Claire nodded. “I’m ready.” She clapped her hands, trying to pretend that she had no qualms about what she was doing there.
Kimmy grabbed Claire’s waist and positioned her in the middle of the room. “Stand up straight. You’re slouching. And take your hair down.” Kimmy tugged at her ponytail. “You’ll feel sexier.”
Claire loosened her rubber band and shook her short ponytail out.
Kimmy yelled out, “Beautiful!” then hit a button on the stereo. A hip-hop instrumental song started blaring from the surround-sound speakers.
“Okay, we’re just gonna get loose right now,” Kimmy said, touching Claire’s shoulders with a firm grip. “You’re so stiff. Relax!”
Claire let out a deep breath and shook her body out a little, trying to unwind a bit. She figured if she was going to do this, she might as well try.
“Now, let’s just warm up. Do what I do.” Kimmy stood in front of her and moved her head in a circular motion. Her long curly blond hair swayed in a seductive way, sending whiffs of grapefruit and almond from her fragrant shampoo with every swing.
They did a couple of bends, shoulder rolls, and chest pops. Claire’s didn’t go as far as Kimmy’s did, although the more they moved, the more into it she got.
“Let’s move our hips, now,” Kimmy said over the music. She put her hands on Claire’s waist and began guiding her body with the rhythm. “You go, girl!” she said.
“I feel ridiculous,” Claire shouted, laughing uncontrollably.
“Well, you look fierce!” Kimmy said, jumping up and down with excitement.
The two girls started dancing with each other, and Claire’s awkwardness began fading away as the beat grew stronger and her moves became more fluid.
Maybe Kimmy was right, she thought to herself as she popped and twirled her body around the room with an energy she hadn’t felt in almost a year. Maybe this could help Gavin find me sexy again.
34
madison
Dear Claire and Gavin,
Thank you so much for the crystal vase. Immediately after opening up your gift, George and I ran to the backyard and chopped a couple of roses from the garden to put in it. The flowers died within a couple of days, but that’s not because of your vase—I’m just not good with plants. But I’m determined to be! Thank you for helping me become one of those girls who always has fresh cut flowers in her house. Love you!
Madison (and George)
Dear Laura and Brian,
Thank you so much for the fun box of kitchen goodies you gave us for our wedding. I can’t wait to open up beers with the deer antler bottle opener, and George is super excited about baking a turkey with the roaster you gave us. Plus, we’re already fighting over who gets to use the salad spinner when we cook! We’ll have to have you guys over for dinner soon—let me just learn how to cook first (Laur, wanna give me lessons? ). Love you both.
Madison (and George)
Dearest Gabby,
You really shouldn’t have gotten us those bathroom towels—all I want to do now is take showers every minute of the day so that I can use them! They’re beyond perfect—just like you are. Thank you so much for helping us celebrate our big day. Love you.
Madison (and George)
MADISON PUT HER pen down and shook out her hand. Writing thank-you notes was such a bitch, but she knew Connie would kill her if she didn’t do it. It was only a week after the wedding and Madison wondered if she’d get bonus points for sending them out so quickly.
She looked across the kitchen table at George’s pile of beige note cards. “How are yours coming?” she asked.
“Almost done.” He took a sip of his coffee. “And yours?”
“Two more.” She shook her hand again and walked over to the sink—it was full of dirty dishes from breakfast. Madison had made her famous scrambled eggs (famous in the sense that she watched a Martha Stewart how-to video on YouTube and then made them her own), and George had whipped up his delicious fluffy pancakes (his secret ingredient was sour cream). “You know, we’re already acting like an old married couple,” she had joked earlier as they shuffled past each other in the kitchen, busy with their food preparations.
“Do you remember who gave us this?” George asked, holding up a navy and white paperback book called 101 Questions for Your First Year of Marriage. On the cover, a cartoon couple sat at a table drinking wine and eating pasta.
Madison walked back to the table, her plaid pajama pants dragging on the wood floor, and studied the book. “Aunt Jillian.” She sighed. “Make that three more notes I have to write.” She yawned loudly. “I’m done for now.”
“Tired?” George asked.
“Uh-huh,” she said, sitting back down at the table.
“Out late last night?” he asked casually, not looking up from his note card.
Madison’s head snapped up. “Uh, what do you mean?”
“Oh, I thought you went out with Cash . . .” he said quietly, finally looking at her. “I heard his motorcycle on the street and saw you get on it.”
Madison’s heart beat faster as she put her water glass down on the table. Cash had taken her to a concert, then back to his place to hook up, before dropping her at George’s a little after 4:00 a.m. She tried to come up with some kind of excuse that wouldn’t make her sound—or feel—like the biggest bitch in the world, but nothing came to mind.
“You don’t have to hide it,” George said, blinking a few times. “You should feel comfortable hanging out with whoever you want.”
“I’m sorry,” she said guiltily. As she stared at him, taking in his weary green eyes and the light stubble that lined his chin, she tried to figure out what was going through his head. When they’d decided to get married, George had asked for her companionship, but not her heart. Still, did he truly not care about her sneaking out with another guy? Or did he care for her so much that he was happy to take what he could get? The thought tugged at her and she laid her hand over his.
“George, I know what we have isn’t exactly normal, but I want you to know that I am happy and I really like spending time with you. I’m sorry if I betrayed your trust by lying.”
He shook his head. “You haven’t. I know what I signed up for. And the feeling’s mutual by the way.” He gave her hand a squeeze, then pulled out of her grip and pushed his thank-you notes pile to the side.
“So, I can think of about a million things I’d rather be doing than writing these, including removing my own front teeth. How ’bout you?”
She laughed, feeling the tension between the two of them ease. “Same.”
“How about a drive?” He stood up and started clearing the table.
“Sounds great,” she said, brushing her hair out of her eyes. “Where do you wanna go?” She stood up and placed her water glass in the sink.
“It’s a surprise,” he said. “Meet me back here in ten minutes.”
The two went upstairs to their respective rooms to change. After throwing on a clean T-shirt and swapping out her plaid pants for a pair of jeans, Madison slid down the wooden staircase railing and joined George by the back door. He was waiting patiently with his keys in hand, wearing a blue-and-white-checkered button-down and khakis. His hair was also neatly combed with a little bit of gel.
“You clean up nice,” she said, gently punching him in the arm. “How the heck did you get ready that fast?”
“Time machine,” he said, waggling his brows. “Let’s go!”
They drove with the top down on the quiet oak-tree-lined back roads, letting the cool springtime breeze float over them. She hummed along to the Milky Chance song on the radio while George tapped out the beat on the steering wheel, the silence between them easy and comfortable.
After about twenty minutes, George turned into a long gravel driveway that led to a large antebellum mansion.
“What’s this?” she asked, lowering her sunglasses.
“My childhood home,” George answered.
Madison’s mouth
dropped as she looked at the gorgeous structure standing before her. It was painted yellow with black shutters and had imposing white columns. A large porch wrapped around the entire home and a wrought iron Juliet balcony was situated just above the front door.
“Who lives here now?” she asked in disbelief.
“No one.” He parked the car in the paved semicircle in front of the house and got out.
She opened up her door and followed him. “Why don’t you live here? It’s unbelievable.”
“It’s complicated,” he said as they walked up the front steps.
Madison continued gawking as he unlocked the front door. They stepped inside, and the smell of cedarwood, dust, and cardboard hit her. The first floor was empty, save for a few boxes, a large armoire, and a vintage leather trunk.
She ran her hand along the mahogany banister that lined the grand staircase inside and came away with a light coating of dust.
“My brother and sister and I would slide down these when we were little,” he said, gesturing to the steps. He pointed to a tiny scar on his forehead. “Christmas day, when I was five.” He chuckled. “Parents made the mistake of buying us new sleeping bags, so I used mine to slide from the top of the stairs to the bottom. It was the best moment of my life until I hit the last step and fell face-first onto my brother’s new toy bricks.”
“Oh my god, I have a matching one.” Madison lifted her bangs and pointed to a small scar on her forehead. “When I was four, Claire chased me around our grandma’s house with a remote control, saying she was going to control me, and I ran right into the corner of a glass coffee table.”
“Ouch,” George said, running a finger lightly over the raised skin.
Madison shivered under the unexpected touch. To cover, she gently punched him on his arm. “Whatever, I think it makes me badass. And you, too.”
He laughed. “Something like that.”
“So, why don’t you live here?” Madison walked into the kitchen, which had a large brick fireplace on one wall. “Not that your place on Darby Lake isn’t great, but this is spectacular.”
He leaned his elbows on the wooden island as she looked through the cabinets. “Family drama.”
She joined him at the island and bumped her hips against his. “You can’t keep teasing me with that. What’s the drama this time?”
He shrugged. “It’s a long story, but after my parents’ accident, my siblings and I inherited this place, split three ways. Henry and Chelsy wanted to sell it—they made a big fuss about needing the money, since they weren’t given the family business like I was.” He coughed. “The house stayed on the market for months, and it was looking like we weren’t gonna get what it was worth. So, I just bought them out to try and appease everyone.”
“I take it that didn’t work,” Madison said.
He chuckled and shook his head. “Nope. They thought I was rubbing my wealth in their faces.”
“So, is that why you’re not living here? Because your brother and sister made you feel guilty about it?”
George was silent for a moment, staring out the kitchen window to the manicured backyard. Madison followed his gaze to a set of wrought iron benches and tables positioned around a mossy fish pond.
“And because being here reminds me that I don’t have a family anymore,” he said finally.
Madison’s heart wrenched at his words and the deeply sad look on his face. She could tell that once his family had meant everything to him. She put her arms around his shoulder. “That’s not true,” she said softly. “I’m your family now.”
He looked at her and smiled, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. His silver Rolex caught the sunlight from the window, casting a rainbow on the cream-colored walls.
“Thanks,” he said, giving her a brief hug.
“So, show me the rest of this place,” she said when he pulled away, walking out of the kitchen and heading up the stairs.
They entered a small bedroom to the right of the landing, which George admitted was his. The walls were covered in map wallpaper. Upon closer inspection, she noticed there was handwriting over some of the locations. Madison leaned in and read one of the scribbles. “Florence, Italy: August 20. Had the best sandwich I’ve ever tasted—prosciutto è buono.” Above it, a city in Germany was circled. The writing read, “Stuttgart: February 7. Visited Porsche Museum—I will have one of those one day.”
“Um, this is the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen,” Madison said. “You kept a diary of your travels on the wall?” She walked over to him in the doorway and pinched his cheeks. “I can just see little George Dubois writing on his wall after every vacation.”
His face turned red. “You shoulda seen how mad my mom was when she caught me doing that.”
“Why? It’s so cool,” Madison said, running her fingers along an entry over Provence. “If I woulda ever traveled, I would have totally done something like this.”
“Well, I’ll make you a map room if you want. We’ll be traveling to all sorts of places.” He turned back to her. “Which reminds me, we still have to plan a honeymoon.”
Her stomach jumped with excitement. “Yes! I’ve narrowed it down to twenty places. The list is at home—maybe we can go over it tonight.”
He laughed as they walked into another room. It was larger than George’s and painted a soft lavender. A set of French doors led to a balcony overlooking the backyard.
“This was Chelsy’s room. She was the princess. Andrew and I were so jealous of this balcony—she got a rope ladder and used to sneak out at night to meet up with the boy who lived down the road.” George walked out onto the veranda. “You see those old oaks?” He pointed ahead. “There was this story about a guy in the eighteen hundreds who brought in a million spiders and set them loose on his oak trees so that they would make all these webs. His two daughters were getting married on the same day, and on the morning of the wedding, he had the servants spray the trees and cobwebs with gold dust.”
“Oh my god, the famous Gold Dust Wedding—was that this house?” Madison interrupted.
“Hell, no,” he said, laughing. “But Chelsy was obsessed with that story, always telling my dad that’s what she wanted for her wedding. So on her wedding day, that sucker brought in hundreds of pounds of gold dust and had it sprinkled everywhere on the grounds as a surprise.” George shook his head. “It was a mess! Everyone had that shit on them for weeks. Hell, sometimes I still see it on my clothes.”
She gazed out over the oak trees, and for a moment she could have sworn she saw them glistening with gold. They stood there, leaning on the railing and watching the day go by until the afternoon sun slanted in the sky and slowly sunk beneath the tree line. It reminded Madison of all the times she had sat with her dad on the back porch, shooting the shit or just being together.
Madison glanced at George out of the corner of her eye, taking in his neatly combed hair and the jeans that came up a little too high above his sneakers. She’d never pictured having a husband like him. Heck, she’d never much thought about being married at all. But standing in this house, she could imagine what it’d be like to raise their kids here. They’d have map rooms and build forts in the oak trees. They’d slide down the banister on Christmas morning and make s’mores in the kitchen fireplace.
This was what she was supposed to want. Ease. Comfort. Happiness. And a part of her was truly happy. But she couldn’t stop the voice in the back of her mind that wondered whether it was enough.
35
laura
“ARE YOU SURE you don’t want anything else to eat?” Laura asked Brian, looking at their hotel’s room service menu. They were sitting on the large king bed, and Brian was flipping through the seemingly endless channels on the TV. It almost felt like they were on vacation, and not waiting anxiously for Brian’s surgery in New Orleans the next morning. “Doctor says you can’t eat past midnight, and you’ve only got an hour before then. Spring rolls? French fries? Chocolate cake?”
Rob
and Janet had taken the two of them to Copeland’s earlier that night, splurging on Brian’s last meal before his surgery. He had ordered cheese fries, a rib eye, mac and cheese, and a slice of turtle cheesecake. She had figured he couldn’t possibly still be hungry, but Laura had learned over the years to never underestimate the power of Brian’s insatiable hunger.
Brian wrinkled his nose. “I’m good.”
“Okay!” She closed the menu, put it back on the nightstand, and cuddled up next to her husband on the bed. “Can you believe this day has finally come?”
He wrapped his muscular arm around her shoulders. “Babe, I know this hasn’t been a good year for you—for us—but I want you to know how much it means to me that you stood by me through it all.” It made her happy hearing that—like he finally understood and appreciated all the sacrifices that she had made for him.
She nuzzled her head into his neck, breathing in the familiar musk of his aftershave. “Well, we’re in this together. That’s what marriage is.” Sure, they had their setbacks this year, and maybe she had her own doubts, but she reminded herself they were married and she needed to give their relationship everything she had. Maybe neither of them had grown up completely yet, but they were gonna grow up together.
Brian softly stroked her hair. “So, you’ll still love me if this surgery doesn’t work?”
Laura’s stomach twisted into a knot. She’d spent so much time worrying that he wouldn’t be able to even get the surgery that she’d barely considered the possibility that it wouldn’t work. “Why would you be worried about that?”
He turned on his side and faced her. “What? You not loving me anymore . . . or the surgery not working?”
“Both,” she said, sitting up, her eyes narrowing in on Brian’s face. “Of course I’ll still love you. And of course the surgery will work. Why would you even say that?”
He sighed, lacing his fingers behind his head and staring up at the ceiling. “You’ll be at the hospital the whole time, right?” Brian sounded nervous. He was never nervous, not even when Toulouse High had played their rival in the playoffs junior year. They’d been down by twelve in the fourth quarter, but Brian managed to turn the game around and win it on a last-second quarterback sneak.
The Young Wives Club Page 22