I step out of the car and wave to Liam as he speeds off to dinner with Nikki, an event that will no doubt be chronicled online tonight by TMZ. Before he drove away, he invited me to a Los Angeles magazine party in Nikki’s honor the week before the wedding. “I’ll come if you promise to wear a shirt that costs less than my wedding dress,” I had joked, blowing a kiss in his direction as he deliberately gunned the accelerator pedal.
I open the door quietly, still wondering who is inside with Max. I catch my breath as I see him and Courtney cracking open a bottle of champagne in the kitchen, Max motioning the bottle toward Courtney and acting like he’s going to shoot the cork at her. I knew this joke well. He had done the same thing to me the night we got engaged.
I drop my bag on the table to alert them to my presence, and they both look up at the same time. I search their faces for deception, guilt, anything that will tell me what’s really going on between them, but I see nothing. Max doesn’t jump away from her like he’s doing something wrong, and she holds my gaze as she walks over, gives me a tentative hug, and tells me I’m just in time to toast with them.
“What are we toasting?” I ask through gritted teeth, suddenly remembering the last time Courtney was here, just a few nights before the wedding. I’d invited her over, ironically, to celebrate. We’d just landed a new client and I’d splurged on a bottle of wine that we’d shared while talking for hours on the patio. As I look back now, it’s surprising that Courtney never seemed off or like her mind was elsewhere. Max had gone for a late run and had come out to say hello, shirtless and sweaty, just as Courtney was leaving. “It’s pretty dark out there, let me walk you out,” Max had suggested, and I’d been proud to be engaged to such a gentleman. I’d hugged Courtney tightly and smiled as she and Max disappeared through the front door. As I got ready for bed, my body tingling from the wine and feeling thankful that I had such a great friend and fiancé, had they been outside planning their future?
“Courtney’s first day—it went really well!” Max answers, and suddenly it’s clear why I never heard from him all day. He was too busy picking out champagne at the corner liquor store with Courtney. “She even wooed Ernie!” he says with a laugh, referring to the notoriously prickly CEO.
“Fantastic,” I say halfheartedly as Max fills another flute and hands it to me. “Where did you find your keys?” I ask, pointing to where they are sitting on the counter.
“Oh, I’m so stupid. They were actually in my messenger bag the whole time!” He looks at Courtney and they laugh together as if they’re sharing an inside joke, and I imagine him telling her the story as they sipped their coffee in the break room, Courtney batting her eyelashes and giggling at his forgetfulness. “Sorry, honey,” he adds, almost as an afterthought.
“No problem,” I repeat limply. “Liam gave me a ride home,” I add, to no one in particular.
“Oh, good,” Max says breezily, clinking Courtney’s glass and then mine. I take a seat at the counter and listen as they regale me with every story of the day, from the way Courtney’s new boss kept calling her Cathy to the food truck that had pulled up outside their office building with the most mouthwatering Kobe beef sliders you’ve ever tasted. I nod my head at the right intervals and try not to hyperventilate. I had caused this. I tried to tear them apart, but instead I had brought them even closer together. It seemed the more I tried to hold on to Max, the further he was slipping away, like a thread that continued to unravel. And, as I observe Courtney and Max laughing about a painful regulatory meeting they had suffered through, it’s becoming harder to believe that they weren’t going to end up together. Perhaps this was why people wouldn’t want to know when they were going to die. Because how could you truly live knowing the end was coming?
Several glasses of champagne later, Courtney finally heads home, but not before Max offers to carpool with her the next day. “Lovely,” I say under my breath as they debate whose iPod they are going to listen to.
“So you like having Courtney at work?” I state the obvious as we head upstairs to our bedroom, Max taking the steps two at a time like a schoolboy.
“Of course,” he says innocently. “You know that better than anybody. Aren’t you the one that used to say she was the only thing that made your job bearable?”
Yes. That was true. But that was before she blew up my life and took you with it.
“Oh, yeah, she’s great,” I say, trying to hold back the sarcasm that’s been bubbling just beneath the surface all night.
“What’s going on with you?” Max sits down on the bed. “You seem annoyed. Is this because I didn’t pick you up from work?”
I sit next to him and grab his hand. “No, although that would have been nice.”
“I’m sorry. I guess I never really worry about you that way.”
“What does that mean?”