After We Fall

by Melanie Harlow

  After We Fall

  Melanie Harlow

  MH Publishing

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  36. Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Want more in this world?

  Are you a Harlot yet?

  Never miss a Harlow thing!

  Also by Melanie Harlow

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2016 by Melanie Harlow

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover Design: Letitia Hasser, Romantic Book Affairs

  http://designs.romanticbookaffairs.com/

  Cover Model: Joseph Cannata

  https://www.instagram.com/josephcannats/

  Editing: Tamara Mataya

  http://tamaramataya.blogspot.com/

  Publicity: Social Butterfly PR

  http://www.socialbutterflypr.net/

  ISBN: 978-0-9983101-0-7

  For J & C

  Your love and courage inspired me.

  Second chances are not given to make things right, but are given to prove that we could be even better after we fall.

  Unknown

  One

  Margot

  I didn’t throw the pie.

  And really, I think that’s what everyone should be focused on: the supreme restraint, the Buddhist-like control, the fucking regal nature with which I glanced at the award-winning Cheery Cherry Delight and decided against it. (Just so you know, that was only because of the shirt he wore. Furious as I was, even I could not bring myself to desecrate a snowy white, crisply starched Brooks Brothers button-down. I’m not a monster.)

  Not that hurling a tray full of scones—one at a time, with admittedly poor aim—at your ex-boyfriend is behavior to be commended. I completely understand that. And anyone who knows me will tell you it was utterly out of character. I, Margot Thurber Lewiston, pride myself on my ability to control my emotions. Maintain grace under pressure. Keep calm and carry the fuck on. My composure rarely slips, and it certainly doesn’t slip in a room full of donors to my father’s Senatorial campaign.

  Honestly, I’ve never thrown food in my life. I’ve never thrown much of anything, which is probably why I had a bit of trouble hitting the target (I have apologized profusely to Mrs. Biltmore about the singed linen. Also the Belleek vase), and I certainly don’t throw things indoors.

  Because I was raised with manners. Good old-fashioned, old-money manners. We believe in modesty, courtesy, and—above all—discretion.

  No matter what, we do not Cause a Scene.

  According to my mother, Margaret Whitney Thurber Lewiston (known to all as Muffy), nothing says poor taste—or worse, new money—like Causing a Scene.

  She tells me I have caused one that people will be talking about for years to come.

  This is probably true.

  I can explain.

  It was a text no one wants from an ex-boyfriend at one in the morning on a Tuesday night. Or any night, really.

  Tripp: I need to see you. I’m outside.

  Me: It’s so late. Can we talk tomorrow?

  Tripp: No, it has to be tonight. Please. I need you.

  Frowning at my phone in the dark, I wondered what this could be about. We’d broken up well over a year ago, and though we’d maintained a cordial if stiff relationship since then, we hadn’t had a private, in-person conversation since the night we split. While I was considering how to politely handle this request, he texted again.

  Tripp: Please, Gogo. It’s important.

  I softened slightly at the nickname, not because I liked it that much, but because it reminded me of better days. We’d known each other a long time, our families were close, and once upon a time, I’d thought we’d spend the rest of our lives together. I could be gracious.

  Me: OK. Give me a minute. Front door.

  I used the minute to yank out my ponytail, put on a bra under the Vassar t-shirt I’d been sleeping in, and slip into a pair of pink silk pajama pants. A heavy summer rain drummed against the roof of my townhouse, so I hurried down the stairs to open the front door, but of course, Tripp was perfectly dry.

  “Hey,” I said, standing back as he closed his dripping umbrella and entered the foyer. Hot, humid air followed him in, and I quickly shut the door against the heat, then snapped on the light.

  “Hey.” He set the umbrella in the stand near the door and ran a hand through his neatly trimmed dark blond hair. He wore a pink button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and it was tucked in to a pair of white shorts with kelly green whales embroidered on them. He had pants with little embroidered whales on them too, in multiple colors. My eyes lingered on his familiar Sperry deck shoes. No socks.

  “Thanks for letting me in,” he said.

  “What’s going on?” I twisted my long hair over one shoulder and crossed my arms over my chest.

  “Can we sit down? I need to talk to you.” On his breath, I detected a whiff of scotch, and upon closer inspection of his face, I noticed his eyes were bloodshot.

  “Can’t we talk right here?”

  He fidgeted. “Look, I know the way things happened with us wasn’t cool.”

  “That was last year. I’m over it, Tripp.” It was mostly true. Sometimes I still felt a tug of sadness when I thought about the three years we’d spent together and the hopes I’d had we’d be engaged or even married by now, but my therapist had me mostly convinced it wasn’t so much about the loss of him as it was the loss of the dream life I’d envisioned for us. Secretly, I still wasn’t sure what the difference was.

  “Well—what if I’m not?”

  I shook my head, taken aback. “What?”

  “What if I’m not over it, or over us?”

  “What do you mean? That makes no sense, Tripp. You were over us before I was. It was you who said you didn’t want to marry me. I was ready.”

  “I never said that. It wasn’t personal like that.” His thick slab of a chin jutted forward. “I just said I wasn’t sure I wanted to get married.”

  “Well, I was sure. And I wasn’t going to wait around for you to decide once and for all. I moved on, Tripp. And so did you.” Moving on was a bit of a stretch for me, since I hadn’t dated anyone seriously since the split. But he’d been seen around town with a whole slew of sorority girls. Lately he’d been dating someone my friends called Margot 2.0, since she was basically a younger, blonder, bigger-breasted version of me. (But according to Muffy, none of that mattered because she was new money; i.e., completely unsuitable in the eyes of Tripp’s parents, Mimi and Deuce.) “What about your girlfriend? Does she know you’re here?”

  “Amber?” He frowned. �
�No, she doesn’t. She thinks I’m with my father, and I was with him earlier. He…” The frown deepened, and Tripp swallowed hard.

  “He what?” For the first time, I started to get a little worried. Deuce was over seventy, with high blood pressure and a penchant for thick steaks and stiff drinks. He’d had his third heart attack at the end of last year. “Is your father OK?”

  “Yes. He’s fine. But—” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his wet shoes squeaking on the wood floor. It occurred to me I had never seen Tripp this nervous or uncomfortable. On any other day, he was Mr. Confident, especially after some good scotch—brimming with all the entitled self-assurance of a handsome, wealthy, Ivy League-educated white man.

  “Spit it out, Tripp,” I said, stifling a yawn. “Otherwise we can talk about this tomorrow. I’m tired, and I have to work in the morning. I’ll call you a car if you can’t drive home, because it smells a little like you’ve been—”

  “Marry me, Margot!” He threw himself down on his knees in front of me. “I want to get married. To you.”

  “What?” My heart was thundering in my chest. Was this for real?

  “Marry me. Please. I’m so sorry for everything.” Wrapping his arms around my legs, he buried his face in my knees.

  I thumped on his shoulders. “For God’s sake, Tripp. You’re drunk. Get up.”

  “I’m not drunk. I know what I’m saying. I have to marry you.”

  I stopped hitting him and stared down at the top of his head. “What do you mean, you have to marry me? Why?”

  He froze for a moment, then recovered. “I have to marry you because I’ve realized you’re the only one for me. We’re perfect for each other. You’ve always been the one, Margot. Always.”

  OK, it was a fairly pathetic display, what with the squeaky deck shoes and the bloodshot eyes and the whale shorts, but I sort of felt for him. Tripp had never been great at declaring his feelings. I wasn’t particularly a champ at it, either. “Tripp, please. Stand up. Let’s talk about this.”

  “First say you’ll marry me. Look, I have a ring,” he said, as if he’d just remembered he’d brought one. From his pocket he pulled out a small black box, his fingers fumbling a bit as he opened it.

  I gasped and covered my mouth with my hands. The huge, brilliant cut stone winked at me from its slender diamond band. It had to be at least two carats, with gorgeous color and clarity.

  “Put it on,” he urged, taking it from its velvet cushion.

  I wanted to. God, I wanted to. But I didn’t want to marry Tripp. It would be wrong to put the ring on when I knew I was going to turn him down, right?

  Because I had to turn him down. Despite what he said, we weren’t right for each other anymore, were we? I didn’t love him anymore.

  Maybe I should try it on just to be sure, I told myself. I mean, what if I put it on and suddenly the hall was filled with music and rainbows and sunshine? What if I still loved him and just didn’t know it? Biting my lip, I held out my left hand and let him slide the ring onto my finger. Perfect fit. I shivered as he got to his feet.

  But there was no music. No rainbows. No sunshine. Just the rain outside, the sound of those squeaky deck shoes, the puddle they were leaving on my nice wood floor, and those infernal whale shorts.

  Sighing, I looked at it on my hand one last time before starting to pull it off. “It’s beautiful, Tripp, but I can’t—”

  He covered my hands with his, preventing me from removing the ring. “Don’t say that. Please don’t say that. You have to marry me.”

  Annoyed, I yanked my hands away and slipped the ring from my finger. “I don’t have to do anything.”

  “I’m begging you, Margot. Please.” His voice cracked, and in his eyes I saw real desperation. I hadn’t seen that in him since—

  “Tripp,” I said slowly. “Is something going on with you?” Years ago, Tripp had struggled with a gambling addiction, racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt his father eventually had to pay off. But as far as I knew, he’d stopped the compulsive betting by the time we were together. And why would that prompt him to propose to me, anyway?

  He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “No. Honestly, Margot. It’s just that I’ve been so miserable and lonely since we broke up.”

  “You didn’t look miserable or lonely.”

  “I was. Really, I was. And I was a total asshole to you.”

  “Well, we can agree on that, at least.”

  “I’m sorry.” He pulled me into an awkward hug, but I kept my arms at my sides, the ring caught in one fist. “We’re so right for each other, you know we are. We make sense together. And we’re both going to be thirty soon, so we should stop dicking around.”

  Pushing him away, I stood back and crossed my arms again. “That is not romantic. At all. And you’re the only one who’s been dicking around.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m bad at this stuff, you know I am. But…but…” He looked inspired for a second. “You complete me, Margot.”

  Battling the urge to call him out on his blatant pilfering of Jerry Maguire, I grabbed the ring box and (somewhat reluctantly) tucked the ring back inside. “Listen, this is crazy. We’ve been broken up for over a year. You can’t just show up out of the blue and propose.”

  “But I want to marry you,” he whined, his eyes darting to the left.

  “Then maybe you should take me to dinner first.” I held out the ring box, feeling a surge of pleasure at how well I was handling this situation. A year ago, I’d have been texting Jaime and Claire pictures of my engagement ring already.

  He nodded glumly as he stuck the box back in his pocket. “Sure. OK.”

  At the door, I handed him his umbrella and gave him an impulsive hug. I could appreciate how hard this had been for him—it wasn’t easy for a guy like Tripp to admit he was wrong and ask forgiveness. It showed maturity and growth, didn’t it? “Let’s talk again in a day or so, OK? I need to think.”

  I opened the door and he left without saying anything else, opening his umbrella against the punishing rain. After snapping off the light, I moved into the living room and watched him get into his car from the big picture window. Rain cascaded in sheets down the pane, blurring his form. When I saw the headlights come on and then disappear into the rainy dark, I went back upstairs to bed.

  Holy shit, I thought, sliding beneath the covers again. What a crazy turn of events. Never in a million years had I thought Tripp would come to my doorstep in the middle of the night, with a diamond ring, begging me to marry him. It was such a complete reversal of his mindset a year ago.

  Part of me was mad that now he’d decided we were right for each other, but another part wondered if he’d just needed more time all along. Had I been wrong to pressure him when he wasn’t ready? Had I been too hasty to issue a “now or never” ultimatum? Had I been too insistent that we do things according to my timeline?

  But dammit, we’d talked about everything! For three years, we’d fantasized together about the country club wedding, the center-entrance Colonial, the two kids, the sailboat, the King Charles Spaniel…it wasn’t just me who’d wanted all that. He had too.

  And didn’t I still want it? Should I consider his offer? Annoying as it had been when he brought up my thirtieth birthday, he sort of had a point. My social circle was small, and I hadn’t met anyone I was even attracted to in a year—how much longer did I want to wait to start the next phase of my life? As Muffy was fond of telling me, Thurber women marry and have children by thirty, Gogo. Even the lesbians.

  It wasn’t that I was unhappy. I had great friends, close family, a new job I loved, a beautiful place to live. So why did I feel like something was missing?

  I was tired, but I lay awake for a while, playing with the fourth finger of my left hand.

  Two

  Margot

  “You’re kidding me.” Jaime paused with her dirty martini halfway to her mouth. Claire seemed just as shocked, but took an extra gulp of her
cocktail.

  “Not kidding.” I shook my head and smiled.

  “Why didn’t you say something earlier?” Jaime demanded. “I saw you this morning at the office and you didn’t say anything about it!”

  Jaime and I worked together at Shine PR, the marketing and public relations company we’d started together last year. Her degrees in psychology and marketing and her experience in advertising paired well with my experience in PR and social connections, and our little startup was a big success so far. We’d already hired an assistant to manage social media for several clients and planned to hire another by next year. “Because we were busy this morning, and you were with clients all afternoon. I figured I’d tell you both here tonight.”

  “Well, I’m glad you waited,” Claire said from the other side of Jaime. It was our weekly Wednesday Girls Night Out, and we were at the Buhl Bar, a little earlier than usual since I had to attend a fundraiser for my father later on. “Now that you guys work together and see each other every day,” Claire went on, “I fear I’m missing half the life gossip. So he actually proposed?”

  I nodded. “On bended knee, with an exquisite diamond ring.”

  “What a surprise!” squealed Claire.

  “What a dipshit,” said Jaime. “I hope you told him to stick that ring where the sun don’t shine.”

  I sipped my gin martini and replied with careful consideration. “I did nothing of the sort. I was kind and understanding, and I let him down easy.”

  “Why?” Jaime continued to gape at me with wide blue eyes. “He was such an asshole in the end.”

  “Because I have manners. Yes, he was an asshole,” I admitted, “but he copped to it. Said he was sorry and basically begged to have me back. He said a lot of nice things, actually.”

  Jaime’s stare made me uncomfortable, and I focused on my drink. She knew me too well. That’s the problem when you’ve been best friends with someone since the ninth grade—even for someone like me, usually an expert at concealing how I feel, that friend sees through you.