He shrugged. “It’s a gamble, because you’ll either get drunk and be nice to me or get drunk and hate me more.”
He was right. It was a gamble. But champagne was a good choice. It usually made me bubbly, too. Usually. Now, not that time at the fund-raiser for 57th Street Primary when that damn Jenna outbid me at the last minute on those estate sapphire earrings she knew I wanted. That night, being a little champagne-drunk made me feisty.
“I wasn’t going to give you this yet,” James said, “because I don’t want you to think it’s a bribe.”
He pulled a tiny box out of his pocket. My heart raced. I loved a good tiny box. Which is why I got so mad about the earrings.
“But then I decided that giving you this will prove to you how serious I am about working things out. Because I know right now there’s like a ninety percent chance you are leaving me, and I want you to have it anyway.”
He slid the box across the table. I opened it, and I think I went blind. Seriously. It was a single emerald-cut diamond with two teeny baguettes flanking it. It was huge but not so huge that it looked too clunky like some sort of ungroomed ice rink.
“Whoa.”
I slid off the emerald I always wore on my right hand, put the diamond on, and lifted my hand to show him across the table.
“Wow,” he said.
“This is seriously amazing, James. Thank you.” I paused. “Now there’s only an eighty-five percent chance I’m going to divorce you.”
He laughed cautiously, and I laughed wholeheartedly. He was treading lightly, as he should have been, because I was incredibly leery of the man. There was no doubt in my mind that if we got back together, I would spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder. I mean, my shoulder would be more toned from wearing this massive diamond, but still, I’d be looking over it.
I took a sip of my champagne and admired my new jewel. “It really is quite spectacular,” I said.
Then I stopped cold, my champagne in midair. I set the glass down too forcefully and glared at James.
“Oh, my God. This was an engagement ring. You bought this for Edie Fitzgerald because you were going to ask her to marry you. I can’t believe you!”
“Hold up,” James said. “I had Craig make the ring for you. If you’ll look inside the box, it says, ‘Designed especially for Caroline Murphy Beaumont.’?”
Ah, yes. So it did. My longtime jeweler, Craig, was always on point.
James reached for my hand across the table. “I don’t get how you can be so sweet one minute and so cruel the next.”
And that’s when I realized that I might have run from Peachtree Bluff like my hair was on fire, but somewhere in there, a little Southern must have gotten in.
With his hand on mine, I felt that spark that I used to feel, that jolt of electricity that made me know that our being together was so right. And it made me realize how long it had been since I had kissed him, made love to him. It was another gamble. Because I might think of Edie Fitzgerald and how my life was shattered, how I had to leave town and come to my mother’s house so as not to be the laughingstock of Manhattan.
As I cut my very rare, very perfect steak, James said, “So where do we go from here, Caroline? What can I do to prove how much I love you and how very sorry I am?”
I didn’t say that the ring was a good start.
“I’m trying, James,” I said. “I swear I am. But this nearly killed me. You can’t imagine how vulnerable you feel when you’re six months pregnant and all alone. It is terrifying. I’m not going to forget that soon. You’re going to have to be patient.”
He nodded. “I’ve cleared my schedule through July.” He grinned.
I smirked, then looked up and said, “I don’t want to know details. I don’t want some bullshit explanation of why you did what you did or some self-reflective crap. The more I know, the more I’ll have to dwell on.” I paused. “But James, you didn’t tell me that you were having an affair and you were sorry. You told me you didn’t love me anymore and you were leaving me. How am I supposed to move on from that? How do I know you aren’t going to quit loving me again next week?”
I hated to cry. Couldn’t stand it. But I could feel tears in my eyes as I said it. I had spent so much time, understandably, I think, worrying about the outside world, thinking about what people were saying about me and how I looked, that my primary emotion these past few weeks had been humiliation. I hadn’t spent all that much time fully feeling how devastating it was for the person who was supposed to be your everything to cast you off like you were nothing.
He looked up at the ceiling for a moment as though I might forget my question if he didn’t make eye contact.
“What are you doing?”
“I am trying to answer you in a way that doesn’t sound like a bullshit explanation.” He put down his knife and fork and took my hand. “It wasn’t about you. It was about me. I felt like I’d made a mess of my life and I hadn’t amounted to anything or lived up to my expectations. It was like I was breaking out of my rut or something. I made things about us that were really about me.” He took a sip of wine. “This sounds insane, I know, but it was like I was living two separate lives, and I couldn’t process how this would affect you. It was like the whole thing was a delusion, and I was going to get to keep the life I had while still doing this horrible thing.” He shook his head. “You’re right. Whatever I try to say sounds idiotic. But I realized that feeling your heart race because someone famous was giving you all her attention is not love. Someone who has your back, who gets you through the hard times . . . that’s love.”
I could see his eyes welling up, and I knew that this hurt so badly because I loved him so much. It felt impossible. I was pretty sure I could never trust him again. But I also knew that I wanted to be with him—although being with him would be forever, unalterably changed. There was no good answer here. It made me feel sick.
“When I figured out what I had really done,” James said, “when I realized that the entire world was going to know that I had destroyed my family, it was like I was running headfirst into a moving train and I couldn’t jump off the tracks to get away. I had to convince myself that I was in love with her, that love had made me do this horrible thing.” He sighed. “Otherwise I had thrown my whole life away for absolutely nothing.”