Courtney
Okay. Know that I’m always here for you.
Max
Thanks. I just have a lot on my mind. I’ll be okay.
Courtney
Kate’s a very lucky woman—I hope she appreciates you.
I check for a response from Max, but there isn’t one. Rage rises to my throat as I try to push the image of Glenn Close holding a butcher knife from my mind. I rack my brains, trying to remember if I’d ever given Courtney the impression that I’d been taking Max for granted. Had I somehow made it seem to her like he wasn’t my number-one priority? But more importantly, had I made him feel that way?
“I have to do something about this,” I whisper to myself as I open the door and place Max’s phone back on the dresser and grab mine. “Right now.”
I climb back into bed, the sound of Max’s breathing comforting, reminding me that what I’m about to do is for us. Courtney needs a distraction. And I have the power to give her one.
I gulp my tears away as I pull up Facebook. I had always believed Courtney was a true friend—someone I could trust with anything. But now I knew she should never have been given that kind of access to my private thoughts. To my life. To my fiancé. And I couldn’t allow her to take another step toward the line I knew she’d eventually cross with Max.
I think back to tonight—how she’d talked over me as I’d tried to share something funny our wedding planner had said, how she’d stolen glances at Max when she thought I wasn’t looking. And then I remember a remark she made to me after Max sent me chocolate-covered strawberries to the office a couple of months ago with a note that said, just because.
“How did you find such a great guy?” She’d sighed as she slid the card back into the envelope. “I hope you know how lucky you are!”
How long had she plotted to take Max from me?
Finally, I type the words and let the tip of my index finger linger over the post button before closing my eyes and pressing it down hard, feeling a sliver of relief that Courtney will never read it because the status will disappear like all the others, but my heart still pumping in overdrive because I’ve just wished for the one thing that Courtney and I fear most.
It’s so sad that Courtney can’t get off Magda’s shit list no matter how hard she tries.
CHAPTER NINE
I feel the jersey fabric of the sheets, still warm after Max has left for his run the next morning, and silently pray that ours will be the only bed he will sleep in again. At least a hundred times, I’ve considered wishing for Max to be hopelessly in love with me—to have not one single doubt about spending the rest of our lives together—but I don’t want to use my power to make him feel that way. I want his heart to lead him there on its own. Because if it’s not his decision, then I’ll always be left wondering—had he been given the choice, would it have been me?
My head throbbing from the mojitos last night and the text exchange I’d discovered between him and Courtney, I grab my laptop and head to the kitchen to take care of a few chores that have fallen by the wayside since I traveled back in time. With a few clicks of my mouse, I wish for the laundry that is piled high next to the washing machine to be washed, dried, folded, and put away; for our dry cleaning, which had been sitting across town for a week, to be picked up; and for my upper lip to be waxed—without pain and without leaving the embarrassing red mark that taints my fair skin for hours afterward and screams to the world, yes, I just got hair removed from my upper lip, how are you?
But as I pull the plastic off Max’s freshly pressed shirts and slacks that are now hanging on the back of the chair next to me, I wonder—no, I know—that I’m being too frivolous with my wishes, that I should probably be helping others, not just myself and Jules. I could hear my mom scolding me now. Why didn’t you wish for a cure for a disease or to end hunger in third-world countries? And she’d be right. Why hadn’t I?