“You’ll live,” I replied bitterly. I had one eye on Rachel as she maneuvered through Patrick’s horny, drunk friends at the bar. “You need to get your shit together.”
Patrick laughed and leaned back in the booth. “I have my shit together, man.”
We sat in silence until Rachel returned. “Here’s a Coke for Patrick and two waters.”
Her ring caught the light hanging over the table and flashed in Patrick’s face. His eyes went wide. He looked angry but it melted into a sarcastic grin. He sipped from his soda glass. Every minute without alcohol was bringing him closer back to sober. “You know why you have your shit together, man?” He stared at me.
“Not really,” I replied, biting back my real feelings out of respect for Rachel. I put my arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer toward me. Her body stiffened.
“Because you have everything. Hell, if I had billions, the admiration of the entire city, and that woman right there on my arm? I’d be a happy man.”
He was interrupted by the screech of the microphone. Three of Patrick’s buddies had stumbled up to the karaoke mic and were starting the opening lines of some Kid Rock song. Patrick looked over at his buddies and cupped his hands around his mouth. “FREEBIRD!” He yelled, laughing uproariously. He turned back to Rachel. “He proposed tonight, huh?”
Rachel didn’t reply. She had a stony look on her face and hadn’t warmed to my arm around her at all.
“He proposed and he brings you to this shit hole?” Patrick drank heartily from his soda glass. “Jesus Christ. You deserve so much fucking better.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying, Patrick,” Rachel hissed quietly.
Patrick grinned. “Remember our second date? When we did karaoke? What did we sing?”
“I don’t remember,” Rachel replied.
“You do remember. I know you do. Because sometimes the song comes on when all three of us are driving somewhere and you always look at me. Don’t lie to me, Rachel.”
Rachel squirmed. “It’s that Backstreet Boys song. The ‘As Long As You Love Me’ one.”
Patrick raised his hands in the air and stood up. He put his hand out to Rachel. “Let’s sing it. One more time for the happy bride-to-be. Just for old times’ sake.”
Rachel didn’t put her hand out.
“Come on, Rach, you’re no fun. Let’s do it. Callie doesn’t have to know.”
“She said no, asshole,” I said, feeling my blood pressure rise.
Patrick laughed and leaned closer to Rachel. “You told me once you could never be with a man who didn’t sing karaoke for you. Did this asshole sing yet?” Patrick laughed at her lack of response. “Listen, I’m going to sing for you.”
“Patrick, no. Stop-“
But he was already halfway to the sound booth. His friends had petered out from singing and had wandered off the stage mid-song, the lyrics running for no one.
“Oh God,” Rachel muttered. “He’s going to make a total ass of himself.”
“He didn’t need karaoke for that,” I pointed out, finishing off my gin and tonic.
Patrick yelled the song title at the karaoke host, who looked grateful to have a reason to end the Kid Rock background track. The he grabbed the mic, only a little unsteady on his feet. “Ladies and gentleman, the last time I sang this song in public, I was on the best date of my entire life. Rach, this is for you.” The karaoke track started up and Patrick took a deep breath. He was missing every third word, but he wasn’t a bad singer. His friends were cheering him on, but the rest of the bar was booing him already.
I looked at Rachel who seemed like she was going to die of secondhand embarrassment. I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to do this, but if anyone could get me singing in public, it was the love of my life. “Scoot,” I said to her.
“What?” She asked me, bewildered.
“Up, out of the booth. Let me past you.”
She stood up and let me by her. I went to the karaoke host and asked them to start the song over. She had to set down her empty martini glass to push the button. I hopped onstage and put my arm around Patrick. “This goes out to a very special woman. My buddy Patrick here needs some help, so I thought I’d join in. Ready, Patrick?” Patrick looked shocked but there was a glimmer of gratitude in his eyes that caught me entirely by surprise.
The music started up, and Patrick and I started singing. He seemed emboldened either by my support or from sheer competitive machismo. He was hitting the words and the notes. And so was I. It was my deepest secret that no one knew: I could actually sing. We made it to the chorus and I stared as hard as I could at Rachel. She was smiling and blushing.
I saw a few people had actually pulled out their phones to record us. I took the harmonies. We didn’t sound half bad together. I worried for a second that this would end up on the Internet, but no one in the audience seemed to recognize me with the bill of my hat casting a dark shadow over my eyes. We got to the end and threw in a few patented BSB dance moves.
The crowd went wild. “Encore! Encore! Encore!” they chanted.
I held my hands up in denial of the request and hopped off the stage. I turned around to see if Patrick needed any help. My stomach dropped as I saw him pick up the microphone again.
“Rachel. You never called me back. If you had called me back, we could have been together. It was supposed to be us.” He looked like he was going to cry. Then he turned his gaze and a dose of fury over to me. “But you’re with this billionaire asshole here. Zane fucking Reid. Alright. How am I supposed to compete with that? No man can.”
The crowd whispered; the three people filming on their iPhones had now multiplied by a factor of five. I ducked my head and walked as quickly as I could over to Rachel. But it was too late. A woman in her mid-fifties grabbed my hat as I walked by.
“It is him! It’s Zane Reid!” The crowd started to swarm me. I left my hat behind and hurried to Rachel. I threw a fifty-dollar bill on the table and took her hand. She looked like she was going to cry. I put a protective arm around her and hurried her outside to my Land Rover. She barely made it inside before people had me cornered. I locked the door with the remote key palmed in my hand. “Folks, I’m happy to sign autographs if people want that. But I only have a few minutes, okay? Then I need to get back to my evening.”
“With your fiancée?” Everyone in this crowd of two dozen seemed to have their camera phones recording.
I swallowed. “Yes, with my fiancée.” Someone handed me a sharpie and suddenly I was signing phones, t-shirts, arms, and the clothes of several people who went out for a night on the town wearing Bears paraphernalia. “Please, no vertical video,” I said to a short woman in her twenties. “You should know better. If you’re going to film me and sell my story to the news, at least film horizontal footage.” She giggled at me.
“I’ve always hoped that I’d get to meet you one day,” she purred as she pulled down her t-shirt so I could sign the top of her breast.
“Well, it’s your lucky day,” I said sarcastically. I moved the marker up and signed her collarbone instead. She pouted at me but I ignored her and moved on.
It ended up being more like half an hour, what with half of the people drunk and wanting to tell the famous Zane Reid how I’d changed their lives by throwing a ball to other grown men wearing tight pants. I was finally able to beg off and make my way into the driver’s seat. I locked the doors six times for good measure. I turned to Rachel, holding my breath and expecting the worst.
She had a sad smile on her face; but it was a smile nonetheless. “That was kind of you to do that for those people,” she said softly.
She didn’t need to say the next words. I said them for her. “You’re going to have to keep your sister away from the news for the next few days.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
RACHEL
I barely slept from tossing and turning with a mixture of excitement and negative anticipation. The big party was tomorrow night, and in the
meantime, I had to wake up and face my sister. Keeping her away from the news was probably a foolish endeavor. Her friends would see the video. The entire world would. But I had to hold onto hope. I finally climbed out of bed at five in the morning and showered. I toyed with the idea of leaving the engagement ring on my nightstand and not telling Callie about my engagement.
Then I realized it would be a good distraction. Besides that, there was a small chance that the news would cut out Patrick’s part. An infinitesimally small chance considering that it added another layer of intrigue – Zane Reid’s New Fiancée Has Unrequited Lover. But the chance was still there.
I stared at the ring some more. Zane had been right. I wouldn’t have chosen the ring for myself, but it was perfect. It felt like a part of me that I was becoming and growing into. It was a simple solitaire diamond with a low profile, encircled by tinier diamonds. The main stone was at least three carats, but the low profile would keep me from catching it on everything and popping my gloves in the lab. It was perfection.
I pulled my hair into a low, dowdy ponytail and pulled on the most tattered t-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms that I could find. I waited until I heard the click of the coffee maker being turned on in the kitchen before I left my room. I tried to look cheery. “Morning!” I called out.
I realized at once this was a terrible strategy. Callie looked at me suspiciously. “Morning,” she replied slowly. She stepped over and felt the back of my forehead with her hand. “Hm, strange. You don’t have a fever.” She flipped her perfectly curled blonde hair over her shoulder and pinched both of my cheeks. “You feel like my sister. You look like my sister. Or at least some realistic alien facsimile of her. But you don’t sound like my sister.” She looked at the clock above the stove. “I didn’t even know that Rachel Cobb existed before seven in the morning. I thought you just sort of beamed into space between four and six fifty-nine in the morning and then reappeared.”
“Ha ha,” I retorted drily. “Breakfast? I’ll cook it.”
Callie grabbed my hand that hung by my waist. “You’re acting really, really weird, Rachel Anne,” she said in her thickest Georgia accent.
I pulled my hand away from her and opened the fridge door. “You sound like mom,” I replied. “Now you are freaking me out.”
Callie’s jaw dropped. I saw her eyes go to my ring finger on my left hand; it was still resting on the door of the fridge.
“Hell fire save matches, fuck a duck and see what hatches,” she whispered. My sister never, ever cursed. “What on EARTH is on your hand? An ice cube?” She grabbed it and held it up to her face. “Oh my word. Oh my word. Oh my word. You’re getting married?” She shrieked and hugged me, jumping up and down. She grabbed my hands and we bounced and squealed with excitement. “You’re getting married! You’re getting married! To – Zane? To Zane Reid?”
I nodded excitedly.
“Oh my word. Oh my word. Oh my word,” Callie repeated. We finally stopped bouncing. “How did he propose?”
“At the Adler,” I said. “In the main theater. Under a simulation of the Milky Way.”
Callie clapped a hand over her mouth. “That is so romantic.”
I blushed at the memory. “It really is.”
Callie grabbed her phone. “You know what? I’m calling off work today. Screw it. We’re going wedding dress shopping just for fun. And you’re not going to complain, alright?”
I took this as an extraordinary sign of good luck from the gods above. “When was the last time you played hooky?”
Callie shrugged and dialed. “Probably the mid-nineties.” She held up a finger. “Hey, Margot. I’m taking the day off. Hold my calls, rearrange my schedule, cancel meetings. I’m out of the office today.” She paused. “No, I’m not sick! I’m just-what? What do you mean did I see the news?”
My stomach dropped and with it I nearly let go of the dozen eggs I’d pulled out of the fridge. It hadn’t occurred to me that the video might already have been aired on television. Callie hung up the phone and tapped into it furiously. “Callie,” I said guiltily. “Wait.”
She ignored me and hit play on a video. I heard Zane declaring his love for me, and then his and Patrick’s warbling voices coming through the little speakers on her phone. I swallowed hard. The song ended. Please cut away. Please cut away. Please-
Patrick’s unsteady voice rang out through the video. “Rachel. You never called me back. If you had called me back, we could have been together. It was supposed to be us.”
The look on Callie’s face made me want to die. This was raw footage. No need to editorialize. “Res ipsa loquitur. The thing speaks for itself,” Callie whispered. There were tears in her eyes. She was trying to blink them back. “That’s why Patrick didn’t come home last night. He was with you.”
I shook my head. “No, no. I came home right after midnight. Zane dropped me off. I don’t know where Patrick is-“
Callie laughed darkly and took a few deep breaths, her perfectly made up face seething. “I need my coffee container,” she said absently. She opened the cabinet and went about her usual morning routine of pouring coffee into her travel mug. “Even if he wasn’t with you, he was with you, Rachel. I knew it. I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. I’ve known it for years. He’s always loved you more than he’s loved me.” She said all of these things matter-of-factly. I found myself wishing that she were yelling. It would have been much less painful than this.
“We never did anything, Callie. We went on three dates but I wasn’t interested in him. And then he met you, and it was wonderful and-“
“And you never told me that you went on three dates. Did you fuck him? Did you fuck my husband? Were you a virgin other than Patrick’s dick inside of you? Did you purposely write that out of history so I wouldn’t ask you questions that would lead to incriminating answers?”
I shook my head, feeling the full blast of prosecutor-style Callie. If this was what she was like in the courtroom, no wonder she had made partner so quickly. This was terrifying. “We never had sex. I swear. I was a virgin until I met Zane. Patrick and I only ever kissed. That was it. Three dates, most of which were in public until an end-of-the-night kiss.”
Callie nodded robotically and pushed past me into the entryway. “My husband has been acting more and more strangely over the last few months. Now I know why.” Her fingers hovered over the key hooks. She grabbed my set of storm trooper keys and tossed them at me. “Get out,” she said flatly. “I want you gone by the time I get home from work. I don’t want to see you in my house ever again.”
Tears were burning in my eyes. “Callie, please. Please. I love you. You’re my sister. Let’s talk about this.”
She grabbed her own silver key fob. “Fuck you, Rachel.”
And then she stormed out the front door, leaving me with my tears and the total, earth-shattering silence of an empty house.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ZANE
“I’m just saying, it would make the most sense for you to just go ahead and move in with me permanently.” I hauled suitcases out of the back of my Land Rover and put them on the luggage cart I’d borrowed from the bellhop.
“I don’t want to do that until we’re married,” Rachel said.
I grinned and pulled her over to me. “Then let’s get married right this second.” Rachel rolled her eyes. I kissed her on the mouth. A car honked from the driveway behind us. “Fuck off,” I screamed back at them.
The valet came over. “Mr. Reid, you are blocking the very front here. I’m sorry to disturb but it would be great if you could move your vehicle. Or I could move it, of course.”
I smiled at the kid. “We’re done here,” I said, handing him the key and pushing the metal baggage cart into the lobby of my building. Tourists and residents were milling around.
“You’re joking about the wedding, right?” Rachel asked.
I grinned at her as we stepped into my private penthouse elevator. “I’m not, actually. You want to
get married today? We’ll do it.”
Rachel sighed. “Honestly, that’s the last thing I want to do right now. I really just want to take a long, hot bath and then sleep until the party tomorrow.” She slapped her forehead and groaned. “Oh God, the party.”
I grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “One thing at a time, my love. One thing at a time.”
I unloaded Rachel’s’ belongings in my bedroom while Michael drew a bath for her. Rachel had tried to insist on doing it herself but Michael wouldn’t hear of it. I heard them talking in the bathroom as I unpacked her things.
“You just wait and see, Ms. Rachel. I promise you things will turn around faster than you can blink. It’s how it always happens. Darkest before the dawn and all that.”
I heard Rachel sniffling and the whip of fabric. I knew that Michael had procured one of his signature starched white hankies with his initials embroidered in the corner. It almost went without saying. “Thank you, Michael,” she said. “And please, just call me Rachel.”
Michael chortled. “I’m getting closer to that. Maybe next month. I’ll put it on my list. Is there anything else I can get for you?” He emerged a moment later and shut the double doors to the bathroom with a loud click. “She’ll be alright,” he said to me. “Don't you worry. I’ve called down to the kitchens to bring her up a miniature version of her favorite pizza along with a chocolate malt milkshake.”
“Thank you, Michael,” I said earnestly, folding up the last of Rachel’s lacy underwear and tucking it in the dresser drawer. “Do you think you could do a few more things for me? For tomorrow.”
By the time I finished telling Michael the instructions, the pizza and milkshake had arrived. I took it into Rachel, who was napping in the water. I shook her gently awake. She beamed at the sight of the food. I was happy to see she was still wearing her ring on her finger. The soap bubbles formed a puffy, foamy crown around the diamond as she reached for the pizza.
I stripped off my clothes and stepped into the water. “Be my guest,” Rachel said sarcastically. I grabbed her ankles under the water and started massaging her feet. She closed her eyes and moaned with pleasure.
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