The Truth About Ever After

by Rachel Schurig

  “You didn’t think we should discuss it first?”

  I stared at him. Crap.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said, throwing the papers down on the dresser. “I seriously do not believe you.”

  “Eric—”

  “Is that what tonight was? You were going to try to get me into bed so you could get pregnant again? Without even discussing it with me?”

  “No!” I cried, feeling close to tears. “I mean, yes, I did think maybe we could try again tonight.” His face looked thunderous. “But I was going to talk to you about it first!”

  He looked at me, lying there in the bed, and snorted. “Yeah? When were we gonna talk, exactly?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, the tears coming now. I could see how this would look to him and he was totally right to be angry. “Eric, I really was planning to talk to you about it. But then you started kissing me, and you were so sweet and wonderful. It slipped my mind—”

  “Slipped your mind?” he yelled. “It slipped your mind?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” I cried. “I just meant, you know, you distracted me. I stopped thinking about babies and started thinking about you. About wanting you.”

  “You know what, Kiki? I have a really hard time believing that’s true.”

  “Eric,” I gasped. He had never called me a liar before, not ever. We were always honest with each other.

  He pointed at the papers on the dresser. “That shit is insane, Kiki,” he said, his voice cold, derisive. “It’s only been a month. A month. We are not ready for this, not by a long shot.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered again, tears streaming down my face. I couldn’t believe that everything had gone so wrong so quickly. How stupid could I possibly be?

  He waved his hands as if to dismiss me. “You know what, I have a lot of work I should be doing.”

  “No,” I said, sitting up on my knees. “Eric, please. Come to bed. We can talk about this—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “I don’t want to talk at all. God, Kiki. All these weeks I’ve been feeling so bad for you, so sad for us both.” He pointed again at the stack of papers. “And all this time this is what you’ve been worried about? Trying to scheme up a way of getting pregnant again?”

  I felt all the color drain from my face. I got that I had messed up, that I should have talked to Eric a week ago. But how could he be so cruel?

  He must have realized that he’d gone a step too far, because he took a deep breath, his face softening. “I’m sorry,” he sighed, running a hand through his hair. “That was uncalled for.” His eyes met mine. “I’m just very upset right now. And… hurt.”

  My heart constricted. I had hurt him, after everything we had already been through this month. I didn’t imagine there was any way I could feel any worse.

  I was wrong.

  “I’m gonna crash on the couch,” he said, turning away from me. “I just…I just want to be alone. I’m sorry.”

  “Okay,” I said, my voice small. I wanted to go to him, to apologize and make him see that I hadn’t meant for it to be this way, that he really had made me lose my head before. But he was already walking out of the room, leaving me, for the first time in our marriage, to sleep alone.

  Chapter Twenty

  I couldn’t remember ever feeling so awful. The miscarriage had been terrible, but at least then I’d had Eric by my side to help me get through. Now I felt more alone than I ever had in my life, even worse than those first terrible days of junior high, when I had been the new girl everyone made fun of.

  To make matters even worse, I couldn’t even tell Jen why Eric and I were fighting. One more thing to hide from her. I spent my days at work, forcing myself to stay busy so I could pretend my bad mood was based on stress. Sarah’s wedding was coming along. We had already booked the venue, the country club both our families belonged to, and the caterer—two of the biggest hurdles in any wedding. Up next was dress shopping, a day that I was completely dreading.

  After that first night, Eric had come back to our bed, but he was still cold and angry toward me. It was a terrible feeling, knowing that he didn’t trust me, that he thought I would try to trick him into a pregnancy.

  And then, four days after our biggest fight ever, we had another one.

  “There’s an interesting message for you on the machine,” Eric said as soon as I walked in the door that night. I had stayed at work late with Jen, going over our options for flowers for Sarah’s wedding. There were several vendors that we liked to use and each had submitted fantastic arrangements for us to choose from. It had been a fun day, working so closely with Jen, but I was exhausted.

  “Oh, yeah?” I asked absentmindedly, picking up the mail from the counter and flipping through it.

  “Yeah. Sarah Vandermark called. Apparently she seems to be under the impression that you’re planning her wedding.”

  I froze. Shit. I hadn’t yet found a way to tell Eric that piece of news.

  “I take it by your reaction that Sarah is not, in fact, out of her mind,” he continued drily. “Which would mean that you are planning her wedding.”

  I looked up at him warily. His expression was hard.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I don’t know, Eric,” I said, feeling even more tired than I had when I left the office. “Maybe because I was worried how you were going to react.”

  “Is this how we’re going to be, Kiki?” he asked, sounding almost as tired as me. “Are we going to be this couple?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about keeping things from each other. Not talking. Not being honest.”

  “It’s a client, Eric,” I said, setting the mail down on the counter and walking past him out into the living room. “Do you tell me every little thing about your job?”

  “This is not a little thing and you know it,” he said, following me. “You know how I feel about that woman. Why on earth are you going through with this?”

  Something in me suddenly snapped, and I spun around to face him. “Because my sister is having a baby,” I said, “and is going to be out on maternity leave. So we need the money, okay? Do you think I like working for Sarah? Do you think it’s been easy for me?”

  “Kiki—”

  “Just shut up, Eric,” I yelled. I saw surprise flicker across his face. “You have no idea what this has been like for me. Trying to make decisions based on what’s best for Jen and her baby when… when…” Without even realizing it I had started to cry, big racking sobs that shook my entire body. Without another word, Eric reached for me and pulled me into his arms.

  “Everything is awful,” I cried, wanting to wrap my arms around him but feeling angry at him at the same time. “I have to be happy for Jen, and think about what she needs, but that means I have to work with someone I hate. I should be worrying about our baby right now, not Jen’s.”

  Eric pulled me down onto the couch so I was sitting in his lap. I buried my head in his chest.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, brushing my hair back from my face. “I’m so sorry. You’re right, you should be thinking about our baby. It’s not fair.”

  “It’s not,” I cried, knowing I was close to hysteria now. “It sucks!”

  His chest rumbled a little bit with his quiet laughter. “It sucks big time.”

  “And then you got so mad at me—”

  “Kiki, I had every right to get mad at you,” he said, his voice quiet but firm. “I felt like you were manipulating me. That’s not the way to bring a child into the world.”

  “I know I should have talked to you,” I said, my tears increasing again. “I know I got way too obsessed with all that fertility stuff without talking to you. But I swear, I wasn’t planning to sleep with you just to get pregnant. I wanted to tell you what I was thinking. But you had to be all sexy, kissing me and carrying me around.”

  “You think I’m sexy?” he asked.

  His ton
e made me burst out laughing, even in the middle of my tears. “I’m trying to explain,” I said, hitting his chest.

  “I know,” he said, grabbing my hand and holding it against his heart. “I know you weren’t trying to trick me.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. I could handle the rest of it if I knew Eric and I were okay.

  “But that doesn’t mean what you did was cool. We need to talk about it. Here, sit up and blow your nose. I’ll get you some water.”

  “Don’t go,” I said, holding him tightly. “Not yet.”

  I sat up in his lap, taking the tissue he offered and blowing my nose. After I wiped my eyes I felt a little more in control.

  “Kiki, you have to stop this obsessive stuff,” he said, looking into my eyes. “There’s just no reason for it. When you get like that it makes me feel like we’re not in it together, you know?”

  I looked down, feeling bad. He had said similar things to me before, during wedding planning, about the house hunt. Why couldn’t I learn from my mistakes?

  “We have to be a team,” he said firmly. “It’s the only way this is going to work. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said, nodding enthusiastically. “I promise I’ll be better.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t need to be better. You just need to communicate with me.” He grinned suddenly. “That way I can talk you down when you get too crazy.”

  I gave him a watery smile back, but his face hardened. “I still don’t like this Sarah crap,” he said.

  I swallowed. “I don’t like it much myself,” I said. I considered telling him that it was her pot-stirring that had made me so crazy about getting pregnant again in the first place. I knew it would make him mad all over again, but we had just promised to be honest with each other. Surely that didn’t mean every little tiny thing though, right?

  “Jen’s doing most of the work with her,” I said, deciding not to go there right then. “You know how she is with weddings. It’s nice having an ally—Jen thinks she’s about as awful as you do.”

  “Jen’s a smart girl,” he said darkly. Then he sighed. “I just think this is a terrible time to be exposing yourself to her crap. You’re having a hard enough time as it is.”

  I kissed the corner of his mouth softly. “I’m a big girl,” I said. “But it’s nice of you to worry about me.”

  “I always worry about you. Even when we were fighting, I couldn’t stop thinking about you, wondering how you were.”

  “You’re a very sweet husband, Eric Thompson,” I said, kissing the other corner of his mouth.

  “And you’re a very sweet wife.” He looked down at me for a moment, his eyes darkening. “Could we maybe pick up where we left off the other night?” he asked, his voice low. “No baby stuff. Just you and me.”

  I grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  I had hoped everything would get back to normal after that. Fighting with Eric was something I did not want to experience again. And things were better, when we were together. Unfortunately, that was happening less and less as the weeks passed.

  Plans for Sarah’s wedding were in full swing. I was spending more and more time at the office, calling vendors, arranging appointments, and trying to find staff to take care of all the details. For the first time, I really appreciated how much work Jen had put into my wedding.

  To complicate matters, Jen was suffering from some serious morning sickness. Unfortunately, the sickness did not limit itself to the morning. It seemed she was constantly running for the bathroom or the nearest trash can. She was surviving solely on saltine crackers, which seemed to be the only thing she could keep down.

  “It wasn’t like this for Ginny,” she told me weakly one afternoon in early May. She had just returned to the conference room from a particularly long dry heaving spell in the bathroom and looked shaken and weak. “She felt great by the time she got to the second trimester. I don’t understand why I’m still so sick. I’m nearly five months along.”

  “It’s different for everyone,” I soothed, rubbing her back. “Try not to worry. Hey, did you guys decide on a nursery theme?” I asked, trying to get her mind off how crummy she felt.

  Jen smiled weakly. “Matt is trying to talk me into a sports theme.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “You don’t even know if it’s a boy.”

  “He says his baby will be into sports whether it’s a boy or a girl.”

  I laughed, missing Matt suddenly. Jen and I had been so busy at work I hadn’t seen them socially in a while.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to find out?” I asked, giving her my best convincing look. “Wouldn’t it be so much more fun if you knew?”

  “I want to be surprised,” she said firmly. “And those puppy dog eyes of yours aren’t going to make me change my mind.”

  I affected a long-suffering sigh, then grinned at her. “You can’t blame me for trying.”

  Jen looked down at her phone, checking the time. “We should probably go. We don’t want them to get there before us.”

  I whimpered a little. “Can’t we send Barbara instead?”

  “You’re a big girl, Kiki,” Jen urged, standing up and gathering her things. “You can handle a little wedding dress shopping.”

  The drizzly weather matched my mood perfectly as Jen and I set out from the office. We were meeting Sarah and her mother at the most upscale bridal boutique in town.

  “I notice you haven’t arranged a limo,” I told her as we climbed into my SUV. I loved my car. My mother was forever telling me to upgrade, as I’d had it for four years now, but I refused. It was the first thing I had bought with my own pay. In luxury, it was a step down from the car my dad had given me in college, but I didn’t care. It was all mine.

  Jen snorted as she fastened her seat belt. “Yeah, I didn’t think Sarah deserved the whole Kiki Barker experience.”

  I laughed. Jen and I had looked at this same dress salon for my own wedding. She had arranged an entire day for me and my bridesmaids—a limo, champagne and muffins for the ride, a fancy lunch. It was one of my favorite memories of wedding planning—which probably explained why I was so happy we would not be repeating it for the likes of Sarah.

  We reached the boutique ahead of the Vandermarks. As we stood on the sidewalk waiting, I felt irrationally angry that Sarah and her mother were late.

  “It’s raining out here,” I muttered.

  “A slight drizzle,” Jen countered.

  “Still. You shouldn’t be out here in the rain. What if you get sick?”

  “Being pregnant doesn’t mean I’m going to be hurt by a little rain.”

  “I don’t care. You shouldn’t have to stand here in the cold. When’s it going to be spring, anyhow? This rain is killing me. It’s like the weather is never going to turn.”

  “Kiki,” Jen said, laughing. “You’re spiraling, hon. You’re letting your bad mood about the Vandermarks turn into a bad mood about everything. Let it go.”

  Before I could argue I heard the unmistakable sound of Sarah’s high-pitched voice. “Kiki!” she called, hurrying down the street toward us, her mother at her side. “Jen!”

  “Hello,” I called back, waving. I took quick notice of their matching Burberry raincoats and felt my spirits lift. Her mother hadn’t changed much, always trying to be one of the girls. I may come across as silly and spoiled sometimes, but at least my mother and I never wore matching clothes.

  We entered the warmth of the bridal boutique and my spirits lifted even more. This salon was beautiful and the selection was top-notch. I absolutely loved wedding dresses. Maybe this day wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  “I’m still not sure about this,” Sarah said, her voice disdainful. “Won’t I get a better quality if I have my dress designed for me?”

  I met Jen’s eye, trying not to roll my own, but she was smiling professionally at the Vandermarks. “That’s always an option,” she said. “But I figured we should see what’s read
ily available first. I promise, the dresses in this boutique are the highest quality and will be made personally for you if you choose one.”

  “ ‘Readily available’ are the key words there, Jen,” Sarah said, rolling her eyes. “I hardly want to wear something that a hundred other girls will be wearing this summer. I mean, if I had to count the number of times I saw that same tired Amsale dress a few years ago. It was ridiculous.”

  Jen looked at me and gave me a half smile, and I did my best not to pull Sarah’s hair. I would have bet half my trust fund that she was referring to my Amsale wedding dress. At least I didn’t look like a starved giraffe in my dress, I thought. Stupid brat.

  “It would be rude to cancel the appointment,” Mrs. Vandermark said. “We can always schedule a trip to New York if you decide you want something designed. Daddy will make sure you get what you want, don’t worry, sweetie.”

  Our bridal consultant came out at that moment, and Jen and I sent Sarah back with her while the three of us went to wait on the floor. We were shown to a comfortable seating area, and Sarah’s mom and I were given champagne. I did my best not to drink mine too fast, though I couldn’t help but think it would calm my nerves.

  “It’s so sweet of you to be here, ladies,” Mrs. Vandermark said. “It’s so hard on Sarah that Beth is indisposed during all this planning.” The tone of her voice made it clear that she thought it the height of inconsideration that Beth had chosen her daughter’s engagement as a time to give birth.

  “We’re happy to be here,” Jen said. “It’s part of our job.”

  A few painful moments of small talk later, Sarah returned in her first dress, a blinged-out ball gown with a massive skirt and train. I held my breath, anxious to see what she and her mother had to say. In my opinion, it was just terrible, completely the wrong thing for her. Sarah was tall and thin, almost angular, and the dress seemed to hang off of her, even though the consultant had clearly pinned it in at the waist.

  “Ooh, Sarah, you’re gorgeous,” her mother cooed.