Once Upon a Bride

by Jenny Holiday

  “Jesus Christ, Elise.” He tipped his head back and looked at the ceiling. “I’m not going to make it to Friday.”

  She chuckled. Who knew she would enjoy torturing him so much? “I was just being honest.” Which was still an unfamiliar sensation. “I’m still kind of marveling over how I can just say whatever I want to you. It’s weird.”

  “You said that, but I’m still having trouble believing that it’s all that unusual for you.”

  Jay pretty much said whatever he wanted most of the time. But it was different for her. Probably in part because women were socialized to be deferential, to not make waves. And in part because she in particular had been socialized that way. It wasn’t like she had a lot of practice with people valuing what she had to say. Of course, with her friends, she could be honest, but that was different. They didn’t look at her with a singular focus, like they were hanging on every word that came out of her mouth.

  “It is unusual! It’s like…radical honesty.” Radical honesty. She liked that phrase. She liked the feeling of radical honesty—so much she laughed from sheer delight. “I’ve never really done that.”

  “Well.” He waggled his eyebrows. “It suits you. Even if it does sort of torture me.” Then, after a wink, he turned his attention to his tiles. “I’ve got nothing. I’m going to have to do an exchange.”

  As he swapped new tiles for old, she smiled at him, her client and her friend. Her soon-to-be lover. If this damn job ever got done. But given his immovable stance, there was nothing to do but take her turn at Scrabble. She studied her tiles. She had nothing that would continue the sexy theme they had going. But she could build off the Y in COY to play YET. Oh well, the suggestive streak couldn’t go on forever.

  He raised his eyebrows. “As in, are the fucking rugs here yet?”

  Or maybe it could. She cracked up. That was another cool thing about Jay. He could shift so effortlessly between filthy and funny.

  “Pretty much.”

  The rugs came two days later just after lunch.

  They had been the longest two days of Jay’s life.

  When Patricia poked her head in and said, “There are some rugs here. Do you want them placed now or do you want to hang onto them and do it after hours?”

  Jay shot up from his desk. Rugs. His new favorite word. “Either way. You handle it.”

  “Okaaay…”

  He supposed it seemed a strange request. He was known for being a perfectionist-slash-micromanager. And he hadn’t involved Patricia in any aspects of the design project. No, that project had been his.

  Had been—past tense.

  “Cancel the rest of my appointments for the day.”

  “But you have the Carlises coming in at three!” The alarm in her voice was palpable. The Carlises were multimillionaires—and high-maintenance multimillionaires at that.

  “Something came up,” he called over his shoulder as he strode out of the office.

  He used one hand to obsessively punch the button for the elevator and the other to slide his phone out of his back pocket.

  The rugs are here.

  The rugs are here.

  Where are you?

  Shit. Worst timing ever. She’d been hoping her estimate had been off and that the rugs would be even more delayed. But no. Here it was Friday, and the rugs were right on time. What was she going to say to him? She winced as she sat up enough to type a response.

  Home.

  Home in bed, more specifically. She’d had to cancel a consult this afternoon, and she was lying in the dark waiting for enough time to pass that she could take another dose of painkillers. How ironic that she was literally in bed when those stupid rugs arrived.

  I’m on my way.

  Ugh. She wanted to scream. To punch things. But she was too wiped out to do either. She tried not to let herself sink into a pit of self-pity every month, but this wasn’t fair. She started typing but then erased it. What could she say? I’m sorry, kind sir, but my rogue uterine lining will make it impossible for me to entertain any gentlemen callers this evening.

  In a taxi. Faster than dealing with parking.

  Well, okay. She’d just tell him in person. Let him see the real her. Their relationship had been characterized by radical honesty, right? He wasn’t going to be her boyfriend, but she hoped that he wasn’t thinking of them hooking up as a one-time thing. Even though they had yet to have sex, she was pretty sure that once was not going to be enough for her. And if he felt the same, which she hoped he did, he was going to have to know that she spent a couple days every month curled up in the fetal position wracked with pain. And hopefully he wouldn’t be too put off by her “lady issues,” as her father had called them.

  The sound of her buzzer sliced through the apartment. When she’d been apartment hunting, part of the appeal of this particular one had been that it was in a heritage house that was more than a hundred years old. It had character.

  But it did not have a doorman. Or even an intercom system. Damn, what she wouldn’t give right now to be in a high rise like her friend Wendy.

  The buzzer went off again.

  She heaved herself off her bed, her eyes tearing, and started plodding down to the front door.

  Something was wrong with Elise.

  Jay knew it the moment she opened the door. It took him only a nanosecond to go from cursing her for taking so damn long to answer the door to being seized with worry over what was the matter.

  “Hi.” Her voice was scratchy—and not in a good way. Her face was pink—and not in a good way. She held one arm tightly across her stomach like she was trying to keep her guts contained.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Was she...crying? Worry flash froze into panic. “Elise. Sweetheart. What’s wrong?” He rested his hands on her shoulders and crouched so he could see into her eyes. Tears were indeed gathering in them.

  She sort of sagged against him as she whispered, “I can’t have sex with you.”

  “Okay,” he said immediately, even as, on the inside, every single one of his cells stood up and howled in protest. “I’ll go, but I need to know you’re okay before I do. Can I call one of your friends?”

  She smiled weakly. “I can’t have sex with you today.” The clarification calmed those riled cells somewhat, but he was still confused. And worried. “You want to come up, and I’ll explain?”

  Upstairs, she sank immediately onto the sofa. This was the first time he’d been here that she hadn’t offered him something to drink. She was a natural hostess—usually.

  “I have endometriosis.” She smiled weakly, and a hint of her old sassy self appeared on her face. “I’m in a lot of pain right now in my….internal sexual regions.”

  “Endometriosis,” he echoed. That had something to do with periods, he thought.

  She answered his unspoken question. “It’s when the lining of your uterus grows on the outside instead of the inside. On other organs, usually. And whereas in the inside, it, uh, builds up and sheds every month… Is this too much squicky lady talk?”

  He shook his head vehemently. “No. Not at all.” To his surprise, he desperately needed to know what was going on. He wanted to know everything about Elise.

  “Yeah, well, so the stuff on the outside thickens and builds up like it would before a period, but then there’s nowhere for it to go. Scar tissue builds up. It…hurts a lot.”

  “Can they do anything for it?”

  “They have. It’s actually better than it used to be.”

  That was hard to imagine. His skepticism must have shown in his face, because she smiled. “Yeah, I’ve had surgery for it, and that helped a lot, at least initially. It seems to be getting worse again now. But it used to be just horrific. For years. Nobody believed me.”

  “What?” Okay, that was just dumb. Anyone could see she was in pain, and if this was a milder version of what she’d experienced before? It boggled the mind.

  “Yeah, doctors would tell me it was just bad period pain—
which I’ve since learned is really common with endo. Then one day in university I was hanging out with my friends when it was really bad. Gia was sort of used to it, because we spent so much time together. But Wendy was so alarmed, she called an ambulance. I tried to talk her out of it, but I’m glad she prevailed, because there was a doctor at the emergency room who finally took it seriously. I got some scans, a diagnosis, and, later, a bunch of my insides hacked out.”

  Wow. It was a lot to take in. His heart broke for her, enduring all this pain, at the same time that he was pissed at all the people who hadn’t taken her seriously.

  “I’m really sorry, Jay.” She sounded so defeated. “I know we were both, uh…primed for this.”

  “Sweetheart, don’t be sorry.” He wanted to sling an arm around her, to hold her close, but he wasn’t sure if that would hurt. So he settled for laying a palm lightly against her cheek. There was still the low hum of attraction he always felt around her, but for the most part, his lust had dissipated. It had been replaced by something that was both softer and stronger. “There’s plenty of time.”

  “You’ll wait?”

  “Uh, yes.”

  He would wait forever, he realized with a start.

  Wow. But that was a thought to be examined later.

  She blew out a breath that seemed like relief.

  “Did you think it was the day the rugs arrived or nothing?”

  She shrugged.

  Maybe it was that her defenses were down because of the pain, but he thought he had seen a flash of vulnerability, of uncertainty, in that shrug. “Nope. We’re just going to extend our torture a little more. How long do these bouts usually last?”

  “Two or three days.”

  “And what would you normally do while you’re not feeling well?” He kind of wanted to march her back to the emergency room and demand relief on her behalf, but of course that wasn’t the correct course of action.

  “I’d lay in my bed and watch stupid TV to try to distract myself from the pain.”

  “All right, then. You mind company?”

  The smile that lit her face changed it, chased away the shadows. She looked like her old self. “I would love company.”

  “What’s on?” He followed her into her bedroom. She was sort of shuffling, clearly still in pain, and it damn near killed him to watch.

  He’d never been in her bedroom. Like the living room, and like her personal style, it was a mixture of exuberant and restrained. The walls were a bright, almost lime green, but pretty much everything else—lamps, rugs, a small desk—were quiet neutrals or subtle patterns. The bed, sitting on a raised platform, was a messy jumble of white linens and pillows. It looked like an unkempt cloud in a green sky.

  She picked up a remote and aimed it at a small TV mounted on the wall. It came to life displaying her Netflix queue. “I was watching Grace and Frankie. But we can switch to something else.”

  “Nah. That sounds perfect. My mom is the world’s biggest Jane Fonda fan, so I’ve been meaning to check this show out. Mom used to try to make me do her old Jane Fonda workout videos along with her, but thankfully there wasn’t enough room in the trailer for both of us to do it.” He kicked off his shoes and bounced around in a parody of aerobics then dived onto the empty bed, hoping to elicit a laugh.

  It worked. The bed dipped as she eased herself on, but her smile became a wince. Slowly, she arranged herself next to him. They were lying side by side, almost—but not quite—touching. She turned her head and aimed a smile at him so incandescent it took his breath away.

  Yeah, this was not how he had imagined this afternoon going. At all. But somehow, impossibly, he wasn’t the least bit disappointed. In fact, this felt…exactly right.

  Elise had never had so much fun while enduring so much pain. Well, fun wasn’t the right word. It wasn’t deep enough. Jay’s steady, solid, caring presence—his persistence—felt like mercy, like a grace she hadn’t earned. She luxuriated in it, which should have been impossible given that luxury shouldn’t be able to coexist with pain. But somehow, with him, it did.

  After a bunch of episodes of the show, the room had started to grow dark as evening descended, and he insisted that she eat something. She’d tried to demur, but he wouldn’t have it. And after listening to him bang around in her kitchen for fifteen minutes, he returned with a grilled cheese sandwich.

  And she felt better after eating it. Stronger.

  The front door buzzer rang as she was finishing them up. Jay jumped up from his spot next to her. “That’s for me. That was the last of your bread, so I ordered a pizza for myself.” He paused. “Was that okay?” His brow furrowed like he was worried he had overstepped.

  “Of course.” She grinned listening to him tromping down the stairs, thrilled that he was apparently planning to stay on into the evening.

  When he reappeared a few minutes later with some pizza on a plate, he was also holding Yahtzee.

  “Now this is a classic,” he said appreciatively. “I don’t think I’ve played this for thirty years.”

  She scooched herself up against the headboard and made a “bring it” motion with her fingers.

  “You up for it?”

  “Yeah, if I get too wrecked to lift my hand to roll a pair of dice, just take me out to the pasture and shoot me.”

  He frowned. He was so uptight sometimes—his friends and colleagues were right. But she loved it, as it was so often in service of her. She thought back to their confrontation with her father, when he’d gotten all weird and snippy, then to his insistence that they not sleep together until the design job was done.

  Jay was a very good kind of uptight.

  “I’m kidding,” She patted the bed. He sat, though he still looked overly serious. So she grabbed the game and said, “Youngest and prettiest goes first.”

  That did it—he turned his frown upside down. “But of course.”

  After the game—annoyingly, she lost—she laid back down. He would probably leave soon. She really, really didn’t want him to. Having him here had made the day so much more bearable.

  “You tired?” he asked.

  She tried to say no, but a yawn overtook her. Busted.

  He would leave, now that he thought he was keeping her up.

  And sure enough, he sat back and uncoiled his legs—he’d been sitting cross-legged for Yahtzee. But he merely shuffled around until he was lying back against one of her pillows. She’d been lying on her side on top of the duvet, but now he was tugging on it—he wanted her to get under the covers.

  He was going to tuck her in. Of course he was. He did stuff like that.

  But to her astonishment, when she got under the covers, he did too.

  He moved right up next to her and opened his arms.

  Tears threatened, and her throat tightened. This probably wasn’t a good idea. This was pretty boyfriend-y. But she was tired, in pain, and powerless to resist. So she surrendered. She nestled herself into his embrace and went to sleep.

  Chapter 5

  By Sunday, the pain had receded, but Elise had had to postpone the booty call to spend the day with the girls.

  “Now don’t get too excited,” she said as she showed the security guard in Jay’s office building her temporary badge. “This isn’t like a residential job. It’s not going to hit you over the head with its fabulousness.”

  “I beg to differ,” Gia said. “I can already feel myself getting faint at the fabulousness that’s in my future.”

  Gia had flown in late Saturday. She did that sometimes. She would parachute in for a quick best-friends-fest, and the four of them would gorge on each other’s company. Gia had stayed at Elise’s place last night, and today they had all gone from breakfast to the spa, and now they were headed up to the empty offices of Cohen & Smith so she could show them her work.

  They all crowded onto the elevator, chattering a mile a minute.

  These intense doses of her best friends, where they dropped everything and just reveled in
each other’s company, were among Elise’s favorite ways to spend time. Usually.

  She had been more than a little distracted today.

  But she wasn’t going to be one of those women who bailed on her friends for a man. And she really did want to show off her first big solo design job.

  “Hold the elevator!”

  Elise reflexively did do, sticking her hand out to stop the door closing.

  “Thanks.”

  Oh, crap. It was that woman Stacey. Jay’s ex-girlfriend. Or not. Depending on who you believed.

  “Hey!” Stacey seemed a little too happy to see her. “Elise Maxwell, right?”

  “Yes, hi. I’m just taking my friends up to Cohen & Smith to show them my work. Jay said I could.”

  She wasn’t sure why she added that last bit. Jay had given her a key to the office long ago and told her to come and go as she pleased, but it wasn’t like Stacey needed an explanation.

  “I’m sure he did.” Stacey was looking way too amused for a causal elevator encounter.

  Elise was starting to get annoyed. So this woman was Jay’s ex. So she was stunningly beautiful and accomplished. But just because she had a history with Jay didn’t mean she had to lord it over Elise.

  Her irritation must have shown on her face, because Stacey said, “I’m sorry I was so weird and bitchy that day we met.”

  Uh, what? That was the last thing Elise had expected.

  “It was just because I get kind of possessive of Jay. And not because we dated, but because we’re old friends. I mean, we did date, but he was right, it was only for, like, five minutes. I mean, the way he kisses.” She made a face like she’d smelled something bad. “Like, chill out, dude. It’s like he only has one degree of intensity, and that’s, like, a hundred, you know?”