“Touché.” I laugh. “But in all seriousness, she’s been different, right?”
“I don’t know—like you said, I’ve been MIA,” he says, and I can tell my comment bothers him.
“About that . . .”
“Forget it, let’s just have a good time and not worry about how any of us is acting. I think we can agree that we’re all doing the best we can under the circumstances.”
“You’re right, but what if this thing with Jules is more serious, like she might be having real problems, maybe even with Ben?” I start to tell him about what I overheard in Jules’ foyer when the buzzing of his phone interrupts us. I grab it before he can. “Can Nikki handle not receiving a text from you for five seconds? I’m trying to talk to you about something important here.”
I survey Liam as he searches for his answer. “Okay. She does seem slightly off. But if she has a problem, she’ll talk to us about it—I’m not going to force her.”
A dozen scenarios flare through my mind as I wonder what could be wrong between Jules and Ben—if anything. It was true that I could be reading too much into the fight I overheard. The reality was that couples argued, especially ones that had been together as long as they had. And it was possible I was being hypersensitive because of my own situation with Max. But the instinct in my gut told me something had happened to shift their dynamic dramatically. And I had wondered more than once, based on some of the cryptic comments Jules had made about her marriage, if Ben had cheated on her. It was possible—he traveled a lot and was a good-looking guy. But while there was a chance it had happened, I just couldn’t believe he had it in him. He used to brag that he didn’t need to look at other women after he met Jules—that she was the most beautiful person on the planet.
“I’m not saying we need to force her to tell us her secrets, I just want to make sure she knows she can confide in us. That we won’t judge her or Ben.” Max flashes through my mind, how I had ignored our problems until he’d been forced to look other places for the answers he needed. I didn’t want Jules to make the same mistake. “After what happened to me, I just worry that if she’s wearing blinders, it could make whatever she’s going through worse.”
Liam motions for me to give him his phone. “Well, you might have been given a special gift, but most of us have no other choice but to get it right the first time,” he says, scrolling through his phone so his eyes don’t meet mine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“And you said we would never be able to finish it!” Liam raises his voice over the thumping sound of the music, pointing to the empty bottle of Ketel One vodka and mixers on the tray in front of us. He signals to the server who’s been assigned to our plush couch in the VIP area of TAO. “Another one, please.”
I try to shake my head, to tell Liam that I’ve already had too much, that I’m so buzzed I’m no longer embarrassed by the fluorescent penis beads I’m wearing around my neck. I had even let Jules talk me into participating in a ridiculous bachelorette scavenger hunt—I’d pinched some guy’s ass on the dance floor and done a blow-job shot at the bar. But despite Jules’ pleading, I had drawn the line at removing my bra and talking a man into wearing it.
But I was having a great time, the alcohol blunting any tension I’d felt among Liam, Jules, and me earlier.
“Having fun?” he yells into my ear, his breath hot.
“Of course!” I exclaim as that new will.i.am song starts playing, the one that Jules made us listen to on repeat so many times on the car ride here that Liam finally banned it.
“Oh my God—I love this song!” she screeches as she clumsily grabs for our hands, yanking us through the bodies smashed together like sardines on the dance floor. Once there, I lose myself in the moment, forgetting to be worried about Jules’ marriage, about Liam’s relationship with a young starlet who’d been in rehab just months before, about my own future with Max. Instead I close my eyes, raise my hands above my head, and shake my hips to the beat. And for a moment, I wish we were back in college—things had seemed so much simpler then. Just the three of us against the world. When I open my eyes, I catch Liam watching me with an odd look on his face.
“What?” I mouth to him.
He nods in the direction of Jules, who has her hands on the chest of a man I had caught staring at her earlier. He has his hands on her hips, and every few seconds, one of them leans in to yell something in the other’s ear, but they never stop touching. When she finally glances over, I give her a questioning look, but she only throws her hands around his neck and grips him tighter. Concerned, I start to bob and weave my way over to her, but feel a strong hand on my shoulder. “Leave her be,” says Liam.