Her Best Friend

by Sarah Mayberry

  He’d meant the comment as a way in to the conversation they needed to have, but Amy surprised him by groaning and clapping a hand to her forehead.

  “Oh, God. Don’t tell me I came to your place last night, as well?”

  He took a moment to respond. “You could say that.”

  “It’s official. You can’t take me anywhere. How embarrassing.” She pushed her sunglasses a little higher on her nose. “According to Denise, I drank nearly three bottles of wine on my own last night. Can you believe that? She poured me into a taxi and sent me home. Then apparently I rolled up at her place a few hours later, wanting to party like it was 1999. I suppose you’re going to tell me I did the same thing to you, huh?”

  Quinn had been drunk with Amy plenty of times over the years. He’d listened to her ramble on and on for hours about Art Deco architecture and the golden years of cinema, held her hair away from her face while she vomited, fed her coffee and egg-and-bacon sandwiches to cure her hangovers the next day. Not once had he ever known her to black out.

  He had to admit, it was a novel way of dealing with the situation: pretend it had never happened. Or, at the very least, that she didn’t remember that it had happened. The emotional equivalent of an ostrich sticking its head in the sand.

  “You mostly wanted to talk, not party,” he said slowly.

  She groaned again. “I really embarrassed myself, didn’t I? What did I do? Please tell me I didn’t yack on your mother’s Persian rug.”

  Some of the tension eased from Quinn’s shoulders. No matter what concerns he had about the future of their relationship, he couldn’t help but be amused by the zeal with which she was throwing herself into her attempt at damage control.

  Meryl Streep, eat your heart out.

  “You didn’t yack on the rug,” he said, unable to suppress a smile.

  “Bless you. One piece of good news this morning. I feel like someone parked a cement truck on my head overnight.”

  She pressed her fingers to her forehead dramatically and started to recount some of the crazy antics she’d gotten up to at Denise’s place.

  He watched her, admiring the performance. The throw-away breeziness, the self-deprecating jokes. He could guess exactly what had happened—she’d woken with cotton mouth and a hammering headache and remembered what she’d done. Knowing Amy, she’d probably squirmed with self-recrimination and embarrassment for a while. Then she’d come up with a plan to minimize how vulnerable she was no doubt feeling right now.

  Not a very good plan, admittedly, but a plan nonetheless. And she’d been desperate enough to put that not-very-good plan into action.

  A huge wave of tenderness and affection washed over him as he stood in the early morning sunshine listening to his best friend pile on the baloney.

  She was an idiot. An adorable, gorgeous, feisty, funny, sweet, sexy idiot.

  He waited until she paused to draw breath.

  “Ames. Come on. This is me.”

  She started to say something, then shut her jaw with a click. He could practically hear her debating with herself, trying to decide if she should give her too-drunk-to-be-responsible-for-my-own-actions gambit another shot or not. Then her shoulders slumped and she reached up to tug her cap lower on her face.

  “Could we please not talk about this?” she asked, her voice anguished.

  “I think we should.”

  “Well, I don’t. Let’s forget it ever happened.”

  “Sorry, Ames, but it’s not something I’m going to forget in a hurry.”

  “You should. You should just wipe it from your mind. That’s what I’m going to do.”

  “Ames.” He reached for her sunglasses, sick of not being able to see her eyes.

  She shied away from him. “Don’t! Don’t be kind to me, Quinn. Just…don’t.”

  Kind? What the hell was she talking about?

  “Listen—”

  He broke off as a black Audi convertible drove out of the alley and turned in to the parking lot.

  Amy made a surprised sound as it drew to a halt.

  “Isn’t that…?”

  He eyed the car’s dark tinted windows. “Yeah.”

  He watched as his soon-to-be ex-wife slid out of the car, a vision in stylish black. Their eyes met across twenty feet of gravel.

  “Quinn,” she said.

  “Lisa.”

  What the hell was she doing here?

  “Amy. It is you under that hat and glasses, right?” Lisa said as she crossed the distance between them. “You look like you’re hiding from the paparazzi.”

  “It’s me,” Amy said. Her voice cracked on the last word. She cleared her throat.

  Lisa leaned forward and kissed her. “It’s really good to see you,” she said quietly. She stepped back and shifted her focus to Quinn. “Don’t worry, I’m not about to kiss you.”

  She said it lightly, wryly, but he frowned.

  “I thought we were doing this through our lawyers,” he said.

  She seemed a little taken aback by his directness, but he didn’t see the point in beating around the bush.

  “We are. I’m not here to see you. I’m here to see Amy.”

  “Sorry?” Amy sounded startled.

  “I came to see you,” Lisa repeated.

  Quinn crossed his arms over his chest. He might not live with her any more, but he still knew when Lisa was lying.

  “Is it too early for brunch?” Lisa asked. She very carefully kept her gaze on Amy, avoiding eye contact with him.

  Amy slid a look toward Quinn. She looked torn, uncomfortable.

  “Um, sure. I mean, no. It’s not too early,” she said.

  Lisa smiled brightly and shook her head so that her long, straight hair flipped down her back. “Let’s go somewhere nice. My treat. I saw a new place on the way in. Sault or something like that?”

  “Yeah. It’s got a good reputation,” Amy said. She slid another look Quinn’s way.

  “We can take my car,” Lisa said. She moved toward the Audi.

  Amy hesitated before following her, glancing at him. “Um. I’ll see you later, okay?”

  He nodded. She didn’t move. He didn’t need to see her eyes to know she was feeling guilty.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Give me the keys and I’ll finish off that last wall in the main theatre.”

  “You don’t have to keep working when I’m slacking off.”

  He held out his hand. “Give me the keys.”

  He thought she was going to argue but after a beat she reached into her pocket and held out her key ring.

  “Don’t work too hard, okay?”

  He wrapped his hands around the keys and her hand. “This conversation isn’t over. You know that, right?”

  She pulled her hand free. “That’s a matter of opinion.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  She glanced over her shoulder to where Lisa was watching them. “I have to go.”

  He let her go. For the time being.

  AMY WAS QUIET during the drive to the restaurant. Lisa’s unexpected arrival was like a slap in the face. A brutal, very effective, cosmic wake-up call.

  For all the days that Quinn had been in town, Amy had only ever thought about him and her, about their friendship and the risk her feelings posed to it. She hadn’t once thought about Lisa, about how her friend would feel if, by some miracle, something happened between Amy and Quinn. But the truth was that there had always been three people in this love triangle. And somehow, over the past few days, Amy had allowed herself to forget that.

  And no, Lisa’s betrayal of Quinn did not cancel out any obligation Amy had toward her friend. Two wrongs didn’t make a right.

  “I’d forgotten how beautiful it is around here in autumn,” Lisa said as they turned onto the road to the restaurant.

  Amy studied the towering oaks that lined the road, each a study in ochre, crimson and amber, their leaves lit up like fire by the morning sun.

  “I forget to look sometime
s,” she said. “I guess it’s true what they say, familiarity does breed contempt.”

  “Story of my life.”

  Lisa said it so quietly Amy almost didn’t hear her. Amy flicked her a glance as they pulled in to the parking lot at the restaurant.

  “Good, it looks as though they’re open,” Lisa said.

  They were shown to a seat on the rear verandah with a view over lush, colorful garden beds and down a grassy slope toward a dam. Everything was perfect, from the pristine tablecloth to the expensive exotic flowers spilling from a nearby urn. It wasn’t until the waiter was flicking a crisp linen napkin over her lap that Amy was able to see past her guilt to register how underdressed she was. Her ragged jeans and green-and-blue striped sweater had seen many better days. Her sneakers were scuffed and she wasn’t wearing a shred of makeup. By contrast, Lisa looked as sleek and polished as if she’d just left a photo shoot.

  Nothing new there. Ever since the summer of the red bikini, Amy had been standing in Lisa’s fashionable, sexy shadow. Why should anything have changed simply because they hadn’t seen each other for a while?

  “Mmm. The bruschetta looks good. And there’s French toast made with brioche. Yum,” Lisa said, after studying the menu.

  Amy’s stomach churned uneasily at the thought of food, particularly food that came accompanied with maple syrup. “I think I’ll have black coffee with a side of black coffee.”

  Lisa gave her a sympathetic look. “I thought you were looking a little under the weather. Big night, huh?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Have the omelet. The protein will do you good,” Lisa advised.

  She took charge of the ordering when their waiter came, then they both sat back in their seats and regarded each other.

  “You look good, Ames,” Lisa said. “It’s hard to tell under the hat, but your hair’s much shorter, yeah?”

  “Mmm. More by accident than intention,” Amy admitted. “I got chewing gum caught in it a couple of months ago and had to lose four inches.”

  Lisa laughed, but her smile quickly faded and she shifted nervously in her chair. “I know you’re probably wondering why I’m here. Why I wanted to talk to you.”

  For an absurd, irrational moment Amy thought that Lisa knew. That somehow she’d gotten wind of the kiss and Amy’s confession and that she’d come to confront her with her perfidy.

  Then sanity returned and she released her grip on the arms of her chair and tried to calm her pounding heart.

  “To be honest, I’m still kind of getting over the surprise of seeing you so suddenly.”

  “It’s like this, Ames—I’m seeing a therapist.” Lisa blurted it like a kid swallowing cod liver oil, as though she was trying to get the awfulness over and done with as quickly as possible.

  Of all the things Amy had expected her friend to say, this was the last. Lisa had never been big on self-exploration and contemplation.

  She was aware that Lisa was watching her tensely, waiting for her reaction. She tried to formulate a reply.

  “Are you finding it helpful?”

  “You think I’m nuts, don’t you?” Lisa asked.

  “No! Of course not. God, it’s not like I couldn’t benefit from professional intervention half the time.”

  Like last night, for example.

  “You’re the first person I’ve told. In case you couldn’t tell.” Lisa smiled self-deprecatingly.

  It was Amy’s turn to squirm in her chair. There was no way Lisa would be confiding in her if she knew what Amy had done, what Amy wanted. No way.

  “So what made you…you know?” Amy asked.

  “Seek professional help? Get my head read? It all caught up with me, Ames. The affair, losing Quinn. My own shitty behavior, in a nutshell.” Lisa took a mouthful of water and ice cubes clanked against her tall glass. She met Amy’s eyes and shrugged. “I told myself I was fine, that Stuart and a new life was what I wanted. I even started looking at houses, was on the verge of putting an offer in on this amazing place in Vaucluse…. Then suddenly I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning, and I couldn’t stop crying. Stuart took me to the doctor’s and he wanted to put me on antidepressants. But I knew it wasn’t a chemical thing. It was a me thing. I’m so screwed up, Ames.”

  Lisa blinked rapidly. Amy reached across the table and took her friend’s hand.

  “Just because you screwed up doesn’t mean you’re screwed up,” she said.

  “Tell that to my therapist,” Lisa joked. “My relationship with my parents…my relationship with Quinn…the way I see myself. Basically, I’m a therapist’s wet dream. Paula’s going to be able to name a ski lodge after me by the time she’s straightened me out.”

  Amy could hear the pain beneath Lisa’s lighthearted words.

  “I think you’re very brave,” Amy said. And she meant it. It took a lot of guts to confront your own bad decisions and try to learn from them. “Lots of other people would have taken the tablets and bought the house and never looked back.”

  “Well, if I could have got away with it I would have,” Lisa said. “But apparently my subconscious had other ideas.”

  “You’re still brave.”

  “We’ll see. Anyway, my therapist is the reason why I’m here. We’ve been talking a lot lately about when I was growing up. You and me and Quinn. God, we used to have fun, didn’t we? Remember the time we had that party when my parents were away?”

  Amy smiled. “Denise passed out in the backyard and we tried to lock Quinn in the toilet off the laundry room by tying a bit of rope between the door handle and the washing machine.”

  “But instead of staying trapped, he pulled the washing machine over he yanked on the door so hard,” Lisa said.

  For some reason they both found this hysterically funny and for a long moment there was nothing but the sound of giggling and wheezing at their table. Lisa fixed Amy with a steady regard once she’d regained her composure.

  “I know I messed up with Quinn, and I know how close you two are and how much you’d probably love to punch me in the face for hurting him, but I really don’t want to lose you, too, Ames. That’s why I’m here. To tell you that I value your friendship. And that if you want to punch me in the face, that’s okay with me—as long as we can still be friends.”

  Guilt wrapped itself around Amy’s chest and squeezed hard. If Lisa knew how bad a friend she really was…

  “It’s not my place to judge you, Lis. At the end of the day, whatever happened is between you and Quinn,” she said uncomfortably, “it’s none of my business.”

  “Do you mean that? Really?”

  “I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”

  Lisa sagged with relief. “My God. You have no idea how terrified I was of having this conversation with you. I’ve been talking about coming down here for weeks, and my therapist has been telling me to do it. But it wasn’t until I was lying awake staring at the ceiling last night that I got the courage up. I jumped straight in the car before I could chicken out.”

  Amy glanced down at her faded sweater and grungy jeans. She didn’t consider herself to be a particularly intimidating person. The idea that Lisa had been losing sleep over talking to her was hard to get her head around. “Am I that scary?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  Amy blinked. “Okay.” She wasn’t sure, but she thought that maybe she was a little offended.

  “Not in the way you’re thinking,” Lisa said quickly. “It’s just that you’ve always been so straight down the line, Ames. You’re probably the most honest person I know. Well, you and Quinn, I guess. But then you two were always a matched set. I used to be so jealous of you.”

  Amy made a scoffing noise. “You’re the one with the law degree with honors and the big fancy job and the legs that go on forever and the kind of car I will never, ever be able to afford.”

  Lisa dismissed it all with the flick of her hand. “You have something that’s worth more than any of that, Ames. You know who you are. I
’ve always admired that about you. Why do you think I was always over at your house when we were kids? When I was around you, I felt grounded. You don’t bullshit and you care and you’re not embarrassed to show it. And you know what counts in life.”

  Amy felt like a huge fraud. If she was even close to being the person Lisa thought her to be, she’d tell her friend the truth right now. Confess everything, lay it all before her.

  Amy looked down and smoothed her fingers along the crease in her napkin. She couldn’t do it. Unlike Lisa, she wasn’t brave enough to expose her greatest failings to public scrutiny. So much for being a bastion of no-bullshit and honesty.

  “I’m no angel, believe me,” she said quietly. “I’ve got my own fair share of flaws, Lisa. More than my share.”

  The waiter appeared with their meals then and Amy said yes to cracked pepper and no to more sparkling water and made all the right noises about how good her omelet looked.

  Lisa leaned forward as the waiter once again left them alone.

  “I promise no more heavy talk from now on, Ames. Tell me about your plans for the Grand. And how are your folks? And who should I be on the lookout for while I’m in town?”

  Amy forced a smile and took a moment to gather her thoughts. Then she started answering her friend’s questions.

  CHAPTER TEN

  QUINN FINISHED PREPPING the walls in the main theatre. He stopped for a brief chat with Rick when the other man dropped off his contract, then threw himself back into work. By midday the walls were done and he briefly considered going home. Instead he shifted his attention to the concession stand in the foyer. Amy hadn’t discussed where she wanted to focus their efforts next but he wasn’t in the mood to welcome leisure time.

  There was no point lying to himself; it had been a shock seeing Lisa’s car turn into the parking lot. Especially given the conversation he’d been having with Amy.

  He had no idea why Lisa had chosen to come to town while he was here, but he knew it wasn’t a coincidence. He thought about what Duffy had said in his e-mail about having trouble pinning down her lawyer, and used more force than was strictly necessary to push the sander across the pocked and scarred counter. If she was angling for something more in the divorce…