(Almost) Happily Ever After

by Annabelle Costa

  Also, this is the first time I’ve ever seen myself on television, and I look awful. I know Will was worried about looking awful, but he didn’t. I genuinely do. If I had any idea I was going to be on television that day, I would have worn a less puffy coat. And gotten my hair done. And lost thirty pounds.

  Oh well.

  Mia seems really happy to see me when I show up at her apartment. She sits with me as I unpack my suitcase of clothing into the guest dresser. “Let me know if there’s anything you need,” she says.

  “No, this is great,” I say.

  “I’ll cook us all dinner tonight,” she says thoughtfully. “Do you like arroz con pollo?”

  “Yeah, sure, whatever.”

  “Would you prefer something else?”

  I roll my eyes at Mia. “Can you stop mothering me? Anything is fine.”

  “I was just… sort of worried about you last night,” she admits. “I didn’t know where you went.”

  What? I stop unpacking. “What are you talking about? I didn’t tell you until today that I moved out of Will’s apartment.”

  Mia is quiet for a second. She’s not usually the foot in mouth type—it must be pregnancy brain. “Will called me.”

  “Great,” I mutter.

  “He was worried about you,” she says. “He just wanted to make sure you were safe. He sort of lost it when he realized you weren’t here. Who did you stay with?”

  “Somebody from my biology class.”

  “Male or female?”

  I glare at Mia. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing happened and I’m here now.”

  “Yeah, smelling like a college dorm room,” she says.

  “Hey, it’s not against the law to experiment.”

  “Actually, it is against the law.”

  “Okay, Mommy.”

  Mia shifts on the bedspread. “Seriously, Libby. I don’t know what’s going on with you and Will. You guys are like the best couple I know, and now…”

  “Things aren’t good.” I sit down on the bed next to her. “They haven’t been good in a while. Ever since Will became partner at his firm, his workload has been out of control. He’s tired all the time, he’s at work till midnight—we were supposed to elope in Vegas and he had to cancel the trip. He forwarded me the e-tickets and told me to go with you.”

  “I wouldn’t mind a trip to Vegas.”

  “That’s not the point.” I bite my lip. “Then this thing happened with the Hanford Corporation. I don’t understand how he could defend a company that’s done such terrible things. I thought he loved animals as much as I do. I mean, what’s wrong with his moral compass if he could defend them?”

  Mia nods. “I know what you mean. I like Will, but his behavior recently has been… disappointing. Even so, I know he’s a good guy.”

  “All I know,” I say, “is that I can’t live like this anymore. I don’t know how he’d ever make time for me if we ever did get married and have children…”

  The last word sticks in my throat. I don’t want to tell Mia about Dr. Powell and our appointment. About how children might very well not be in my future if I stay with Will.

  “We’ve grown apart, Mia,” I say. “I feel like the things each of us want have become so different.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Mia says.

  I don’t want to believe it either, but what other conclusion can I draw? The man who defended the Hanford Corporation on national television isn’t the man I fell in love with, that’s for sure.

  _____

  I’m not entirely surprised when I see Stephanie waiting for me outside work the next day. She’s already proven that she’s great at stalking me. The part I’m not sure about is whether she’s here to gloat or ask for forgiveness. I think it’s the former.

  I hate her.

  “Libby!” She falls into step beside me just as I speed up my gait. That means she’s practically running thanks to her short legs. “Can I talk to you?”

  I don’t even glance in her direction. “Actually, no.”

  Stephanie doesn’t allow this rejection to deter her in the slightest. “I didn’t expect things to happen the way they did,” she puffs.

  “Really?” I say drily. “Because it seems to me things happened exactly the way you wanted them to.”

  I’ve had a lot of time to think about Stephanie’s ulterior motives. It’s clear she doesn’t think much of me, based on the way she gained my trust with that phony job offer. And she clearly wanted to wreck Will’s career.

  But I also believe that the things she said in Reid’s kitchen weren’t entirely lies. I think she still has a lot of affection for Will. I can’t help but wonder if part of her plan was to get me out of the way so she could slide back into his good graces. Well, she certainly was effective.

  Stephanie is still running to keep up with me. One thing I can say about her is that she seems to be in horrible shape. She’s getting very short of breath just from this brief sprint. “Libby,” she manages, “I think you should know that… that William called me last night.”

  I hate the fact that she now has my attention.

  I stop walking and Stephanie shifts her infamous red purse to her other shoulder. She gulps a few times to catch her breath.

  “So what did he say?” I ask.

  “Look,” she says, “I didn’t mean to break you guys up. That wasn’t what I wanted.”

  “So what the hell did you think would happen?”

  She shrugs. “I thought he’d quit. Or get fired.”

  “Great.”

  “It’s not like he’d be unemployed,” Stephanie says. “William can come work for my firm whenever he wants. My boss would be elated if we got him.”

  I glare at her. “Is that more or less bullshit than the job offer you made to me?”

  Stephanie’s green eyes widen. “Libby, that wasn’t a bullshit offer. I would love to have you come work with us. I think you’d be absolutely amazing.”

  I narrow my eyes at her. Is she serious? I feel like I can’t believe anything this woman says.

  “You’re exactly the sort of person we need, Libby,” Stephanie says. “I love your passion. Whatever else happens, I want you to know that the offer is still open.”

  I feel my resolve to hate Stephanie weakening. She’s a liar, that’s for sure. And she’s definitely crazy. But nothing she said out at City Hall the other day was phony. She’s only doing this because she cares so damn much. She could have worked for a firm like Saperstein and Hitchcock, but she didn’t.

  “So what did Will say on the phone?” I ask her.

  “He yelled at me for about forty-five minutes straight,” she says sheepishly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him quite that angry.”

  “Do you blame him?”

  “I guess not,” she admits. “He told me I wrecked the best thing that ever happened to him.”

  My eyes widen. “He lost his job?”

  “No, you ninny,” she says. I’ve never been called a “ninny” before and somehow it doesn’t surprise me that Stephanie is the first person to do so. “He meant you. He doesn’t care about the job.”

  “Sometimes I think that’s all he cares about,” I mutter.

  Stephanie looks at me thoughtfully. “Something you need to understand about William is that he is very good at arguing. In law school, he could argue either side of any issue with equal amounts of skill and passion. That’s what we were expected to do—we didn’t have a choice.” She attempts to tuck a strand of her red hair behind her ear but it’s honestly hopeless. “I genuinely believe that’s what he’s doing now. His firm gave him a case to argue and he’s doing it the best he can. Because he thinks he has to. What he doesn’t seem to understand is that sometimes in life, you do have a choice.”

  I just blink at her.

  “What I’m trying to say,” she says, “is that William isn’t a bad person for representing Hanford. That’s his job. But when your job makes you do things that you don’t believe in
over and over… well, maybe it’s time to get a new job.”

  “Will isn’t going to leave Saperstein and Hitchcock,” I say. “That’s one thing I know for sure. And I couldn’t ask that of him.”

  She smiles. “Well, we may very well have gotten him canned.”

  I shake my head. “I doubt it. They love him there.”

  “Yeah, well,” she says, “he’s easy to like.”

  I study Stephanie’s small face from within her mass of frizzy red curls. “You still like him, don’t you?”

  Her pale cheeks color slightly. “Well, yes. Of course I do.”

  At least she’s honest about it. For once.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’m not a threat to you, if that’s what you’re thinking. William wouldn’t touch another woman besides you.” She gives me a meaningful look. “If you don’t go back to him, he’ll probably die alone.”

  I roll my eyes. “You’re being melodramatic.”

  “If you think so,” she says, “then you aren’t aware of the impact you have on him. When he talked to me on the phone last night, you were all he could talk about. His job was the furthest thing from his mind.”

  I don’t know what to think. If I’m the only thing that matters to Will, why can’t he make the time to get married? Why can’t he take a week off to have a vacation with me? Why does he get home after I’m asleep half the nights of the week?

  Those tickets to Vegas are still in my inbox—a reminder of the commitment he was unable to keep because he valued his work over me. Maybe I should take Mia. After all, he’ll never take me.

  Chapter 32

  Tomorrow is December thirteenth, the day that Will and I were supposed to fly to Vegas to get married.

  The date dances in my head as I lie in bed reading, facing another night of trying to fall asleep without Will next to me. It’s funny how you get used to someone being beside you all night. He’s the first person I ever slept next to on a regular basis, and now it turns out I can’t sleep without him.

  Even though he snores slightly. And if I accidentally kick him in my sleep, his leg goes into a spasm that wakes both of us up.

  My phone lying on the nightstand buzzes with a text message. I snatch it up and read the words on the screen.

  I miss you.

  I squeeze the phone in my hand. I text back to Will:

  I miss you too.

  His response is instant: Come home.

  I want to. It would be so easy to go home to Will, let him kiss me and hold me and then pleasure me. But nothing would have changed. I’ll still resent him for the hours he works and the clients he represents. As hard as it is, I can’t let him off the hook for any of that. I type my response:

  I can’t come home when I know that tomorrow we were supposed to fly off to Vegas but you couldn’t make time.

  His next response isn’t quite so instant, but it surprises me nonetheless: Meet me at the airport gate tomorrow.

  Okay. He’s trying to make amends. But say we do go on this trip. Say we get married. What next? More of the same?

  I don’t know if it’s a good idea.

  Please. Give me one more chance.

  I don’t know.

  My phone starts to ring and I see Will’s name appear on the screen. I hesitate over the green button to answer the call. But in the end, I put my phone on “Do Not Disturb” and go to the bathroom to brush my teeth.

  _____

  I sleep like crap.

  Worse, when I wake up in the morning, I still don’t know what to do. I’m not sure if I should go on a trip with Will and try to make things right, then return home to the exact same problems. It’s tempting obviously. Going to Vegas would be more fun than living with my happily married, pregnant friend. But I don’t want to trade one trip for a lifetime of unhappiness.

  When I stumble out of my bedroom, Mia is already gone for the day, but her husband Paul is still hanging around the living room, messing with his phone, drinking coffee. It reminds me that Will would never be lounging around at eight o’clock on a Friday morning.

  “You look like you didn’t sleep well,” Paul observes.

  Paul is the nicest guy ever, but he always says the wrong thing. I mean, who says to a woman that she looks like shit first thing in the morning? Who?

  “Yeah,” I mumble. “Not really.”

  “It’s a memory foam mattress,” Paul tells me. “So the longer you sleep on it, the more comfortable it will get.”

  “I don’t expect to be here that long,” I say.

  “Oh?” Paul raises his eyebrows. “Did you and Will make up?”

  Paul takes a sip of his coffee. I know for a fact that Mia would kill him if she knew he was drinking coffee on her sofa.

  “Does Mia know you’re drinking that here?”

  He smiles sheepishly. “No…”

  I nod. “I won’t tell on you if you get me a cup.”

  Paul fetches me a cup of coffee like a good little boy. He then plops down next to me on the sofa with his own cup, which splashes slightly on the armrest.

  “Will is a good guy,” Paul says. “I’m sure you two will work it out.”

  “He’s not that good a guy,” I mutter.

  “Yes, he is,” he insists. “I mean, he’s got a lot of integrity.”

  “Integrity?” What in hell is he talking about? “Paul, do you know who his client is? How could you say he has integrity?”

  “Yeah, exactly.” Paul takes a long swig of his coffee. “He probably hates his client. You’re mad at him, people on the news are cracking jokes about him… but he’s still sticking it out and doing his job. He’s not abandoning his client just because everyone is telling him he should. I mean, isn’t that what a good lawyer is supposed to do?”

  I take a sip of my hot coffee. Will brews it better.

  “Lots of people who need lawyers are scumbags,” he says. “But everyone is entitled to an attorney in this country. One who will stick with them.”

  Damn. He’s sort of making a good point.

  “If I ever get into a legal jam, I’d want Will as my lawyer,” Paul says.

  “Yeah,” I say softly. “Me too.”

  Chapter 33

  I barely have time to throw some clothing in a suitcase and grab a cab to LaGuardia. And of course, we end up sitting in horrible traffic. The cabbie valiantly tries to make it to the airport, weaving in and out of cars so aggressively that I’m certain I will die on this trip to the airport. But I don’t die. I make it to LaGuardia with barely twenty minutes to spare.

  Twenty minutes is not nearly long enough for a standard domestic flight. It can take half an hour to get through security sometimes.

  Will is going to think I stood him up.

  I send him a text message as I climb out of the taxi: I’m coming. Don’t let the plane leave without me. Then I run.

  The line for security is, of course, ridiculous. When I see it, I recognize that there’s no way I’m going to make it. It’s not physically possible. I check my phone and there aren’t any messages from Will—I hope he got my message. I see a big guy from airport security walking by and I try to get his attention.

  “Excuse me,” I say to the man. “I’m trying to make a flight to Vegas that’s in, like, fifteen minutes. Is there anything I could do?”

  The man glares at me. “You’re supposed to arrive forty-five minutes early for domestic flights.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I say. “But I think we can agree it’s too late for that. So…”

  The man shrugs his burly shoulders. “I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t give you priority for being late.”

  “Look,” I say desperately. “I recently broke up with my fiancé and he asked me to meet him here to go to Las Vegas to maybe get married. And if I don’t show up, he’s going to think I don’t care about him anymore. So can you help me… for the sake of love?”

  The man frowns in confusion. He clearly has no sense of romance. “Why don’t you just t
ext him and tell him that you couldn’t manage to get to the airport on time?”

  “I did,” I say, “but he’s not texting me back.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” the man says. “But I’ve got to go. There’s some situation at the front of the line with a wheelchair passenger.”

  A wheelchair passenger?

  I strain to see what’s going on at the front of the line. Of course, I’m so far back that it’s a hopeless cause. At this point, getting off the line means I’ll have zero chance of making the flight. Then again, I don’t think it’s going to happen anyway. May as well take a chance.

  Man, if this turns out to be some disabled old man, I’m going to be so pissed off.

  I grab my bag and hurry to the front of security, pushing past suspicious-looking passengers who probably think I’m attempting to cut in line. As if I’d try something like that with a bunch of tired, cranky New Yorkers. I’d get my throat slit.

  I’m nearly at the front of the line when I hear the familiar voice:

  “Look, I can’t do this. I told you, I’m not able to stand up. Not for ten seconds, not for one second. I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Sir.” It’s the voice of the man I’d just talked to. “It’s impossible to scan you thoroughly while you’re sitting. I can help support you while you stand up. We don’t expect you to stand independently.”

  “And I don’t feel comfortable with that.” I can see Will now, staring up at the burly TSA guy. He’s wearing a white dress shirt and has clearly just come from the office. But other than that, he looks fairly rumpled—his hair is tousled and his collar is half turned up. He’s got those circles under his eyes. “I mean, can’t you just frisk me in my wheelchair? That’s what they’ve always done in the past.”

  “Sir,” the man says again, “if you’re refusing our screening—”