Before Him
“You get that my pride has kept me out of Mookatill and not a broken heart?” Pride. Shame. Loathing for our (un)friendly neighbourhood gossips.
“It doesn’t matter. He hurt you, and that makes me want to hurt him. Out of sight, out of mind usually, but he was just there.” And I was already annoyed at that point. He just happened to make himself my outlet. Hearing a noise outside, I wander over to the window and peek through the blinds. It’s just Brandon Schnyder throwing today’s paper onto the driveway next door.
“You know, I’m coming to see that Ed did me a favour.”
I bring my phone back to my face, and in the corner of the screen, I appear to be wearing my what the fuck face. “No, he did not,” I mutter angrily.
“I mean, sure, it would’ve been kinder if he’d just said he was having second thoughts. If he hadn’t slept with Emily.”
“Argh! Do not mention that woman’s name!” Along with my demand, I hold up the hand I’d like to smack a bitch with. Emily, not Holland, obviously.
“Or if he’d had a better sense of timing and cheated on me before I bought my wedding dress,” Holland continues. “Maybe before we’d sent out the invitations, or paid the final catering bill. But we would’ve made each other miserable, Kennedy.”
“It’s too early to listen to this bullshit. New topic, please.”
“Okay. I’ve got one for you.” On the screen, she swallows thickly, her eyes darting away. “Oh, I met Dylan Duffy!”
“You did not!” Dylan Duffy was my biggest teenage crush. What that man could do to me with his on-screen Scots-American accent was nobody’s business.
“I did. I served him a quail’s egg and then I got invited to his birthday party by his wife, Ivy. She’s totally gorgeous, by the way.”
“You were invited to work the party? I thought you weren’t waitressing anymore?”
She pauses, appearing to contemplate where to take this explanation. “It’s a long story,” she says eventually with a head shake. “And not the main thing I wanted to say.”
“Go on.” Her weird tone causes the fine hairs on the back of my neck to stand like pins. “You remember I told you what happened in London? With my boss?”
“The one you slept with by accident.”
“I totally had sex with him on purpose, Dede. You saw how hot he is. I just didn’t know who he was at the time.”
“Okay, so what about him?”
“I might’ve sort of been seeing him?” Her inflection renders the words a question.
“Right.” I scrub a hand over my face. Maybe it’s a Harper thing. Maybe we just live to make things complicated. “But it’s just a temporary job. Seasonal. He’s like, your super-hot, super-rich rebound.”
“Yeah, he is, and it isn’t,” she says, drawing her non-explanation out.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“The job was just temporary. Being a duchess? Well, that’s kind of permanent.”
“How do you become a duchess?” It’s early. I’ve been up all night having fabulous sex. Forgive me if my brain isn’t working quite right.
“When you marry the duke.”
“He asked you to marry him?” My tone is flat because that can’t be right.
“And I said yes.”
“And how old did you say he was again?” I ask, pressing my fingers to my temple as a throb begins there.
“He’s sixty-two. But he has all his own teeth and hair!”
“Jesus, Holland, that’s way older than Tina!”
“I know. It’s pretty bad, right? So when I tell you he’s really forty, you might not find it so bad.”
“Forty. He’s forty.” That’s still so much older than she is. But it’s her life. She has to make her own mistakes. God knows I have. And I encouraged her in this, living her life as she wanted to, not as she thought she ought to. Because fuck everyone else.
“Alexander, that’s his name, he wants to know if I’d like to get married in Mookatill, and as much as the thought of that tickles the hell out of me on some level, I think I’d still rather stick pins in my eyes.”
“Okay.” But is it really? I don’t feel like it is as my hand begins to shake. I pass my phone to my other hand to see if that helps.
“Also, I want you and Wilder to come here to see where I’ll be living. You know, in my castle.” A fist twists at my insides, my whole body beginning to ache. “I really want you to meet Alexander’s family. Well, they’ll be my family soon, and they aren’t snooty at all once you get past their accents.”
Her new family. The family she’s exchanging us for.
Oh, my God. Holland isn’t coming back.
Ever.
39
Kennedy
PRESENT
EVERYONE LEAVES
I stare at the phone in my hand. I didn’t even tell Holland about Roman. I didn’t share my good news as she did. Somehow, it seems like an omen. The weirdest sensation suddenly washes over me, cloaking me in a sudden sense of foreboding.