The Status of All Things (3 page)

“Matron of
dis
honor now!” I force a laugh.

“I’m sorry—I wasn’t thinking. I just don’t want you reading that. No good can come from it.”

“What am I supposed to tell everyone? What’s my status report?
Feeling sad. Got jilted
?”

“Come on, Kate. That’s the last thing you should worry about right now. Everyone will understand.”

“People are going to feel sorry for me.”

“No they won’t! They’ll feel
sad
for you. There’s a difference.”

“Well, either way, I’m going radio silence. At least for now.”

“That alone should tell them something awful happened!” Jules jokes. Admittedly, I was sometimes guilty of oversharing on social media—checking in at my Pilates class, uploading pictures of the models from a photo shoot at work, even posting links on Jules’ wall about the latest episode of
Girls
. I had never denied that I loved interacting with everyone online, that I enjoyed sharing all the best parts of my life there. But in my defense, I had always drawn the line at taking pictures of my food.

“I like keeping in touch with everyone,” I argue weakly. “At least I’m not as bad as some people. You know who I keep thinking about?”

“Max?” Jules offers.

I cringe at the mention of his name. “Well, yes, but no. I mean Callie.”

“Callie Trenton? From college?”

I nod my head. “Her wedding pictures keep flashing through my mind. She just posted them in honor of still being ‘deliriously happy’ after ten years. Did you see the one of her and her
husband jumping in the air on the beach? It was the perfect day. The perfect shot. The perfect
everything
,” I say, thinking back to the way my stomach tightened as I scrolled through her album, hoping I’d be able to capture the same sentiment at my own nuptials.

“It was her wedding day. She’s not going to share the picture of her brother spilling red wine down the back of her dress or post how irate she probably was when her husband
actually
smashed the cake in her face. She’s going to make sure she looks picture-perfect.”

“I guess I just wanted to have that too. Now I never will.”

Jules puts her arm around me. “You will. Just not today.”

“Will I? Or do I just not deserve it?” I shake my head. “Because I look at people like Callie. And it’s not just her wedding photos—it’s everything. Her model-like kids, her exotic vacations—did you see the safari she went on? She kissed a giraffe! And I guess I want to know why some people have lives like that, while others”—I tap myself on the chest—“are sitting in their bridal suite with a gown they’ll never wear on a wedding day they’ll never have.”

Jules considers this for a moment before responding. “I don’t think anyone knows why things work out the way they do, Kate. But one thing I do know for sure is that people’s lives are not always as perfect as the filtered photos or edited statuses they post on Facebook.”

“True,” I concede, pulling the sheets tight around my body and curling up into the fetal position. “But wouldn’t it be nice if they were?”

CHAPTER THREE

Who says you can’t drink seven mai tais on a five-hour flight? #passedoutatthirtythousandfeet

I turn the key and push my front door open, watching it swing wide and settle against the wall. The entryway looks just like it did when we left—Max’s navy-blue windbreaker is hanging on a hook, right next to my black hoodie. We’d worn them to walk down to the wine store the night before we’d flown to Maui, deciding to splurge on a good bottle of red to celebrate. Why couldn’t he have voiced his doubts then, as we sat facing each other on the couch while we sipped the Pinot Noir we’d purchased, speculating about which family member would make the biggest ass of himself at the reception?

As I step through the doorway, my heart folds inside my chest. This homecoming couldn’t be more opposite of the one I’d envisioned. I’d pictured Max dramatically scooping me up and carrying me over the threshold, me giggling as he nuzzled his face in my neck, kissing me just below the ear, sending electric charges through my abdomen. But as I drop my suitcase now, the thud from the luggage hitting the hardwood floor echoes
through the vacant house, underscoring the emptiness inside of me.

I draw my breath hard into my lungs and release it slowly, remembering Jules’ advice on our flight home:
just take everything one moment at a time
. I turn at the sound of her footsteps behind me. She’s gripping a suitcase in each hand and has a tote slung over each shoulder, looking like a Sherpa as she walks up. After I’d dissolved into tears as my luggage descended the conveyor belt at LAX, she’d demanded that she carry
all
of my bags, only letting me be in charge of one small carry-on.

“I didn’t get very far,” I say as I reach out to grab the straw purse that’s sliding down her arm—the one I’d planned to stuff with magazines and books and take to the private poolside cabana Max and I had rented for the first day of our honeymoon on the island of Lanai.

“You’re inside. That’s something.” She presses her lips together forming a slight smile, releasing the rest of my bags around her feet.

I nod, my eyes resting on one of the pink luggage tags that reads Bride.

“So”—she laces her fingers through mine—“let’s take a few more steps. If we’re diligent, we might get to the staircase by nightfall.” Her eyes are sympathetic as she nudges me with her elbow.

I turn to face her, my hand still tightly gripping hers. “Thank you.”

“It goes without saying.”

“Well, I’d still be in a heap on the floor of the bridal suite if it weren’t for you,” I say. Jules had called the airline and changed my flight; she’d neatly folded and packed all of my bikinis, maxi dresses, and even my lingerie into my suitcase; and she’d put my
wedding dress into the garment bag—the sound of the zipper sealing it inside making me feel nauseous.

“You’re going to get through this,” she says, interrupting my thoughts. Then when she catches my skeptical expression, adds, “I promise.”

“I’m going to have to trust you on this one, considering I’m not even sure how I’m going to lift my arms to brush my teeth tonight.”

“I’ll help you. I’m staying over.”

“Jules, you can’t. The kids. Ben—”

“It’s already done. Ben loves you as much as I do and wanted me here with you. . . .” She pauses, amusement in her eyes. “Plus, better him than me dealing with the kids adjusting to the time difference!”

We laugh. It feels foreign, almost like a betrayal of my pain, making me wonder how long it will be before the laughter rolls comfortably off my tongue like it used to.

“Well, please thank him for me.”

“Will you stop? It’s an unwritten rule that best friends take care of each other and best friends’ husbands understand. You’d do the same for me.”

“Well, if Ben ever leaves you, I will kill him,” I say matter-of-factly. “I need you to know that.”

Jules smiles wryly at my declaration and then regards me for a few moments, no doubt taking in my disheveled appearance—my oily face and the dark circles around my eyes exposing the stress of the last two days. My unwashed hair is pulled back into a messy ponytail and I’m wearing the same pair of sweats I’d woken up in yesterday.

Finally, Jules says simply, “Well, you definitely
look
the part of someone who can wield a weapon.” She points to my puffy eyes
and my sweatpants hanging low on my hips. Jules grabs my hand again. “Now, follow me. One foot in front of the other.”

I walk in step with Jules down the hallway that spills out into the living room. The remote control rests on the glass coffee table where I left it after we’d watched an old episode of
Project Runway
the night before we left for Hawaii. Feeling tipsy from the wine, I’d told Max he should start wearing sweater vests and he’d pretended he hadn’t heard me. As Jules and I walk into the kitchen, the granite countertops gleaming—not so much as an errant water glass in sight—I have another flashback to the morning Max and I were leaving for the airport. I was gripping our freshly printed boarding passes tightly as I rushed around the corner, nearly tripping over the open dishwasher door. I’d wanted to be two hours early to LAX—
at least
—and Max had been hunched over the sink, his sleeves rolled up, running a round brush inside my cereal bowl that I’d forgotten to wash. He’d looked up unapologetically. “Can’t come home to dirty dishes.”
Or apparently he hadn’t been planning on coming home at all.

In the past twenty-four hours, I’ve thought about a dozen instances like the one that morning, wondering which marked the exact moment when he decided he couldn’t marry me. While I knew it wasn’t logical that he left me because I refused to rinse every glass and pan thoroughly before placing it in the dishwasher, I still wondered deep in my heart if it was part of what had factored into his decision. Had he finally grown tired of certain nuances about my personality that he’d once found endearing? Like my need to dissect the tribal alliances on
Survivor
every week? Or my inability to take out the trash before it was overflowing and too heavy for me to carry to the Dumpster? Or was it something bigger—maybe he wasn’t attracted to me
anymore? I glance at my reflection in the microwave and cringe. From the way I look right now, I can’t say I blame him.

He’d texted me several times since the rehearsal dinner, saying we needed to get together to figure things out—my hope rising each time his name appeared on the screen, only to fall again when I realized all he wanted was to settle things and move on. While sitting on the tarmac as I waited for the flight back to LA to take off, I absorbed the plush West Maui mountain range, the same one that Max and I had planned to take a helicopter ride over before departing for Lanai, and had finally written back and asked him what “things” he was referring to, my heart sitting in the base of my throat as I waited for his response, hopeful that he meant
us
, but knowing better. He’d texted me a list that had nearly made me double over in pain:
the condo, the checking account, the credit cards
.

As I’d watched the wing of our plane start to move down the runway, my sobs rippling in the back of my throat like a hot spring, images of the honeymoon plans that would now never become real force themselves upon me: snorkeling on Molokini, hiking to Sweetheart Rock in Puu Pehe, and getting the couples’ massage Max had insisted on booking for us. I’d made a bad
Bachelor
joke when he’d suggested it, but as we ascended into the blue, cloudless sky and the island of Maui became nothing more than a speck of green in the vast Pacific Ocean beneath us, I would’ve done anything to be side by side with him on those massage tables.

I’d thrust my phone at Jules to show her the text from Max and she’d unbuckled her seat belt and wrapped her arms around me tightly, despite the warning look from the flight attendant. “How could he be so businesslike about this?” I’d sobbed into her neck.

Jules shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t understand him at all right now. I thought I knew him better than this.”

“So did I—”

We’d sat in silence, both of us taking inventory of our memories of Max. I wondered what had become of the man I could always count on—the guy who once drove an hour round-trip to get me the only chicken noodle soup that sounded good when I had the flu, never questioning me when I told him it was something about the texture of the noodles and the taste of the broth. And doing it again a few months later, this time without even asking, when I’d been sick again. Where had the man gone that would always reach across and grab my hand while we lay in bed, folding it back over his chest and kissing each finger as I drifted off to sleep? And where was the guy who’d made my mom laugh so hard she’d cried the first time she’d met him, when he’d told her the story of how, after spending two months abroad in college, he’d excitedly hugged the wrong girl from behind at the airport, thinking it was his girlfriend. “Let’s just say my jokes about them both having a very nice ass didn’t go well.” As my mom dabbed at her eyes, he’d smiled and squeezed my hand, knowing how much her approval meant to me.

“Do you want me to handle things with him when we get back—tell him you need some space and aren’t ready to talk yet?” Jules said, breaking the silence. She looked down for a moment and I followed her gaze, noticing an airsickness bag that had fallen from the seat-back pocket. My stomach lurched as we hit a patch of turbulence and I contemplated picking it up. Finally she looked at me again. “I just feel so bad about this, like somehow I’m responsible.”

“Because you introduced us?” I frowned.

Jules nodded.

“Just because you pushed us together on the dance floor at Deb and Eddie’s wedding after you’d had one too many sangrias does
not
mean this is your fault,” I’d sputtered through my tears, suddenly back to that night, seeing Jules’ eyes brighten when she spotted Max—whom she’d befriended after he’d hosted his mom’s surprise fiftieth birthday party at the restaurant where she worked as a pastry chef—and realized we were both at the wedding without a date.

“If anyone’s to blame, it’s me—how did I not see this coming? Clearly I missed some major warning signs. Because what kind of person just up and leaves his fiancée the night before he’s supposed to marry her?”

“A stupid one!” she said, pulling me in for another hug, and I’d squeezed her tightly, despite the armrest pressing into my side.

“Really stupid,” I said as I buried my head deeper into her shoulder, the smell of her lavender-scented shampoo comforting me. “And when you talk to him will you please remind him the condo is
mine
,” I’d said calmly, but deep down, I could feel the anger bubbling inside me like a pot of boiling water about to force the lid off.

“Do you want a glass of wine?” Jules asks me now, but her hand is already on the corkscrew. She pours a bottle of Wild Horse chardonnay into two goblets and I follow her outside into the garden just off the kitchen—the selling point for me when I bought the condominium.

I’d been saving for my first home for years, deciding to buy a place before Max and I were engaged, wanting to be a homeowner no matter what happened between us. As I’d tailed the real estate agent through the interior, taking in the delicate crown molding, the built-in bookcases, and the newly finished
dark wood floors, I had a feeling it was special. But it wasn’t until I walked outside and saw the Spanish tile on the patio and the beautiful landscaping on the small but perfectly sized yard, completely hidden from others’ view by two large orange trees, that I’d given Max
the look
that said,
I want this
. He was the in-house counsel for a small medical device company and told me he’d do the negotiating. And when he’d caught the seller’s real estate agent watching us, he’d shot me a look in return—one that said,
if you want it, you need
to
put your poker face on—now
.

Max and I had later shared a laugh about how transparent I’d been, how I’d been unable to hide my wide eyes while a perfectly composed Max interrogated the agent about the asking price. You would never have known he liked anything about the condo, when in truth he was just as in love with it as I was. When the seller agreed to my offer, several thousand dollars less than it was listed for, Max and me high-fiving over the
take it or leave it
stance he’d held firm on, it had never occurred to me that his uncanny ability to hide his real feelings would ever come into play in our relationship. That it would prevent me from seeing that I was losing him.

I remember scrawling my signature across the bottom of the deed, a confident grin spreading across my face as I imagined it would eventually become
our place.
The thought that one day I’d simply be thankful I still had a roof over my head after he tossed me into the trash as easily as he would a carton of spoiled milk would never have crossed my mind.

• • •

My phone rings and Jules wrinkles her nose at the sound. “Sorry, I know, I need to change the ringtone,” I say, and she gives me a knowing look, remembering that Max had chosen the last one—
ironically it had been “Wrecking Ball.” It had become our thing, to steal the other’s cell and select a song to play when there was a new notification.