by Sadie Hayes
“I will.”
Riley got into her car and drove away as Amelia stepped out into the dark drizzle.
“Amelia,” she heard Adam’s familiar voice calling from a distance, but didn’t turn to find it.
“Amelia, stop!” He was beside her now. She kept walking, and he matched her pace.
“I don’t want to talk, Adam,” she said quietly but firmly.
“I know you don’t, but you need to—we need to.”
She stopped and turned to him and snapped, “Since when do you give a shit about what I need?” Amelia was surprised by the force of her own words. She’d never cursed at someone before, and it felt good.
Adam paused in surprise at her forcefulness. “You know I didn’t mean for it to happen like this.”
“How did you mean for it to happen?”
“I wanted us to be partners, but it wasn’t working. Someone had to do something or there wouldn’t have been anything for us to be partners of.”
“Don’t make your actions heroic, Adam. You got greedy. Greedy for power and for money and for fame. And you were jealous of me for having what you wanted.”
“You didn’t want the responsibilities that came with the position. You hated that photo shoot, and you know it. Why should you get to have something you didn’t even want when it was exactly what I did want? You were the greedy one, Amelia.”
“Quit deluding yourself. You pushed me out because you were angry I hadn’t told you about Lisa and Sundeep.”
“I had every right to be angry. How am I supposed to trust you anymore?” Adam fought back.
“Yet you could trust the woman who tried to sabotage our entire company.”
“Violet isn’t what you think.”
“I don’t know what to think anymore, about her or you.”
“Can we please start over?”
“What, do you want to go back to Indiana?” Amelia spat back at him, secretly wishing they could. “Look around you. Things have changed. You’ve changed. There’s no going back to the way things were.”
“Amelia, you’re my sister. You’re all that I ever had before we got here. I don’t want to lose you.”
“You should have thought of that before you got rid of me.”
They were a foot apart from each other and even in the dusk Amelia could see Adam’s face go red with shame and anger. She glared at him, jaw tensed, not letting go.
“Fine,” he spat angrily. “Your pride is going to get you.”
He turned on his heel and Amelia watched him walk past the church and join Violet at her car.
She wanted to shout out: “What are you doing? She’s the bad guy.” But her world was in such disarray that Amelia wasn’t sure she could trust her own instincts. No matter how right she’d thought she’d been, the Sundeep secret had destroyed Adam’s trust in her, and look where that got them. Maybe Violet wasn’t as bad as she thought; and even if she was, Adam wouldn’t listen to Amelia. And why should she save him from trouble anyway? Let him work out his own problems this time.
Amelia gave the church one final glance and for the first time noticed the rain dripping from her hair and felt the sadness—and the freedom—of being entirely alone.
24
Bullish
“Everything okay?” Violet offered, the way women do when they know everything is not okay.
“Fine,” Adam said firmly. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Then we won’t,” Violet agreed as they got into her car and drove downtown for dinner. “I think we should go to the Old Pro,” she suggested, wiping her wet bangs from her forehead, “drink beer and ride the mechanical bull. Can you imagine the sight of it? The two of us fresh from a funeral, wearing all black and riding the mechanical bull? I didn’t know Roger well, but I have a feeling it’s what he would have wanted.”
Adam smiled at her. He’d secretly been hoping they could go somewhere quiet, have a bottle of wine, and call it a night. But Violet’s spontaneity—her total disregard for convention—was what he loved most about her, and if that meant chugging beer tonight, so be it. “Sure,” he said. “Sounds great.”
Violet’s phone started to ring as they reached University Avenue. She glanced at the caller ID and pulled over, answering, “Can you hold for a second?” Then, muting the phone, she turned to Adam. “I’m so sorry, Adam, but this is a super important and confidential call—could you give me just five minutes?”
This had been happening a lot lately; Adam obediently got out of the car. He went into the Walgreens on the corner to dodge the rain and wait for Violet to finish.
He wandered the gum aisle and thought about whether he’d prefer cinnamon or mint. Just as he was settling on a three-pack of wintergreen, he saw a blond ponytail walk up to the register. It was Lisa.
Adam instinctively ducked behind a candy display and watched her hesitantly put her purchase on the countertop.
The cashier glanced at the two boxes Lisa had placed before him and gave her a look before picking one up to scan.
Adam peered to see what she was buying.
“Such a cliché, isn’t it?” Violet suddenly appeared beside him. “Sorority girl stocking up on pregnancy tests.” She smirked and turned her attention to the Raisinets on sale.
Pregnancy tests? Lisa was pregnant?
Jealousy pulsed through Adam’s veins. She was having sex with someone else. And that someone else had knocked her up. His brain was hazy with rage and it took every ounce of self-control not to run out from behind the display and confront her.
He watched Lisa cram the tests into her bag and pull the hood of her sweatshirt over her ponytail as she headed out into the rain.
“You ready?” Violet said, startling him. “Sorry about the call; was a false alarm. But I needed gum anyway.”
He followed her absentmindedly to the counter, his brain weighing whether it was Sundeep or someone else, but too foggy with envy to make sense of any of it.
“Hun, give him the gum,” Violet said, and jabbed her elbow into his side and indicated the cashier.
He finally settled on a thought: That slut, and slammed his wintergreen three-pack onto the counter, swallowing hard to fight back his overwhelming grief.
* * *
“Why are you being so incredibly dull?”
Violet looked at Adam with bored eyes as she lifted an overly ketchuped garlic fry with her bright red fingernails to her equally bright lips. She took special care to chew it in the side of her mouth in order to maintain her grimace.
“Violet, we did just come from a funeral,” Adam defended himself, thankful to Roger for giving him an excuse for his disinterest, even if it wasn’t the real one.
Violet kept chewing as she stared at him with an eyebrow lifted, finally saying, “Please.”
Her tone offended him; she knew how he’d felt about Roger. She knew he’d sat in the service today listening to all the stories of Roger’s endlessly generous encouragement of young entrepreneurs and resenting the man in the coffin for never extending the same loving kindness to him.
But Adam thought he’d done a good job hiding these feelings and was, therefore, irritated that Violet knew.
“I’m going to get more beer,” Violet announced, polishing off her glass and standing up from the table, brushing past Adam and grazing his arm with her soft fingers so that all of his hairs stood up, wanting more.
The Old Pro, a two-story sports bar with a mechanical bull, was the raucous Palo Alto hot spot for after-work revelers, drunk college kids, and scantily clad girls. Adam watched Violet push her way through the crowd. She had a way of leading with her hip, turning more than necessary to make the slimness of her waist and perfect curve of her ass appreciably obvious to the men she brushed past. Adam took a sip of his beer, unsure whether that made him like her more or less.
He stared out the window at people passing with their umbrellas, unable to get Lisa out of his mind. Pregnancy tests. How was it possible?
Adam found it difficult not to think about their own failed attempt at sex. He’d been a virgin, of course, and Lisa had been, too—or at least that’s what she’d told him. But then again, she’d also failed to tell him that she was secretly dating Sundeep. Adam had wanted so badly for Lisa to be his first; not just because at nineteen years old he thought he was past the point of waiting, but because he … well … he loved her. And he wanted to be the one that made it special for her first time, too.
And so they’d talked about it and she’d said she wasn’t ready and he’d said, “That’s fine, just let me know when you are.”
But then one night right before Hawaii they’d both gotten very drunk at a Secret Snowflake holiday party and ended up in his room in the frat house and one thing led to another and then it was happening, just like that, and then it was over, just as quickly. And they laughed and apologized and made humor out of embarrassment, with Adam wishing he could say it’s never happened before and Lisa wishing she could say it was perfect. The whole thing felt anticlimactic and wrong and so not the way either of them had planned that when they woke up the next morning they’d decided it really shouldn’t count. Adam immediately started planning a romantic redo with candles and music and had even let himself fantasize about it happening in Maui.
But then everything had, obviously, fallen apart. And now, almost three months later, some other guy got that moment, and Lisa was probably comparing that guy to Adam and losing any respect or affection she’d had for him in the process.
Adam caught his breath at the thought and he pushed out a sharp exhale, turning his attention back to Violet, who was at the bar, flanked by two older guys, her head thrown back in a laugh. Who cared about Lisa anyway? He had Violet now. That woman at the bar whom those two guys wanted was with him. And even though they hadn’t had sex yet, they surely would soon, and Violet was certain to be amazing in bed and teach Adam how to be spectacular and the sex would make Lisa look bad. And once that was done he wouldn’t have to think about Lisa at all and that whole chapter of his life would be closed.
He took a sip of his beer and closed his eyes, trying to imagine Violet naked.
But then his brain drifted and his eyes snapped open as his heart started to pound: What if the baby was his?
Suddenly it was crystal clear. Like a movie montage, he saw that night with Lisa and then he saw sex ed class in Indiana and then he heard Lisa’s desperate voice cry out “I don’t need you” in San Francisco two weeks ago. Was it possible? Would God really be so cruel?
No, he told himself. That was December, and now it was the end of February: In three months she would have realized. But maybe she didn’t realize she missed her period the first month, given that their encounter didn’t count and she still thought herself a virgin. But then maybe when she’d missed her second period it dawned on her that something was wrong.
And if it had been two months … his brain scrambled … what happens after two months? It’s too late to take the morning-after pill; was it also too late to get an abortion? Adam thought back to the memorial service in the church with the stained-glass windows of Jesus—ws Lisa religious? Adam then thought about his own ethics—was he religious? What were his own beliefs on abortion? Could he ask her to do it? Did he even want her to do it?
Adam’s pulse was pounding. He gripped the table to steady himself, his eyes starting to lose focus as he searched for breath. He needed fresh air. Now. He practically fell off the chair in his rush to get outside just in time to keel over and vomit into the gutter.
The bouncer, a three-hundred-pound, heavily tattooed, bearded man who looked like he collected Harleys, scoffed and came over to make him move, assuming he was drunk.
“Dude. Can’t do that here. Move on,” he said, and pulled Adam up by the elbow.
“No, I’m…” Adam started, but opening his mouth made him get sick again, this time all over the sidewalk and the bouncer’s shoes.
“Aw, gross, man. Stanford nerds can’t hold their beer.”
“No, I’m not drunk, it’s just—” Adam looked up at the bouncer with pleading eyes. “I really messed up, man. I really, really messed up.”
There must have been something particularly pathetic about Adam’s appearance, because the bouncer took a deep breath and walked him to a bench on the corner, where he gave him a shopping bag and told him to take it easy.
Half an hour later Adam pulled his head up from between his knees to see Violet standing in front of him with an annoyed look on her face. They left the Old Pro and headed back to Adam’s frat house, where Adam collapsed on his bed, unsure what to do.
25
Who Can You Trust?
“I know I shouldn’t, but I just love Swedish meatballs. I wish they didn’t always have them at funerals, though.” A platinum blonde with chipmunk cheeks in a tight black dress and four-inch heels chattered to T.J. as she plucked another Swedish meatball off a passing hors d’oeuvres tray and put it into her pink-glossed mouth. “Like, I remember when my grandmother died everyone brought Swedish meatballs and we were stuck with them, eating them for, like, a week, and I felt so guilty because I felt like I shouldn’t be eating. You know? I should be one of those people who loses ten pounds when they’re grieving, but I just love these little meatballs so much I kept sneaking into the kitchen to get more. I probably gained like ten pounds.”
T.J. responded with a close-lipped smile, looking past her and through the doorway into the living room at Riley. Riley’s face was pale and her eyes moist. She wasn’t wearing any makeup. She sat in a wooden chair, bending over her long crossed legs and resting her chin in her palm. She was watching a little boy—Roger’s nephew, he thought—color in a book on the floor, occasionally offering her crayon suggestion when he looked up to her for approval. She looked like a painting, and it infuriated T.J.; Roger dead or not, she had no right to be in his house acting so nonchalant.
“So what do you do?” the girl asked.
“I’m sorry, what?” T.J. looked at her. She was pretty but trying too hard.
“What do you do? Are you still in school or what?” She pushed her hair behind her ear.
“I run a start-up,” T.J. answered shortly.
“Oh, that’s so cool! I’m thinking of starting a company after I graduate in June. Harvard’s got a really great entrepreneurship program, and I’ve been taking a lot of their classes.” Her chatter clung to his nerves.
T.J. took a sip of the Scotch he was drinking and moved around to her other side so that his back was to the living room. She smiled, apparently interpreting this as a suggestive move.
What is wrong with girls? T.J. thought. Who flirts at a funeral? But then he felt guilty, knowing he’d probably flirted at funerals before, too. “What did you say?” he asked the girl again.
“I said”—she dragged the syllable—“I’m thinking of starting a company, too, after I finish college. I’m at Harvard.”
“That’s great,” T.J. said absentmindedly.
“Don’t you want to know my idea?” She batted her lashes and smiled coyly.
Not in the slightest, T.J. thought. “I definitely do,” he said instead, “but first I’m going to get you some more wine.” He gestured to her empty glass.
“Oh! Thank you!” she said brightly.
“Be right back.”
T.J. took the glass and turned to go through the living room, to tell Riley something—he wasn’t sure yet what—but when he arrived she was gone. He closed his eyes and swallowed. Get a grip, he told himself as he poured a glass of wine in order to give his trip to the living room a purpose.
“Excuse me, sir,” said a member of the waitstaff as he tapped T.J.’s shoulder. “Your mother asked if you’d please meet with her and your father in the study.”
“Yes, of course,” T.J. said as he turned around, giving one final glance to the living room to see if he’d somehow missed Riley, wondering in a moment of panic if she had left.
“Back alr
eady?” the blonde asked cheerily.
“Just a sec,” T.J. answered, ducking across the kitchen, pretending as though he’d forgotten something, before heading back to the study.
He stumbled into Riley, their bodies briefly colliding in the doorway. She lifted her head and looked at him, searching his eyes. T.J. opened his mouth but nothing came out.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, and gently pushed past him to the back door, closing it softly behind her so as not to make a sound. It reminded him of how she used to do that in college when she snuck in late at night, always so careful not to let the door slam.
“Dammit.” T.J. shook his head angrily at himself.
T.J. stepped into the study to find his mother chastising his father. “Who’s Nina, Ted?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
T.J.’s ears perked up and his eyes darted from mother to father and back to mother again.
“She said she was following up on an inquiry about Nantucket? That someone had called asking for a broker?”
“Oh, of course. Phil recommended her. I’m doing some research for a company I’m considering investing in; needed some information on the summer home rental market.”
Lori studied Ted, not yet convinced. “So you’re not selling our house in Nantucket?” She emphasized her point: “The one we built together and where we’ve spent every summer with the kids?”
Ted leaned over and kissed his wife’s forehead. “Of course not, dear.”
Her body relaxed and she let her arms drop from where they were crossed over her chest. “I’m sorry,” she said. She had a habit of apologizing whenever she stepped out of neutral. “I guess I’m just emotional from all this funeral business. And I’ve always dreamed of Lisa getting married in that house and I just got nervous because I know the Gibly deal didn’t go like you wanted it to and I didn’t know if—”
“It’s okay,” Ted cut her off, pulling his wife into a hug so she couldn’t see his face as he rolled his eyes.
“You wanted to speak with me?” T.J. interrupted, annoyed at his mother’s weakness and his father’s dismissal.