by Blair Holden
“It feels like it’s bruising. Who knew someone just below a hundred pounds could pack that much of a punch.”
Cole gently removes the ice pack from my face and then he’s the one wincing. “At least let me call Cass—”
“No way! I’m not giving her another reason to diagnose me as some kind of a homewrecking shrew and call boyfriend security services on you.”
“There’s no such thing as a—”
“Shush, don’t make me argue with you. It hurts too much to talk.”
That it did.
“Tessa, I’m so sorry,” Beth apologizes for the thousandth time since the unfortunate incident took place. Technically, she has no reason to apologize. It’s not like she asked me to jump in between the catfight that ensued after we rescued a drowning Jenny from the pool. No one told me I had to step between the two right when Jenny threw a punch.
And wow, does she pack some power for someone who looks like a gust of wind would blow her away. Consequently, I have a huge welt on the right side of my face, which makes it look like I’m the poster child for domestic abuse. Poor Cole, I guess I won’t be going anywhere with him soon.
“It’s okay, I think.”
“I shouldn’t have let her bait me, ugh, I wish she didn’t get to me that easily.”
“Yes, dear, I wish that were the case too.”
Most of the guests left after the little incident in the backyard, also known as Beth nearly putting Jenny on life support. The rest of us are gathered in the living room while the scorned ex-girlfriend in question ran for her life a long time ago.
Not before giving my face something to fondly remember her by.
In the meantime, Mom isn’t making it too subtle that she thoroughly disapproves of how Beth chose to deal with Jenny. In yet another refresher, here’s another tidbit from memory lane. My mother loved Jenny like her own daughter, maybe a little more. Back in the day, Jenny had been exactly what Mom wished I’d been more like. Captain of the cheerleading squad, obviously model thin and gorgeous and knew her way around Nordstrom like it was her local Walmart. They’d bonded over their love for the latest weapon disguised as high heels and baby animals who’d been turned into handbags. So when Jenny broke Travis’s heart, she also broke my mom’s, because I think for her it’d been like losing a daughter.
But I’m not under the impression that Mom still harbors any affection for the woman. Her disapproval toward Beth stems from reasons other than the fact that we had an unplanned reenactment of the WWE in the backyard.
See, Beth isn’t exactly the kind of girl Mom wanted Travis to be with. Given my brother’s reckless past, she’d wanted someone a lot more...angelic. According to some warped logic in her mind, Travis would be better off with a quiet little homemaker from the countryside, and that’s exactly what she said. Beth is the opposite, she’s wild, unpredictable, and as far from a domestic goddess as one can get. The fact that she’s always kept her past to herself is another reason why Mom is so skeptical about trusting her. When she’d only been my best friend, it’d not been that big of an issue. But after Marie, Beth’s mom’s, death due to drunk driving and Beth and Travis ending up together, it’s started to become something of a problem for a woman who’d wanted to bring in a domesticated Stepford Wife for Travis.
“You’d think that with all those people around, it’d be a little harder for you to react the way you did.”
“Mom, she didn’t do anything that I wouldn’t have done.” I defend my best friend, despite my face hurting like a mother trucker.
“So, if one of Cole’s exes were to show up and tried to talk to him, you would grab her by the hair and try to drown her in your family’s pool? And then when she barely managed to escape a violent death by drowning, you’d then proceed to go at her with your fists like you were a Neanderthal?”
If she’s going to put it that way then no, I don’t have nearly the required upper-body strength.
“She wasn’t just trying to talk to him, Ms. O’Connell,” Beth interrupts us, never one to shy away from confrontation or my mother’s biting words.
“She’s been stalking us.” She gestures outside, toward Travis, who’s helping Lan and Alex clean up the wreck from the fight. “Not only has she been turning up at our apartment in the city, but she’s also been leaving me threatening voicemails. Today was the last straw.” Beth grits her teeth and I want to hug her so bad. She doesn’t deserve any of this, especially not when she’s had to go through so much in life to reach a point where she’s happy, content and safe.
“Why didn’t you ever tell us?” Megan and I ask at the same time. In the same room, Cami’s gasp reverberates and Mom’s face pales.
“We didn’t want it to become a big deal. She’s not dangerous, just a little delusional. Her sugar daddy just divorced her and she’s got nowhere to live. Someone thought it’d be a great idea to give her our address, and she just showed up out of the blue one day. Travis...he’s been good to her,” Beth says without a hint of bitterness in her voice. “It was obvious that she’d been through a lot, that her ex abused her, but the more Travis helped her out, the more attached she grew. We put her in a place where she could stay for a while as she was getting on her feet.”
“Oh, I do not see this ending well,” Cami mutters as she sinks to the floor, wine in hand.
“It didn’t. She started showing up unannounced, started calling Travis for every little thing. At first, I felt sorry for her and let it pass. But she began acting really possessive of him...it was creepy.”
“I bet. You should’ve told me, I’d have warned you that Jenny’s a conniving, manipulative witch. She always has been.”
“I would agree with Tessa. Plus, from what you’ve said, she’s not at a good place mentally either and sounds potentially dangerous.” My mom sounds sad and wary, but I’m glad that she’s put aside her prejudices toward Beth and is being sympathetic.
“We’ve talked about filing a restraining order, but at the time it seemed a little extreme. Now, though...”
“I’ll call my Dad, we can do it first thing tomorrow,” Cole reassures her, reminding me with his strong grip on my hand that he’s there, that’s he’s going to support me and my family through whatever rabbit hole we fall into, and I couldn’t be more grateful for it.
Beth doesn’t argue because what really needs to happen is for that girl to be locked up faster than the person who invented clear plastic jeans.
***
“What a crazy day.”
Despite the earlier unsettling events, I decide to not cancel our resort and spa reservations for today. There’s no point wasting good money over the stereotypical psycho ex-girlfriend from a nineties film. Sheriff Stone has reassured us that he’s got an eye on Jenny and that he’ll help us get a restraining order in the morning and maybe see if he can get her into therapy. So with that, I realized that all of us needed to escape the dark cloud that hung over all of us at the house. Yes, I admit I look like I fell down several flights of stairs, twice, and landed cheek down, but we’ve got rooms at a gorgeous, five-star inn and spa courtesy of Mom, and I think it’d be wasteful were we to choose to wallow in our rooms instead.
No one except Cami’s really in the mood for drinking and dancing, so we stick to watching a movie in our room. We all have grand suites, again yet another generous gift, but the inn’s special suite has been reserved for Travis and Beth, and we think it’s only right that they get some privacy tonight. The rest of us have agreed to meet up in mine and Cole’s room for movies and room service once we recuperate.
“Hmm.” Cole seems distracted. and he’s been the same way ever since we got here. I know I might look like a punching bag. but I’d think that the romantic ambience would bring out the flirt in him instead of making him as fun to talk to as a cement wall. His eyes are glued to his phone, fingers moving rapidly as he types out one mini novel after another. It’s a complete one-eighty from how he’d been before we’d left the house. Post m
y traumatic injury, for which I’d gotten prescription painkillers and a doctor’s appointment on my parents’ insistence, he’d been so sweet and thoughtful as per usual. So despite being beaten up, I’d felt like the luckiest girl alive. Sometime between leaving the house and getting to this paradise right in the middle of Hartford, he’d received some kind of text, email, or a life-changing epiphany that required all his attention.
I hover close by, trying not to take a peek at his phone.
“Everything okay?”
Maybe it’s school and a professor who’s threatening to kick him out of law school unless he submits an assignment this very second.
Through his phone. Although it’s a holiday.
He mutters something indecipherable so I let him be. I don’t think about the fact that I haven’t even bothered to look at my own emails this weekend. I’d worked my butt off the entire month just so that we could have these few special days together without work interfering. You try going off the grid when a certain member of the Kardashian clan slaps on a puppy filter and launches the same color lipstick with a different name every other day. But I’d done my research, so even if she were to make another five million dollars in three days with yet another color that I couldn’t differentiate from the one before, I’d be fine.
Casual reminder that I forked over a small fortune to pay for college and still need my dad to cover my rent.
But returning to the mystery of my distracted boyfriend, who seems to think that the answer to life’s mysteries lies in him glaring into the screen of his phone, I do begin to get worried. Cole’s not an over-sharer, especially if he thinks that him sharing his problems will cause me to worry. But I think through the course of our relationship, I’ve managed to prove to him that I’m just as capable of supporting him as he is of supporting me. So, I clear my throat loudly and attempt to intervene again.
“Cole?”
“Yeah?” he asks absentmindedly.
“Are you sure everything’s fine?”
“Yeah.”
Still not looking up from his phone.
“You look a little worried. Is it school?”
“No, everything’s fine.”
Okay then.
“Because if you do need to work on something, I can tell everyone that the movie’s off and just order us some dinner. Do you want me to ask Jay to drop off your laptop?”
I rarely get to take care of him because he never lets me, so now I’m thinking of all the ways I can be of help in case there is some kind of an emergency. I don’t know much about law, but I did take some courses here and there, and I’ve seen every single episode of How to Get Away with Murder and by default will know enough about law to fake it.
I think.
“You know what? I’ll just be back.”
He leaves the room without even looking at me.
Okay then. My jaw, if it did not hurt so much, would’ve been slack were this a cartoon; steam would be coming out of my nostrils. What the heck is up with him? I hear the door slam and follow him, determined to get an answer. He’s fast but I’m angrier, and so even when he ducks into a discreet alcove that appears out of nowhere, I’m quick to follow him there. I’m reminded that I should’ve changed into more than just a silk robe thrown over my pajamas because of course there are people out and about, enjoying their vacation and not wanting their children to be subjected to mild nudity. I almost feel the need to cry at how wrong everything’s going right now. Our stay here had been such a thoughtful gift, and Mom really went to town when she booked us in this luxury country retreat for the weekend. The hotel, located in the small town of Washington, and is spread over fifty-eight acres of beautifully landscaped gardens and woodland. As we were told upon arrival, the place is one of the most coveted weekend getaways and city escapes in the country. We’d only driven half an hour before finding ourselves leaving the city of Hartford behind and completely submerged within the nature preserve. Since the engagement party never got the chance to see the light of day, we’d left home early and now have the entire evening and half of tomorrow to explore this exquisite property. In my head, I’d scheduled so many activities for us just so that we’d all have our moods uplifted. Now it’s all gone to hell.
I pull the tie around the waist tighter just so that I do not traumatize any unwilling passersby and continue snooping on my boyfriend.
This is what I’ve stooped to, hiding behind walls and straining my ears to pick up on Cole’s rushed words.
“You need to calm down and tell me what’s wrong.”
Okay, so something obviously is the matter and he’s trying to resolve it. He’s got the voice right now, the one which tells you that he’s got everything under control and that he’ll make all your troubles go away. In our junior year of college, I’d made the mistake of trying out a menstrual cup for a marketing project and well, to put it politely, it did not go down well for me.
I’d also been wearing white that day, just for kicks.
Instead of going out and about campus looking like I killed something in my pants, I’d called Cole in tears and asked him to help me out. Cami and my other friend from college, Sarah, had been in class and of course I’d tried calling them first. Despite living together at that point and being together for what seems like decades when you’re that young, I’d been too mortified to call him.
In the end, I didn’t have any other option.
My cheeks still heat up at the memory of the day. How he’d raced to the campus gift shop to get me some clothes to wear as well as tampons. He never said a thing while he somehow managed to find his way into the girl’s room and handed me my supplies. How sweet he’d been the entire day necessitated some kind of a boyfriend gold medal because I knew that I could always, always count on him.
Now he’s using that voice for someone else.
“I-I can’t make out what you’re saying. Please stop crying and just try to explain to me what’s going on.”
This sounds ominous.
“You’re hurt?”
I wonder who he’s talking to.
“Is Lainey there with you?”
Of course, the moment he says the five-year-old’s name, everything makes sense and my heart drops at the same time. I’d done such a great job of forgetting about Cole’s neighbors back in Chicago that the memory of them unfolds almost like a car crash. Melissa and Lainey, the mother and daughter that Cole occasionally acted as a manny for. I’m reminded of my surprise trip to his new city and how much of his time had been dedicated to caring for the two. I chose not to pry too much into their relationship because I didn’t want our trip to be about anything but the two of us spending some time together, but it seems as though I need to start asking a lot of questions.
“Okay, look, I can’t be there today, but I’m going to call a friend and he’s going to come get you, okay? Just hang in there. Stay on the line, I’m just going to text him right now. No...I’m not going anywhere, Mel. I’m right here.”
A better person would go up to him and ask him if he needed help. A more supportive and understanding girlfriend would tell him that it’s okay if he needs some time to help out his friends, but it’s been a long day and I’m tired, not to mention the right side of my face is starting to throb again, so I let him carry out his knight-in-shining-armor mission and head to Cami’s room.
This girl could really use a laugh.
***
My girls sense that something’s up, so they kick their respective boyfriends, Lan and Alex, out and we binge-watch Gilmore Girls on Netflix. I bet this defeats the purpose of the retreat. We’re supposed to be relaxing and getting massages, taking long country walks and staying far away from technology. Instead we’re shoveling popcorn in our mouths and screaming at the TV when Lorelai kisses Christopher.
“Are you blind!”
“How could you do this to Luke!”
“You don’t deserve his coffee! You are dead to me.”
Ah, it never gets old
.
I realize that in my hurry to become the next breakout sleuth, I’d forgotten to grab my phone or my key. I have no intention of talking to Cole or getting back to our room, so it’s just as good that I don’t have to talk to him right now. He’s probably busy making sure his dear Mel isn’t struggling to get by without him for a few days.
I yell at the TV some more.
Somewhere in the middle of Rory kissing Jess and then stabbing us all in the back by not leaving Dean, Beth joins us. She’s quiet, not as boisterous as us as we yell and curse at the lesser Gilmore. Beth looks ill with her sallow skin, bloodshot eyes, and a nose that she’s rubbed raw. She falls into the king-sized bed we’ve all managed to fit ourselves into and reaches for the bag of Whoppers malted milk balls on the bedside table, emptying half of it into her mouth.
“Rory should’ve just joined a convent. Men suck. You hear that! Men suck,” she yells at the TV, and I dare not ask how my brother’s managed to screw up this time.
“That, I would agree with.” I fall onto the pillow next to her. “So, for the rest of tonight, guy talk is banned. Except if he’s Jess Mariano. Him we can talk about.”
“I’m down with that,” Cami agrees and flops down next to us. We look pointedly at Megan, who seems to have the most functional relationship out of all of us. Good for Alex, but sometimes it can get a little tiring to hear that they never fight. Sure, they’d had their share of hiccups in high school with Megan’s nearly Amish parents, but now they’re that annoying couple that just really never fights.
“Megan, switch off your phone.”
“But...but...I could get an important email.”
“Even doctors need to get some holiday cheer, Meg, no one’s emailing you today. Switch it off.”
I imagine the picture the three of us would paint, looking at her with our arms crossed across our chests and with hatred for anything male burning in our eyes. I’m not sure what it is that Lan’s done to make Cami mad, but she’s on board and I’m not questioning that.
“He’s not going to call me. I just texted him five minutes ago that—”