Quickie

“Laura didn’t call you?” Her voice is unnaturally high and tight, like she’s trying to remain calm.

I cover my eyes with my hand. “No, Laura didn’t call me. What exactly is this party?”

“It’s all very last minute,” my mother says, flustered. “It’s Laura’s engagement party.”

I feel sick. I feel physically ill. I try to keep my voice smooth and even. “Laura is engaged. To Wyatt?”

“Yes. I know it’s not fair of me to ask you to help, but it’s so last minute that I didn’t have time to hire any caterers. I could really use you as backup, sweetie. But I understand if you don’t want to.”

Unexpected tears come to my eyes. It’s been what …three weeks …and Wyatt proposed to my sister? I haven’t seen him since he left. I still have the ring he gave me in a box on the shelf. I haven’t even had a chance to give it back to him. This is so fucked up and so unfair. How am I supposed to go to this party and be happy for her when the two of them basically threw a box of explosives into my life?

But then again, do I really have a right to be angry about this? The suddenness of it? I just got married overnight and no one of my family knows. I don’t exactly have a leg to stand on when it comes to sudden and permanent attachments.

Fuck it. I am angry. I’m angry that he left. I’m angry that he’s with Laura. But beneath that pulsing river of ever-present anger that’s been there since it happened, there’s another thought. If it was so easy for Wyatt to leave me, then he couldn’t have been happy, and we wouldn’t have been happy after we married. And the more I see everything for what it was, I don’t think we were ever happy. If he makes Laura happy, I can get over it. I can. Well, I can try. I swallow my anger and my confusion and I clear my throat. “I’ll come.”

“Are you sure, sweetie?”

“Yeah,” I say, though my voice sounds like I’m being strangled. “Besides, it’ll give me a chance to give him back the ring.”

My mother makes a sound of disapproval. “You know this isn’t the way I would have liked it to turn out, but I can honestly say that I haven’t seen Laura this happy. Ever.”

I sigh. “Well, I guess that’s good. What time should I be there?”

“Two would be good. It’ll give us some time to get ready before everyone gets here.”

“Okay. I’ll be there.” I let out another sigh as I hang up. The things you do for family. Not only will I have to see Wyatt. And Laura. And them together. But I’ll have to see everyone who was at my engagement party six months ago. This is going to go perfectly, I can just tell. I try to pull myself together—I brush my teeth and change out of the dress and into comfortable sweats that I can relax in until I get ready for the party. But I’m not comfortable. Everything here reminds me of the past. There’s the little dish that holds my rings that Wyatt bought for me at a street fair. There’s the photo of us in Ireland when we went on a spontaneous getaway. There’s the spot on the floor where we had sex after Wyatt asked me to marry him.

Now he’s engaged to my sister. Who the fuck does something like that? What kind of person do you have to be to utterly destroy someone in that fashion? I need a distraction. Now. And I find one in my husband. I go back to reading articles about Wilcox. Wilcox Andrew.

It’s around noon when there’s a knock on my door. I unfold myself from my position on the couch, set my laptop on the coffee table and stretch as I head over to the door. I open it, expecting the mailman or a neighbor, but instead find Wilcox Andrew Herrington in my doorway as if he magically stepped out from my laptop screen and the articles I’ve been reading about him all morning. Jeans and a henly have never looked so good.

“You’re here,” I say, kind of shocked.

He smiles, and my stomach does that pleasant flip-flop that I now associate with him. “I’m here. I realized that we never exchanged phone numbers. So I asked Simon where he dropped you off. Is that all right?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I mean, I can’t believe we forgot something like that, but yeah, come in.”

I stand to the side and let him step into the apartment, suddenly aware that I’m wearing ratty sweats and that I haven’t actually cleaned my apartment in a while. “Umm…yeah. I haven’t cleaned, sorry. I wasn’t expecting you. I’ll just be right back.”