The Status of All Things (20 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY

Life always seems simpler at dawn, the sun rising slowly outside my window, Max’s gentle snores reminding me of the future we’re working toward. Maybe it’s because I wake up feeling light, like a feather dancing in the wind—something that seems to fade as the day wears on. Because I’ll read too much into how Jules’ smile never seems to reach her eyes the way it used to, why seeing Liam and Nikki’s picture on the cover of
OK!
magazine makes my stomach lurch, and why Max’s snores don’t lure me back to sleep the way they once did—that I’m unable to match my breathing to his when I pull him close. It could be that even though I’m so happy to have him back, there’s a small part of me that hates the fact that I needed a do-over to achieve the happiness that eluded us the first time.

“It doesn’t matter how you did it. Life is complicated. If you and Max are happy here and now, then take it and run, Kate,” Jules tells me later when I arrive at the restaurant where she works before we leave for my bachelorette party. “This is what you wanted. And now you’ll even get the wedding you always hoped for as well. Why are you questioning it?” she says as she feverishly mixes fudge in a large stainless steel bowl. She barely
even slows as a tall man sweeps in and dips a small spoon into the mix, the chocolate dangling precariously as he lifts it to his mouth, nodding his head in approval, Jules’ only acknowledgment a quick sideways glance before he disappears into the dining room.

“Who’s that?” I say with a smile. “Supercute coworker alert!”

Jules frowns at me. “He’s one of the owners.”

“How can that be? He looks about twenty-five.”

“He’s thirty.”

I think back to the way his deep blue eyes crinkled at Jules. “He’s adorable.”

“I guess,” she murmurs nonchalantly as she pours the fudge expertly into the waiting pan before placing it in one of the large refrigerators against the wall. “He’s my boss.”

“Really?” I ask. “Because boss or not, he looks as delicious as that fudge you’re making.”

“If you say so,” she answers. “But stop trying to change the subject. I don’t get it. You finally have Max back—you effing traveled
back in time
to make it happen, for goodness’ sake. So please, tell me why you can’t just go with the flow? Just accept that Max wants to make you happy and
that’s
why he told Stella to change things back.”

“Maybe,” I ponder. “I guess I’ve come so far with him that I don’t want to go backward again. The first wedding I planned wasn’t at all what he wanted. And I want to make sure
he’s
happy too.”

“Sometimes you have to give up a little bit of your own happiness to make someone else’s happen. That’s what love is.”

I watch Jules’ face register a series of emotions as she says this. “What did you have to give up to make Ben happy?”

Jules’ eyes narrow slightly. “Don’t make this about me. Any
one who’s been married and has kids would tell you the same thing.”

“Would they? Because I’m only concerned about you.”

“You’ve got precious little time to fix this thing with Max and I’m topping your list of worries?” She walks around and cups her hands over my shoulders. “You need to stop questioning
my
relationship and start talking to Max about
yours
.”

I didn’t know why I hadn’t mentioned Stella’s call to Max the night before—it had certainly been on my mind as we ate dinner, as I poured him a glass of the Chianti Classico I had picked up on the way home. The words had sat on the edge of my lips as we opened the gifts that had arrived at our door earlier that day, both of us cringing as we realized the beautiful cherry-red KitchenAid mixer we tore open was from Courtney, who must have ordered it before everything happened.

“How did work go today?” I had asked Max as we sat on the floor together surrounded by light blue wrapping paper. “Did you see her?”

Max’s eyes clouded over as if he was contemplating whether to tell me what he was thinking. “Okay—” he finally says. “I did see her once, in the elevator. She slid in right before the door closed.”

“Oh? What did she say?”

Max’s eyes met mine. “Just that she was sorry.”

“And?”

“That was it. I told her I was sorry too.”

The skin on the back of my neck pricked. “What are
you
sorry for?”

Max sighed and I could sense him formulating his answer. “I’m sorry things turned out the way they did. That two friendships ended. I feel bad about my part in all of it.”

Trying not to read into Max’s words, I’d turned the white and silver tissue paper over and over in my hands, until it dissolved into a small ball that I tossed in the direction of the trash can. “How did she seem?”

Max paused. “Miserable.”

“Good,” I had said under my breath and tried to mean it.

• • •

“I’ll talk to Max about the wedding stuff,” I promise Jules as she peels off her yellow and black apron. “If you pinky swear that you won’t really make me wear that god-awful penis necklace tonight!”

“Not a chance.” She laughs as she puts her arm around me and leads me out into the dining room and grabs her overnight bag from behind the bar. “You ready?”

• • •

“Vegas? Are you serious?” I ask as I lean my head against the leather passenger seat of Jules’ SUV an hour later, after Jules finally revealed our destination.

“Yep.” Jules nods, giving me a quick sideways glance as she merges onto the 15 freeway, the plastic penis that she stuck on the dashboard waving its approval as we speed past the tumbleweeds and shacks that sprinkle the side of the highway. “ETA two hours, thirty minutes!” she squeals, and high-fives Liam, who is sitting in the backseat sipping from his flask.

“Suite booked at the Aria? Check! Slutty outfit packed in your bag? Check! Bottle service at TAO? Check!” Jules says.

Liam chimes in, “But most importantly? Flask full of the smooth stuff to get this party started? Check!” He laughs and passes the liquor forward, me pursing my lips as I take a sip and
feel the whiskey burn my throat, thinking I’m definitely getting used to the taste, and, dare I say, liking it a little.

“Do you go anywhere without that thing?” I tease.

“Not if I can help it,” he retorts.

As I watch Jules gripping the steering wheel with a permagrin on her face, I wonder why she is taking me to a place she’d always described as skanky. Anytime I had suggested a girls’ trip to Las Vegas, she’d always rolled her eyes and exclaimed,
no way
.

Liam’s phone buzzes and he smiles, texting back quickly with his thumbs. “Nikki says congrats and to have fun.”

“That was nice of her,” I say, and look over at Jules, wondering if she’s having the same thought I am, that I’m surprised he was in the car at all. I’d half expected him to cancel at the last minute so he could attend some swanky Hollywood party with Nikki. “How are things going with you guys?” I ask, but am only met with silence.

“Liam?”

“Huh?” he mumbles, and I look over my shoulder to find him texting with the speed and intensity of a fourteen-year-old girl.

“I asked how things were going with Nikki.”

“Amazing,” he says, his eyes never leaving the screen of his phone as if he can’t bear to let even a second go by without responding. He chuckles. “She wants to make sure we aren’t being followed.”

I glance back at the empty highway. “By whom?”

“The paparazzi.”

“Really? Wow, how things have changed for you,” I say, sounding more put off by this than I intend to. Liam had been getting a lot of media attention as Nikki’s new boyfriend—having gone
from my hipsterish best friend who was writing code for websites to the guy who was dating a huge TV star literally overnight.
Extra
had gobbled it up, wanting to know who this guy was Nikki had picked from obscurity. They’d even done a whole segment about him the other night:
“28
Days
with Nikki?”
a tongue-in-cheek piece about how no guy had outlasted her stint in rehab.

“What’s with the tone?” he asks, finally looking up at me. I wasn’t sure I had a good answer for him, only that there was a small flutter in my chest whenever I thought about this life I’d wished for Liam. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was responsible for sending him careening down a path he wasn’t meant to travel.

“Is your life
really
better now?” I question.

“Are you being serious?” he asks, his face contorted into a smirk that I wish I could wipe right off it.

“Yes, I really want to know.”

“Of course it is!” he says, as emphatically as if I’ve just asked him if he’d be interested in winning the lottery.

“Okay,” I say lightly.

“What do you mean,
okay
?” he challenges. “I can tell there’s more swimming around in that head of yours. Just say it. You know you want to.”

I look over at Jules again, but she only shakes her head as if she’s warning me not to answer him. But there’s something about the arrogance I swear I hear in his voice that makes me comment anyway.

“It’s just that you’ve been kind of MIA since you started seeing her,” I say, doing a mental calculation. I was sure we’d never gone more than a day without at least texting. Since he started dating Nikki, my texts would go unreturned for hours, if they were answered at all. And I hadn’t talked to him on the phone
in days. “And there’s the car and the clothes. You just seem . . . different.”

“Because I am!” He shakes his head. “I don’t get it. I thought this is what you wanted. For me to finally find someone.”

“Of course . . .” I trail off, not sure I want to continue, not even sure what I’d say if I did. They had just started dating and I knew he deserved his honeymoon period. He had a right to that giddy, fluttering-in-your-stomach feeling; that adrenaline rush when the other person’s name pops up on your phone; that urgency to want to be in touch with them all the time, about
everything
. And as his best friend, I also knew I was supposed to want that for him.

When Max and I started dating, we spent all of our nights and weekends together. The only breaks we had from each other were when we were at work. Jules had once joked, “The sex must be amazing. I’ve barely heard from you in weeks! You haven’t even posted on Facebook.” But she hadn’t been annoyed with me, and neither had Liam. Neither of them had called me to task over my absence or my behavior the way I was doing with Liam.

“I think what Kate is trying to say is you’re moving really fast. We’ve never seen you like this. And we just want to make sure you’re okay,” Jules interjects.

“I’m better than I’ve ever been,” Liam says, and leans back against the seat, staring out the sunroof, as if he’s basking in happiness. “And what about you, Jules?” He meets her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Should we be concerned about you? The old you wouldn’t be caught dead in Vegas, but now that you have a new look, we’re on our way there. . . .”

“This trip is for Kate!” she says a little too quickly.

“Uh-huh.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jules challenges, her cheeks turning red.

“Hey—” I interrupt. “I know I started this and I’m sorry. Can we just drop it? Pretend I never brought it up.”

“Fine,” they say in unison, and I lean my head against the window, letting the ensuing silence and the endless highway lure me into sleep, waking to the shiny casinos as we descend into the City of Sin.

“Are you sure there’s no tiger in here or a baby in the safe?” I joke as we trail the bellman into the two-thousand-square-foot suite that Nikki’s “people” had secured for us, passing three different TVs and two wet bars as I make my way to the window, gasping as I take in the incredible view of the strip, squinting my eyes to shield them from the late-afternoon sun. I turn to face Liam and Jules, who both seem lost in thought. “Hey, you two. I just want to say thanks. This is amazing.” Pulling them in for a group hug, I squeeze them close to me. “I’m lucky to have you guys,” I say, and am surprised when I feel tears burn my eyes, hoping the tension we’d felt earlier in the car will now melt away. “And I’m sorry if my wishes have hurt you in any way—I promise I was only trying to help . . .” I grip them both tighter, hoping Jules will take this opportunity to tell us both what’s on her mind.

But she only breaks away and smiles at me. “No waterworks! At least until we get good and drunk!” She laughs, any signs she’s struggling emotionally hidden behind her grin. She walks over to the bottle of champagne peeking out from an ice bucket that had been sent
compliments of the hotel
and uncorks it without fanfare. “To new beginnings,” she says as she pours champagne for all of us and gives me a knowing look. “Just because you didn’t get it right the first time doesn’t mean it’s not meant to be.”

I take a deep sip, letting the bubbles tickle my throat as I ponder her words. She’s right. It shouldn’t matter that I needed to go back in time in order to make things right. This really wasn’t any different than going to couples therapy to work through issues or going through a separation and then getting back together. The bottom line was we’d repaired our relationship.