by L. D. Davis
“Those mushrooms were poisonous! I threw up so much that I think both my kidneys came out.”
There were a few seconds of silence. “I’ll be right there.”
Adam arrived a half hour later, carrying a couple bags from the CVS.
“You look horrible,” he stated, peering at me carefully as we rode the elevator to the penthouse.
“I told you,” I pouted. “I’ve been poisoned. You didn’t get sick?”
I didn’t understand the stare he gave me as he slowly shook his head.
“Maybe I got a different batch than you did. All I know is that I have to get better quick. As maid of honor, I am required to help the bride all day tomorrow—or today.” A thought occurred to me just then. “What if I have a stomach virus? What if I’m contagious and I gave it to everyone in the house already? The wedding will be ruined. It will be like that scene in Bridesmaids, but at the wedding.”
“I’ll check you out, but I don’t think you have a virus.”
I sighed. “What do you know? You’re just an orthopedic surgeon. You probably don’t know the difference between the bubonic plague and food poisoning.”
“Excuse you, Bitchy Betty,” he said dryly, “but I am a multi-faceted physician. I even know the correct combination of medications I can use to euthanize your sick ass, so watch it.”
I didn’t say anything in response, because the elevator doors were sliding open. We were silent as we entered the penthouse, and Adam followed me to my bedroom. Once the door was closed, I felt more comfortable to speak at an audible level.
“What’s in the bags?” I asked.
He reached into one and produced a bottle of ginger ale, followed by a box of crackers. I slowly sipped the ginger ale and nibbled on a couple crackers while he asked me a million questions.
“What else did you eat yesterday? Did you have any alcohol or medications? Any headaches or other pain? When did you start to feel nauseated? Does it hurt when I press here? What about here? Any allergies that you know of?”
I answered everything to the best of my ability, mildly fascinated by how quickly he could roll into doctor mode. I’d seen him do it before and had been just as fascinated.
“Last menstrual period?”
“A few weeks ago. About a month.”
“What was the date?”
I looked up at the ceiling as if there were a calendar there. “I don’t know. It started the same day we first saw Doc Snyder.”
Adam stared at me without any emotion. It was his doctor face, the one that didn’t spill any details.
“What?” I demanded.
He kept his voice even as he spoke. “That was not a few weeks ago. That was not a month ago, Lydia. That was about seven weeks ago.”
I shook my head. “No. It was…it was before Thanksgiving, but—”
“That appointment took place in the beginning of November, Lydia.”
My mouth opened, and then closed, and then opened again. Finally, I shrugged. “Okay. So? I’ve probably had another one since then and don’t remember. I’ve been a little preoccupied.”
His lips pursed and for the first time since I’ve known Adam, he seemed reluctant to speak. His gaze flitted to the remaining CVS bag and back to me. I looked at the bag, too.
“What is in the bag?”
“Don’t freak out,” he said, which made me want to freak out.
One by one, he removed four boxes and placed them on the bed. I stared at them.
“I got four different ones so that, either way, you can be assured of the results.”
My gaze drifted back to his. “Are you serious?”
With a sigh, he reached into the bag once more and pulled out a jar of sliced mushrooms. I silently watched him as he opened the jar with a pop. When he tilted it toward me in an offering, I slowly plucked out a mushroom, dripping in the juice it was stored in, and ate it. And it was as if I’d just eaten ambrosia.
Neither of us said another word as I gathered up the four pregnancy tests and locked myself in the bathroom.
Chapter Twenty
A firm hand gently shook me from a vague dream. I blinked up at Marco with confusion, unsure if I was still dreaming or not and pushed myself up on my elbows.
“Lily asked me to wake you.”
My voice was raspy and strained from my lack of sleep. “What time is it?”
“Almost nine.”
“Damn.” I collapsed back onto my pillow and rubbed my forehead with the palm of my hand, as if that could make it any easier for me to wake.
Marco stood a couple feet away, looking down at me with no hint of what he was thinking or feeling. “Late night?”
“Yeah.”
“Lily said you had company until almost four.”
When I walked Adam to the door in the early morning hours, Lily just happened to be up with the baby. She’d been polite to Adam, or as polite as someone could be while issuing a death glare.
I sighed heavily. “Of course she did. She probably couldn’t wait to tell you.”
“She also told me he’s going to be your date for the wedding.”
The chances of getting another few minutes of sleep were clearly non-existent, so I slowly sat up. “He’s not my date. He’s just my friend, and he’s coming to the wedding. Period.”
His emotionless façade began to slip as his words came out thorny. “You spent all day with him yesterday after you claimed you were wiped out.”
I looked up at him and tilted my head. “How was your last trip to Italy? It must’ve been hard for you, to have to divide your time between Celeste and Celia. How did that work out for you? Or was it a threesome kind of thing?”
He looked like a fly that was shocked to find himself stuck in the embrace of a Venus Flytrap. “It was not like that,” he said, his voice low.
“Then tell me what it was like.”
He walked to one side of the room with a sigh. “Celeste offered her support as my friend, and I accepted it. I didn’t tell you about her because I knew you would not have handled it well and would have misconstrued the situation.”
I swallowed back the sudden urge to cry and tried to keep my voice steady. “Omitting information is what makes me misconstrue the situation, and it is only considered misconstrued if I am wrong.”
“She is just my friend, Lydia. She was there to support me.”
I got up and went to my suitcase on the floor in the corner and began to root through it for something to wear. “I guess my support as your girlfriend meant nothing.”
“It meant everything to me, but you could not be there with me.”
“You didn’t ask me to be there with you.”
He came closer and stopped a couple feet away, hands on hips. “I didn’t think you would go. You wouldn’t have wanted to leave the kids behind, or take them out of school, or maybe you wouldn’t have been able to take time from your job. I also thought meeting my family would have scared you, and you would have reacted badly as you usually do when faced with your emotions.”
I stood up straight and stared at him, hurt and angry. “Maybe I would have surprised you, Marco. It’s like the stupid dancing at the party all over again. You made decisions based off your assumptions, which, by the way, make me look like a complete tool.”
“If I asked you to be by my side in Italy, would you have gone?” He wasn’t asking out of curiosity. It was a challenge. I could see it in the self-righteous gleam in his eyes.
My stomach abruptly gave a lurch, and there was a bitter and sour taste in my mouth. I tried to step around him and head to the bathroom, but he blocked my way.
“I don’t have time to argue with you, Marco.”
“Answer the question. Would you have gone with me?” He was goading me. He didn’t even expect a real answer, and if he did, he expected to be correct about his assumptions.
I swallowed hard, but my throat felt like it was swelling as I tried to keep the contents of my stomach down.
; “I said I don’t have time.”
Again, I tried to go around him, but he didn’t allow me to go by.
“Would you have gone?” he said each word pointedly, a smug smirk on his face.
I was about to puke, and my emotions were officially going berserk. The last thing I wanted was for the rest of the household to hear us arguing, but I lost my composure.
“Yes!” I shouted. “Yes, you fucking bastard! I would have gone with you. I would have uprooted my kids from school, been scared to death, but I would have left my house and my life and gone with you! I loved you. I loved you more than I was willing to admit, and I would have gone with you. I would have wanted to be the person to support you. I would have wanted you to need me like that, because I fucking needed you. You made me rip my heart out of my chest and tell you everything and then you just left! You left me to clean up the mess alone and I needed you!”
I shoved him on the last word. It wasn’t enough so I shoved him again and again until he grabbed my wrists. His face was blurry, because I had started to cry, but I still saw the stunned expression.
“I asked you every day,” he said ardently. “Every damn day I asked how you were doing, asked for you to talk to me.”
“You know how hard it was for me to open up!” I cried as I tried to pull away from him. “You know! But it was pretty impossible to have that kind of conversation with you when we were constantly interrupted by Celia or her kids. They had you there every damn day all day, and we couldn’t get a half hour of your time without interruption. And at night, you were too tired from staying up and doing whatever the fuck you were doing with her to even stay awake long enough if I did want to talk. You made me feel like me and my kids were secondary to her and her kids.”
Marco’s eyes were wide, and his head shook slowly back and forth. He seemed so shocked, that he easily released me when I tried to pull away again. “That’s…that’s not right. It isn’t true. You aren’t secondary. I wanted you to—”
His phone began to ring. Celia’s phone number had its own ringtone, “Für Elise” by Ludwig van Beethoven. I used to like the song, but I hated it now.
“Go ahead,” I said with a small, broken voice. “Answer it.”
He didn’t make a move for the phone in his pocket. He just stared at me, his eyes studying me. The damn music continued to play.
“Answer your phone.”
His face tightened. “No.”
The music stopped, but only for about ten seconds before it started up again. Marco closed his eyes and let out a tremendous sigh.
“Answer your fucking phone!” I shouted.
Eyes still closed, he shook his head again. “No.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. The damage is done. You may as well answer. I’m done here anyway.”
He let me go, and I closed the door and made it to the toilet just in time. Sometime later, after I had showered and cleaned out my mouth, when I came out of the bathroom, Marco was gone.
Chapter Twenty-One
It was the day before the wedding and there was a lot to do. I did my best to focus on the tasks given to me and not relive my fight with Marco, but it was like someone kept pushing rewind on my brain’s DVR, repeating the same memories on a loop.
“Who is getting Shawna and Cliff from the airport?” I asked Lily after we’d climbed into the back of an Escalade driven by a man named Corsey. He and Lily seemed to be pretty friendly, but I’d never met him before.
“Marco is getting Shawna and Cliff, probably as we speak.” She glanced over at me, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “I heard you guys arguing. Was it about Adam?”
My eyes almost rolled. “Why would it be about Adam?”
“Because you’re bringing him as a date to the wedding, and you’ve been spending a lot of time with him.”
“He’s not a date. He is my friend, and it’s not a big deal.”
“It’s apparently never a big deal to you,” she said so low under her breath I barely caught it.
That was a jab at me for Gavin. His name hadn’t slipped through her lips, but that’s what it was about. I knew that as well as I knew my own face when I looked in a mirror. I could have snapped back at her, but instead, I pretended not to hear it. Nothing I would’ve said would have been kind. It was the day before her wedding, and I didn’t want to ruin anything for her, so I kept quiet.
As Lily answered a phone call from Felicia Sterling, my own cell vibrated on my lap. There were several notifications from Facebook. As I opened the app, I thought about how strange it felt to rejoin this aspect of society. It wasn’t something I felt like I’d missed over the years. In fact, I had avoided it. I hadn’t cared to see happy posts about marital bliss from some old college friends, or to see photos of vacations spots I’ll never visit, or to read complaints about problems that are insignificant in the grand scheme of life. I still didn’t feel like seeing any of that, but Adam had convinced me to download the app yesterday. He’d also directed me to a few groups he thought I’d be interested in. I didn’t know how often I would actually use the app, though.
I clicked on one of the notifications. Adam had tagged me in a post. When I went to it, there was a picture of us outside the museum. “In Philly with a Filly,” the caption read.
Despite how emotionally overrun I felt, the post drew a smile from me. Lily gave me a questioning look as she continued with her call, but I didn’t acknowledge it. There were more notifications, a lot of requests for games I was never going to play, alerts about other peoples’ posts, and a few friend requests. One was someone from high school I had never liked, and she had never liked me. Ignored. Another was from a name I didn’t recognize, and after reviewing their profile, I saw we had no mutual friends or anything in common. Fake. Ignore. Next was one from a girl I worked with at the bookstore. She was nice, and though I didn’t see us really being forever friends, I didn’t see the harm in accepting her request. Accept.
The next one startled me. I actually jerked in my seat, drawing Lily’s gaze again. It was a request from Hadley Blackwood, the same Hadley Blackwood I had met at the Herrington party. I was surprised to see this, because I didn’t think I’d made a good impression on the woman after, in so many words, I’d called her and almost everyone in the room entitled snobs. I wasn’t sure what to make of it and chose to leave it alone while I thought it over.
The rest of the morning went by in a blur. Lily tried on her dress one last time and arranged for it to be sent to the Sterling estate. We checked on the cake, picked up some of the favors she’d ordered, and stopped at the jewelers to pick up the ring she’d chosen for Kyle, unbeknownst to him.
It was a gorgeous ring, platinum outlined in rose gold. There was an inscription inside in slanted small letters. “You are worthy of my love.” The words made Lily smile but made my heart ache.
“Do you like it?” she asked as she closed it back in the box and dropped it in her purse.
“Yes. It’s gorgeous.”
She continued to smile as she glanced down at her engagement ring. It was also platinum with diamonds glimmering up and down the sides of it. The round center diamond, which was honestly, enormous, was surrounded by pink diamonds set in rose gold, and then those diamonds were surrounded by more white diamonds, and more white diamonds surrounded those. My sister must’ve been wearing twenty-grand on her one finger, easily, and that did not even include the actual wedding band, which was probably another few thousand dollars’ worth of jewels.
“You’re sure getting used to all that wealth mighty fast,” I commented as I drew my eyes away from her ring. I had to blink a few times because I think the thing burned my retinas.
She glanced at me and shrugged. “I love Kyle. I just happen to love a man who has very deep pockets.”
“Does it ever bother you? I mean, your wedding is small, but you’re not even batting an eye at the expenses. It’s not like you’re serving fried chicken and potato salad for dinner.”
She
gave a small laugh and a shrug. “It’s just a simple wedding that we’re having at his mom’s house.”
“His mom’s mansion, and yeah, you’re not going to have all the bells and whistles, but it will be elegant even in its simplicity, and you’re still spending a hell of a lot of his money.”
Lily’s smile began to slip away. “In twenty-four hours, it will also be my money, and I don’t mean that as snotty as it came out, but it’s true. It’s not like we spend money like this all the time. This is a special occasion. Yeah, in the beginning, I kind of balked at the idea of him buying me shit, but then I didn’t mind. None of it felt like charity. Kyle knows that I will work hard with or without his money. I will want him, with or without his money. None of this”—she waved her hand at her ring and the car and the driver—“matters in the end. What matters is that I love him, and he loves me.”
“Sounds very romantic.” I hadn’t meant to sound sarcastic and underwhelmed, but that was how it came out. After the argument I’d had with Marco earlier, and after all I’d been through in the past, it was no wonder that I was disenchanted.
She looked irritated, and I thought for a second, she was going to really go off on me. My sister had a temper, a scary one, but she seemed to rein it in and took a deep breath.
“Look, I’ve worked hard since I was twelve years old babysitting kids in the neighborhood. First, it was to help Mom. Later, when I started working at other places, it was to help Mom and save for college. I worked all through college to help support Gavin and me, and then me and Mom while you and Gavin were playing house. I worked and worked and worked, and when your husband died, and your kids were in need, I worked more, sometimes only getting a couple hours of sleep a night before I had to be at the next job. Now, I don’t have to work so hard, but I choose to. I am not a perfect person; I have many flaws. I’m not the prettiest, the smartest, or the best daughter or best sister or best aunt, but I know my worth, Lydia. I am worth everything Kyle gives me and allows me to have. I am worth his love. I am worth his devotion. I am worth his kisses and his smiles. I am worth his gifts and his money, and if he no longer had it to spend, I would be no less worthy to him, and he would be no less worthy to me.”