In the Unlikely Event

Mal then made us all coffee and tea before he announced that he was going to pick his daughter up from school.

On the couch, Rory grabbed my hand and told me, “You know what the worst part is? I wasn’t even mad at you for sleeping with him. You’re right. I did tell you I was going to break up with him a gazillion times, though it was still a mistake. I was mad because you didn’t tell me. And because you kept pushing me into his arms for your own, selfish reasons, despite my doubts. The lie is bigger than the sin.”

“I know.” I broke down in tears.

I was tired from the flight and from being eaten alive by my own guilt (AKA not the way one likes to be eaten). I just couldn’t take it anymore.

“I know all those things. I just thought I could sweep it under the carpet and pretend like it never happened. I wanted it to work out between you guys—right up to the point you were in Greece, actually.” I gnawed at my lower lip.

“Why? What happened?” Rory asked, taking a sip of her tea.

She was normally a coffee drinker. Another thing that changed after she moved to Ireland.

“I ran into Whitney, Ryner’s assistant, at Saks. Before you growl at me, I was just looking around, not working on inflating my overdraft situation.” I cleared my throat. “Anyway, I could swear she was sporting a baby bump. It was so easy to figure out with her malnourished self. Of course, I had no intention of saying hi to her, so I did what every character in a B-grade romantic comedy does and hid behind the mannequins. Whit was walking around with someone who looked like she could be her mother, rubbing her swollen belly. The woman asked her, ‘Do you really think he’s going to leave his girlfriend for you?’ And Whitney replied, ‘I don’t know, and I don’t care. He got me an apartment next to his so he can be close to the baby. If Callum wants to marry Little Miss Awkward, I’m not going to ruin his plans as long as he keeps the cash flow coming. Which he will.’”

Rory’s eyes flared, and she sucked in a breath, straightening her back. More than anything, she looked casually outraged. Like, when you tell your friend about something insane that happened to one of your colleagues at work. She seemed completely emotionally detached from the story, which made it easier to tell her.

“What happened then?” she asked.

“Well, at first I thought, What are the chances? But then, I remembered you always told me Whitney was extra touchy with Callum and totally had the hots for him. Pieces started falling together. He’d cheated on you before, why wouldn’t he do it again? I tried to call when you were in Greece, but you didn’t pick up. Then what happened between us came out, and it was too late. I swear not telling you was the worst thing I’ve ever done, Rory. I swear. There’s never any way a boy could come between us.”

Rory put her hand on mine and smiled. “I know.”

“You do?” I felt my entire face twisting in pain.

She nodded. “I’ve known it for a long time—that I was going to forgive you, that is. I figured we should have this conversation face to face, so I was going to do it when I came to visit Mom in a few weeks. But you beat me to it. Look, I know how crappy it feels to cheat on someone. I agonized over what I did to Callum. Still do. Because it doesn’t matter that he cheated—I’m better than that. Or I should have been. I don’t regret being with Mal, but I regret that it happened before I broke up with Callum. That’s for me to live with, a permanent stain on my conscience, and yet here I am—living. So I’m asking you to do the same. Live with your mistake, Cinder-freaking-rella. Learn from it, and go find your Richard Gere.”

We stared at each other for a while, smiling quietly. It felt like a promising hello, but somehow also a bittersweet goodbye. Nothing would be the same, I knew, with or without Rory’s forgiveness. She was not coming back—not to live in New York, anyway, and yet she chose to give me the beautiful gift of forgiveness.

“For the record, I hate your new husband for taking you away from me.” I sniffed, crossing my arms and looking the other way to further prove my point.

“For the record, he resents you, too, for what we did to his pictures,” she snorted.

“You told him!” I grabbed a throw pillow and threw it in her face.

She caught it in the air and tossed it back at me, laughing.