instead.

  “So, Courtney, tell us what’s going on with that guy James you’ve been dating,” I say after our waitress sets down our appetizers. “You were all giddy about him—I think you even called him dreamy? Didn’t you go out on your third date last week?” I ask, refusing to look at Max, afraid I might see jealousy reflected in his eyes. But hoping this will remind him that Courtney isn’t sitting at home quilting every Friday night. That she is actively dating other men.

  “That guy?” She laughs as she plays with the mint leaf at the bottom of her now-empty glass. “I was so wrong about him—found out he was seeing, like, three other girls after telling me he wanted to be exclusive.”

  “That must have really hurt. To have someone betray you like that,” I say, wondering if she hears the irony in my words.

  “Not really—I hadn’t known him very long. He did me a favor actually—I’m done going out with guys I meet at the gym or at a bar or”—she wrinkles her nose—“on Match.com. They’re all the same. I’ve decided that I’m just going to focus on work. Don’t they say the right guy comes along when you least expect it?” She giggles.

  I swallow the words at the base of my throat—the ones I wish I could scream at her—at them.

  Max is not the right guy for you. He’s the right guy for me.

  But before I can so much as shake my head, she leans in and asks Max about an acquisition his device company has been feverishly working on. I suddenly feel like a third wheel as I listen to him tell her about the stent they are attempting to license from a small German company. Courtney nods her head vigorously as Max explains that this small mesh device, used to treat narrowed arteries, has the potential to revolutionize angioplasties and shows great promise in its phase 3 trials.

  “This could be huge for us,” he says, before taking another drink. “Send the stock prices through the roof!”

  Last time we’d all met for happy hour, I vaguely remember the details, having tuned out around the time he walked us through the step-by-step process of how arterial plaque forms in the artery, instead turning my attention to my Instagram account. But this time I forced my eyes open with interest, ignoring the buzzing of my cell phone, trying to keep pace with Courtney, who to my dismay looked genuinely interested.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t find Max’s work compelling, I did. His analytical mind is one of the things that had drawn me to him from the beginning. But there was only so much clinical information I could handle, Max often joking that he knew I was far more interested in discussing whether the basketball players should’ve U-turned the divorcées on The Amazing Race. Had I made him feel like his work wasn’t important? That his stories were no longer interesting? Was that where I’d gone wrong?

  The rest of the night feels like a boxing match, Courtney and me in the ring, each trying to win a round of “who can hold Max’s attention longer?” And if there had been a referee, I think he would’ve called it for Courtney. By the time we get the check two hours later, I’m so exhausted that it feels like I’ve run up and down all 170 steps of the Santa Monica Stairs a dozen times. I fall into bed the second we get home, the three mojitos I consumed sending me into a quick, but restless sleep.

  I wake up a few hours later, one question still nagging at me. Were they already in love? I couldn’t tell if I was imagining things at dinner based on what I knew, or if the subtle nuances I’d noticed were real. I eye Max’s cell phone resting on the edge of the dresser next to his wallet and car keys. I could check it—just to find out if they’d been texting or emailing about more than Hootie and the Blowfish’s latest album.

  Sliding out of bed, I tiptoe over and grab the phone, freezing when Max turns over on his side. Finally, when I’m sure he’s still asleep, I shut the bathroom door silently behind me, shaking.

  I warily slide his phone across the countertop. Before this all happened, I’d never so much as glanced at one line of an email that he’d left open on his computer, and now I was about to look through his phone. This wasn’t me. But considering what I now knew, talking myself out of it was harder than convincing myself not to rip the plastic off that second row of Thin Mints. Just as I’m about to give in to temptation, a woman Liam dated briefly last year comes to mind—one with serious jealously issues who constantly accused him of seeing other women behind her back. (He had been, but in his defense, he’d never told her they were exclusive.) Whenever he talked about her, he’d make the sounds from the shower scene in Psycho. When I’d prodded him about why he stayed with her, he’d claimed the sex was great, but that he was also glad he didn’t own any bunnies for her to boil.

  The relationship had come to a crashing halt when she’d gotten ahold of his phone. Although he’d been diligent about deleting everything, even texts between Jules and me, she’d used the search feature to access texts from the trash. Liam had told us the st
ory over drinks one night, describing how she accused him of having threesomes with us—something we had all found both horribly disgusting and incredibly hilarious.

  I sigh and lean back against the bathroom door. I should just put the phone back where I found it and figure this thing out the old-school way—by using my instincts instead of going all Fatal Attraction on him. But I only knew how this story ended—I didn’t know which chapter we were on. Before I can change my mind, I pull down the search box and type in Courtney’s name. The only text exchange I find is from after we’d left the restaurant.

  Courtney

  You okay? You seemed a little off tonight.

  Max

  I’m fine.

  Courtney

  Okay. Know that I’m always here for you.

  Max

  Thanks. I just have a lot on my mind. I’ll be okay.

  Courtney

  Kate’s a very lucky woman—I hope she appreciates you.

  I check for a response from Max, but there isn’t one. Rage rises to my throat as I try to push the image of Glenn Close holding a butcher knife from my mind. I rack my brains, trying to remember if I’d ever given Courtney the impression that I’d been taking Max for granted. Had I somehow made it seem to her like he wasn’t my number-one priority? But more importantly, had I made him feel that way?

  “I have to do something about this,” I whisper to myself as I open the door and place Max’s phone back on the dresser and grab mine. “Right now.”

  I climb back into bed, the sound of Max’s breathing comforting, reminding me that what I’m about to do is for us. Courtney needs a distraction. And I have the power to give her one.

  I gulp my tears away as I pull up Facebook. I had always believed Courtney was a true friend—someone I could trust with anything. But now I knew she should never have been given that kind of access to my private thoughts. To my life. To my fiancé. And I couldn’t allow her to take another step toward the line I knew she’d eventually cross with Max.

  I think back to tonight—how she’d talked over me as I’d tried to share something funny our wedding planner had said, how she’d stolen glances at Max when she thought I wasn’t looking. And then I remember a remark she made to me after Max sent me chocolate-covered strawberries to the office a couple of months ago with a note that said, just because.

  “How did you find such a great guy?” She’d sighed as she slid the card back into the envelope. “I hope you know how lucky you are!”

  How long had she plotted to take Max from me?

  Finally, I type the words and let the tip of my index finger linger over the post button before closing my eyes and pressing it down hard, feeling a sliver of relief that Courtney will never read it because the status will disappear like all the others, but my heart still pumping in overdrive because I’ve just wished for the one thing that Courtney and I fear most.

  It’s so sad that Courtney can’t get off Magda’s shit list no matter how hard she tries.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I feel the jersey fabric of the sheets, still warm after Max has left for his run the next morning, and silently pray that ours will be the only bed he will sleep in again. At least a hundred times, I’ve considered wishing for Max to be hopelessly in love with me—to have not one single doubt about spending the rest of our lives together—but I don’t want to use my power to make him feel that way. I want his heart to lead him there on its own. Because if it’s not his decision, then I’ll always be left wondering—had he been given the choice, would it have been me?

  My head throbbing from the mojitos last night and the text exchange I’d discovered between him and Courtney, I grab my laptop and head to the kitchen to take care of a few chores that have fallen by the wayside since I traveled back in time. With a few clicks of my mouse, I wish for the laundry that is piled high next to the washing machine to be washed, dried, folded, and put away; for our dry cleaning, which had been sitting across town for a week, to be picked up; and for my upper lip to be waxed—without pain and without leaving the embarrassing red mark that taints my fair skin for hours afterward and screams to the world, yes, I just got hair removed from my upper lip, how are you?

  But as I pull the plastic off Max’s freshly pressed shirts and slacks that are now hanging on the back of the chair next to me, I wonder—no, I know—that I’m being too frivolous with my wishes, that I should probably be helping others, not just myself and Jules. I could hear my mom scolding me now. Why didn’t you wish for a cure for a disease or to end hunger in third-world countries? And she’d be right. Why hadn’t I?

  I think back to last Christmas, when I’d found so much joy from adopting a family in need, spending hours carefully choosing their gifts and wrapping them beautifully with the biggest bows I could find. Or when I’d given up a chance to attend the live Survivor finale to stay home and care for Max when he threw his back out playing flag football. Sure, I’d been known to forget to replace the toilet paper roll on more than one occasion, but I was definitely someone who always wanted to do right by other people.

  Like right now. Excitedly I type, I can’t believe they’ve found a cure for cancer, and hit post. I click over to CNN.com, expecting the website to be flooded with the news. Nothing. So I try again. This time I ask to end hunger in the world. But still, nothing. I quickly delete them both off my page before anyone can start peppering me with questions about why I’d write such a thing. It didn’t make any sense. I could give Jules a flatter stomach and eff with Courtney’s hair, but I couldn’t help starving children in Africa? Why do certain wishes come true and not others?

  The sound of the front door opening startles me. I hear Max walk in and quickly slip the dry cleaning into the front closet, not prepared to lie about how it had ended up in our house. It was the same reason I wasn’t wishing to win the lottery or for a new car. After Max questioned me about my instantaneous blowout, I realized how hard it would be to explain even the smallest of things, especially when I had always been a terrible liar.

  “How you doing?” Max says, kissing my cheek and grabbing a carton of orange juice out of the refrigerator. He pours himself a glass, then leans back to drink it, his quads showing the results of running over ten marathons. It was Max who’d introduced me to running, although I’d never felt as passionate about it as he did, only running occasionally, barely completing one 5K last year. Maybe I should start being more consistent? See if he wants to help me train?

  “I’m okay, how are you? How was your run?”

  “Really good,” he says, rinsing his glass out in the sink and putting it directly into the dishwasher.

  As I watch Max put detergent in the tray and push start on the machine, Courtney’s text to him crosses my mind for the thousandth time.

  I hope she appreciates you.

  I need to show him that I do. I need to prove that I value his opinion and care about the things that matter to him. Maybe that’s what’s making him feel connected to Courtney. I think back to the analytical questions she’d asked Max when he was talking about his job—the thoughtful follow-up questions that would never have crossed my mind. Magda has always said Courtney and I worked well as a team because Courtney was OCD and I was ADD. And interestingly, I have always had a similar dynamic with Max—our differences seemed to smooth out each other’s edges. But now I wonder if he has been craving someone more like-minded.

  “Hey, so I was thinking about the wedding—”

  “Oh?” Max smirks. “I know that look,” he says, stepping closer to me. “What is it? You want to switch out the color of the flowers again?”

  “No! God, you make me sound so frivolous,” I say, hoping he’ll correct me. But instead he pulls a container of cottage cheese out of the refrigerator and starts to spoon it into a bowl.

  I shake off his silent agreement and continue. “Anyway, I wasn’t thinking about the gerbera d
aisies, silly. I was thinking about you. I feel like I’ve been planning this without you and it’s something we should be doing together. I want it to feel like our day, not just mine.”

  Max offers me a small smile. “It is our day. And it’s fine that you’ve taken the reins. You know what you want and I want you to have that—I want you to be happy.”

  “Great. Then you want to know what will make me happy?” I press on before he answers. “Let’s call Stella and toss out everything and start over. Let’s plan this party together.”

  “You feeling okay? First you had that crazy dream and now you want to scrap the ideas you’ve been planning for a year and start over? With only”—Max looks at his phone—“twenty-seven days to go? Is that even possible?”

  Yes, anything’s possible when the rest of your life depends on it.

  “Don’t worry about that. Just tell me, what would you do if it were up to you?” I walk over and kiss his neck. “Because your wish is my command,” I say with a smile, Max having no idea how true that statement really is.

  “You really want to know?” he says, frowning slightly and studying my face.

  “Yes,” I say, excitement brewing inside of me as I watch his eyes start to animate.

  “Okay. Here it is. I don’t want to wear a suit. And I don’t want the groomsmen to either. It’s too stiff for Maui. Let’s be casual. Maybe even wear flip-flops.”

  Oh, gawd.

  “Okay,” I say, forcing my head to bob up and down.

  “And forget the hoity-toity rehearsal dinner on the roof—let’s have a pig roast with a couple of guys juggling torches. That will be much better on my parents’ budget too.”

  I’m beginning to remember why I didn’t push him to be involved.

  “Great.” I smile.