What a Girl Needs (23 page)

Oh my gosh, make it so, Kay. What do you want from me?
“Yeah. Emily’s here. Kevin is off to the airport to drop off the rental car.” My thoughts drift to the reality of that situation. “Oh, I suppose I should have kept the rental car. I need to drive my sister-in-law to Napa.”

“Ashley, what is wrong with you? You’re nervous as a cat in the shower?”

She’s right, and my body is trembling as I contemplate how I’ll get around her to my bedroom. I can’t look her in the eyes. I exhale raggedly. “I’m really tired. Do you mind if I crash?”

“Look at me.”

I look into her prying gaze and straight back down at my bare feet.

“Where were you today?” she prods. “Never mind. I know exactly where you were.”

“Kay, can’t we talk about this in the morning?’”

“First, I want some answers.”

“I was going to tell you about Tiffany’s, but I—”

“Tiffany’s?” She steps back. “The jewelry store?”

I shrug. “Well, what’s left of it, I suppose.”

“What on earth are you rambling about?”

“You didn’t know I was at Tiffany’s today?”

Worst fears confirmed. I slap my forehead. “Why do I always volunteer information? How many Proverbs are there about just keeping your mouth shut? Why don’t I ever get it?”

She just keeps glaring at me the way she used to over that scary clipboard of hers – like if I didn’t volunteer to be the next victim at open mic night, I was destined to live a life filled with pajama jeans and pleather handbags. I make a last-ditch effort at diversion. “You got rid of the landing spot—that little cabinet where I could put my stuff away when I got home. I never understood that.”

“I wanted guests to avoid tripping over the myriad of shoes you left in the doorway. You were like living with a sloppy kindergartener.” She raises her eyes to the ceiling and crosses her arms. “How quickly you forget.”

“Look, he asked me to go with him—”

“Who asked you to go with him?” Kay holds up a plastic baggy filled with the orange unmentionables that have now been mentioned more times than I care to admit.
I’m going to be sick.

“What are you doing with those?”

“Are they yours?”

I stammer and search for words, anything to avoid the truth that my gut knows. “They’re not mine. When I found them the other day—”

“You’ve seen these before?”

Kay has a better guilt-inducing expression than even my own mother. Heck, a better one than Brea’s mother. Pantygate is on.

“Ashley, please tell me they’re yours.”

No, Kay. Don’t go soft on me now. Please.

And here it is. I must tell her the truth now – that Matt admitted – admitted what? Maybe he didn’t admit anything. Maybe his mistake had nothing to do with my “find.” My head is about to explode. If he did mean these garish things, and nothing happened and he has repented – which I realize is a lot of “ifs” and Kay wants to marry him, is it my duty to tell her a truth that will only harm her? When I don’t even know what the truth is? But then again, what if he’s just the lying, cheating dog I always thought he was? What then?

The burden is too much.

“What if they are Matt’s?” I ask her. “What if he did bring a woman into this house? Could you forgive such a blatant lack of respect? It’s your house, Kay!” I say this only because I think she must have respect for the house – herself and dating Matt, I’m just not so sure.

“It’s obvious you know more than you’re saying. You’re the worst liar on the planet, Ashley. You can’t even open a gift without your true feelings pouring out of you. I know what you think of Matt.”

If she only knew how good my poker face was—because at this moment, I want to spill my guts and tell her to run. Then, I remember her telling me that I didn’t understand what it’s like for her.
I wasn’t alone
. And Matt did save my life today…

“I thought they were yours.” Kay straightens the already-straight picture frame. “I was so embarrassed when I saw the mess Matt left under the guest bed. How could I have missed that?”

Kay knows the awful truth. I can see it in her eyes, and she just wants confirmation. I try to lighten the mood.

“I’m offended you thought I’d wear those. That lace was for the tackiest Quinceanera on the lowest budget.” I keep trying to redirect this conversation, so I can think about what to tell her.
How to tell her.
I don’t want the responsibility of telling her this truth because she knows I’ve never liked Matt. She knows that I don’t want her to marry him, and everything she hears about Matt comes through that filter of
Ashley doesn’t want me to marry Mat
t.

“He doesn’t know I’ve seen them. I wanted to ask you first if they were yours, but I knew…” her voice trails off.

“Did you have a guest stay? Maybe you don’t remember?” I want to smack myself. I know full-well where those came from, and I’ve just entered into collusion.” I drop my head in my hands and then lead her to the sofa. Everything in her eyes pleads with me to lie to her, but I can’t do it.

“Don’t insult my intelligence, Ashley. I know who stayed with me in 1994.”

“They’re Matt’s,” I blurt. “Well, I mean, they’re from someone who was with Matt. I don’t suppose he’s wearing women’s underwear at the moment, but you know—”

“Ashley, stop. When I found them the other day –”

“You didn’t ask him right then? Honestly, I don’t know how that kind of stuff just doesn’t fall out of your mouth? How do you keep suspicions like that to yourself? I would have tracked him down at work and—”

“Stuff like that doesn’t fall out of most people’s mouths. It falls out of yours.” Kay walks across the room, tosses the baggy on the coffee table, and drops to the couch. “Who were you at Tiffany’s with?”

“Matt,” I say sheepishly. “So much for the surprise.”

“Are you telling me Matt is planning to propose?” She sits up straight on the sofa. The grin on her face seems to negate every suspicion she’s just shared and ignore my tale.

“Did you hear me, Kay? He admitted to me they were his. That he’d made a terrible mistake and wanted to marry you.”

“You went to pick out an engagement ring to make me happy when you knew Matt cheated on me?”

“No.” Finally I can tell the truth. “No, he told me while we were at the jewelry store.”

“But you knew they existed. You asked him about them.”

“Kay, stop. I did it all wrong, okay? I admit it. You told me you wanted to be married and I didn’t want to hurt you based on my assumptions. Then, when they were more than assumptions, it was too late. Matt said he’d made a mistake and wanted nothing more than to marry you. What options did that give me?”

“The point is, it wasn’t your option, don’t you get it? You betrayed me by going to him first. You’re my friend, Ashley. Or you were supposed to be.”

The accusation backhands me. “What can I say? You’re right.”

“I don’t even know who you are anymore, Ashley Wilkes Stockingdale Novak. I’m not like you. I would survive without a boyfriend.”

“That’s low, Kay. I’ve survived most of my life without a boyfriend or husband. You’re the one who told me I didn’t understand, that you didn’t want to be alone forever. I was only—”

“You were going to allow Matt to propose to me when you knew he’d cheated.”

“May have cheated. And no, I was going to tell you—”

“When?”

I sit up straighter. “When I knew for sure he’d cheated – I mean he claims nothing really happened, but yes, he apparently had someone here. I think. I found out only today, at Tiffany’s, and you and I hadn’t talked since then.”

“But you had your suspicions, and you never shared them with me,” she accuses. “I can’t believe I never checked under that bed before I had a houseguest. You see how I’m slipping?”

“Um, I beg to differ. I think you knew very well how I felt about Matt, and you shut me down every time I tried to bring it up.”

“You knew that mess wasn’t mine though. You had to know I wouldn’t be caught dead in anything orange, much less unmentionables.”

“I was going to tell you before he proposed, but I had to find out for sure first.”
I think
. “Kay, I don’t know what you want! Do you want to marry him? I mean, if he didn’t cheat – and this is assuming he’s telling me the truth now and we were talking about the same thing– but he almost cheated and brought someone here for that purpose, does it change anything for you?”

For me, it might change my view on the death penalty, but that’s another story.

“I don’t know if I want to marry him. I thought I did until I found out he brought someone here to my house. What you did to me made a fool out of me. It seems so cruel. Heartless. Not like you at all.”

What I did? What about what Matt did?

“You have to look at my motive. I found a pair of undies under the bed, but I had proof of nothing. I was trying to do what was best, but I didn’t know what that was – and I never had time to pray on it, so it was just Ashley being Ashley. No good ever comes out of that.”

“Usually, you say whatever you think. What stopped you this time?”

“Your speech on being alone forever.”

Kay is silent for a long time, and rather than fill the space as I normally do, I listen for what she isn’t saying. Utterly foreign to the Kay I know, I watch as tears run down her cheek. I reach toward her, but reflexively she presses herself further into the corner of the sofa.

“The terrible part of this is that I don’t know who betrayed me more. You, or Matt and I have nowhere to go now.”

Call me crazy, but I’m going to have to go with Matt on this one.

“Maybe not working has made my brain go all mushy. I didn’t think things through and I just wanted you to be happy, Kay.”

Kay’s expression turns cold, and if looks could kill, Kevin would find me in a shallow grave in the backyard, covered by a newly erected pergola.

I react to her icy stare with more words. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I wanted more time to decide if Matt really had reformed. He told me that he had. That he wanted to marry you, and I didn’t know how to dash your hopes and kill all trust in him if he had reformed. What would have been the point?”

“You don’t get it. You really don’t get it, Ashley. It was never your job to decide if Matt was honest or not. It was your job as my friend to tell me the truth, and I honestly can’t believe you, of all people, would let me blindly go into an engagement without relaying that kind of information.”

“I was going to! I promise I was going to tell you, but only after Matt confessed!”

“What if it was too late? What if I’d already committed to him? Then, would you have told me?”

I wish I’d never met Matt Callaway. I definitely wish Kay had never met him.

“What a girl wants, and what a girl needs are sometimes, two very different things. That’s what friends are for, to be the scale – to provide balance when you’re too blinded by love to see the truth.”

I nod. “You’re right. You’re absolutely spot-on correct. I didn’t do my job as a friend. I’m not doing my job as a wife. I’m not doing my job as a lawyer. I failed, Kay. At everything, all right?”

Kay softens. “You know that isn’t true. I’m not the marrying type. You and Brea, you’re the marrying types. If I get married I have to answer to someone else. I have to make decisions with someone else. I have to—”

“You have to be vulnerable, yes. That’s what love is. It’s allowing someone in—it’s giving away the power you have to be in control of everything. It’s being vulnerable enough to let someone hurt you. I saw that for the first time when you and Matt were in the kitchen together.”
Granted, it made me sick, but
… “You’re always in control, Kay. Be here at this time, table set by this time, appetizers served at this time, dishes cleaned up by 9:04, people out by—”

“I get it. You cannot imagine that someone would find my organization attractive, and you noticed that Matt appreciated it.”

“On the contrary.” I shake my head vehemently. “I never thought that. It’s the difference I saw in you, Kay. You let your guard down. You don’t have the Fourth of July decorations up yet. You were just a girl with him, and you seemed so happy. Subconsciously, I don’t think I wanted to be responsible for killing that part of you.”

“Is the ring pretty?” she asks me in a small voice.

“Well, there is no ring. There’s an open police case, and there’s a broken wrist.” I hold my hand up like Simba being presented. “But there’s no ring, so no worries.”

“Is Matt okay? Was he hurt?”

“He’s fine. So was I, by the way.”

“I knew you were fine. You always bounce back. You’re ever buoyant. Life knocks you down, and you just rise to the occasion and come back better than before. You’re not like me. For you, if Kevin went away, another ship would be along to pick you up soon. Some of us don’t have all those options.”

“Did I miss something? All of a sudden I’m Angelina Jolie and men can’t resist me? Revisionist history, Kay. I loved a short, balding software engineer who did not love me back. Could you have told me that Seth wasn’t for me, when he clearly wasn’t?”

Kay grasps my wrist—the good one. “You have to be here tomorrow, so Matt can’t ask me. I have to think. He’s going to be angry I led him on.”

“Let him be angry. Just hold up the lace.”

“I’ll never see him again. Once I tell him ‘no’.” Kay is at odds with herself and I feel her turmoil as if it were roiling in my own stomach.

“I’m taking Emily to Napa. Why don’t you come with us? I can stay there for a few days until my mom’s guest room is open – Lord forbid my father let me back in my pastel pink man cave.”

Kay’s agenda self reemerges. “Why is Emily going to Napa anyway? What’s she doing here?”

“It’s a long story. I’m renting a car and she’ll be staying with some friends of my parents.”

I know Kay’s still not herself because she doesn’t even question the ridiculous of this scenario.

“I’ll drive you both up there.”

Except the reason I’m taking her there is because she can’t stay here with you.

“My mom was married three times by the time I was fourteen. I’m cursed.”

“You’re not cursed. You’re just making a decision based on fear. What does your heart tell you? What is God whispering in your ear? Love makes you turn off logic. Until you can feel the decision, you can’t make the right one.”