She: Part 2 (10 page)

Standing in front of the
Please wait to be seated
sign, which I’m sure wasn’t there when I met Logan here for lunch a few weeks ago, unless of course I was too preoccupied with him to see it, I finally ask Amber, “To what do I owe this invitation?”

She looks at me in surprise. “Gem, can’t a well-meaning girl ask her best friend out for lunch without there being an ulterior motive?” she exclaims.

“A well-meaning girl, yes. But,
you
?” I grin.

She’s never showed up at my work before in all the years that we’ve been best friends. From that alone I know something’s going on. She tries her best to look innocent. It’s a look I know very well and it makes me laugh.

“I just wanted to say
hi
,” she attempts to convince me.

I narrow my eyes.

“OK,
fine
,” her facade crumbles, “well,
obviously
I want to know every last detail about your weekend away,” she blurts out.

Ah-ha! The truth, or part thereof. My senses tell me there’s still more to it than that, though for now, I indulge her. Smiling broadly, I say, “Amber, it was
incredible
!”

“Where did he take you?” she demands to know. “No, wait,
wait
…tell me this first: did he propose?” she says very quickly.

I laugh again. “No,” I tell her, shaking my head.

Amber stares at me impatiently, wanting more information.

I shrug. “What? We’re not engaged,” I tell her again.

Now
her
eyes narrow. “Are you
sure
?”

“Quite sure,” I giggle. “I’d call you immediately, you know that.”

She smiles at last. “That’s true. You’re terrible at keeping things from me.”

“And you’re excellent at getting things out of me,” I counter. “We’re a perfect match.”

She laughs; her bubbly nature is infectious. One of many reasons why I love her, I think gratefully. But a brief moment later, her laughter stops and her tirade of unending questions for me begins.

“So, where’d you go? What did you do there? How was the food? I’m obsessed with food,” she tells me needlessly.

“Of course you are, you’re a chef,” I say.

“Tell me something I
don
’
t
know,” she jests, stepping forward and slapping the bell on the maître d’s desk. “Start talking, Gem,” she says impatiently. “Where’d he take you?”

I grin at her. “OK, well…he took me…to the Hotel Beaux Rêves,” I reveal slowly.

“Bonjour, une table pour combien?” the maître d’ asks us.
Hello
,
a table for how many
?

Totally ignoring her, Amber looks dumbstruck for a moment, before shouting at me, “
Shut
the front door!”

I laugh at her reaction. “I couldn’t believe it either,” I tell her.

“Beaux Rêves? The hotel where your favourite book was written?” she checks we’re talking about the same place.

“The very same,” I nod.

“
Gem
,” she says excitedly. “That’s so adorably nerdy!”

I look at her, feeling amused. Anything remotely book-related makes someone a nerd in Amber’s eyes. The most she ever reads is her monthly subscription to Vogue.

“Excusez-moi? Une table pour combien?” the maître d’ asks us again.
Excuse me
?
A table for how many
?

Amber looks at her incredulously. “Avril,” she says, reading her name badge, “I don’t think you comprehend how
huge
this is.”

I laugh again. Oh, I agree, Amber, I don’t think Avril knows, or cares where my boyfriend took me over the weekend.

“Désolée. Une table pour deux,” I say.
Sorry. A table for two
. “Table quarante-neuf, s’il vous plaît,” I add.
Table forty-nine
,
please
.

Avril nods courteously, hands two menus to a waiter, who then gestures that we should follow him to our table.

As we walk, I also divulge, “Logan also named his hotel in Tokyo in my honour.”

Amber’s mouth drops open in disbelief, and I’m thrilled. “Wh—” she tries. “
Wh
—” she tries again.

“Deep breaths,” I tell her, feeling giddy. I’m on cloud nine!

The waiter leads the short way to our table, and my giddiness grows. After Logan told me about naming his latest hotel
Forty-Nine
in honour of our first lunch date at this cafe, I recall saying, “
I don’t remember seeing a table number
,” to which he replied, “
It was on my side of the table
.” I hurry ahead of Amber, who is mumbling incoherently to herself, to ensure that I get to sit on the opposite side from where I sat last time, eager to see this number, our number, for myself.

“Merci,” I say to the waiter, who holds out my chair for me. Before I sit, I shuffle out of my jacket. I peer up at Amber. “Any words yet?” I ask.

“Give me a second,” she says, already in her seat.

I grin at her and then sit down, moving my napkin away from the corner of the table, and there it is — a small circular plaque with the number forty-nine on it. Joy becomes me as I smile broadly. He really did this for me!

I point out the table number to Amber. “See this?”

She nods.

“This is the table that Logan and I had lunch at that first day, before I called you and you googled him,” I say and she nods again, remembering. “This is table forty-nine,” I tell her. “And about ten minutes after our lunch ended Logan took a phone call from his PA and told her that his new hotel now had a name: Hotel Forty-Nine.”

“You’ve got to be shitting me?” she exclaims comically.

“Nope,” I shake my head, still amused.

We stare at each other for a moment before both bursting into a fit of giggles.

“I couldn’t even get Seamus to name his hamster after me when we started dating! Let alone a fucking hotel,” Amber snorts.

Our waiter reappears and stands quietly next to our table. I give him a polite smile and peer down at the menu.
What to have
? Amber is too engrossed in what I’ve just revealed to pay any attention to the menu or the waiter.

“You must have given Logan the good loving this weekend,” she says loudly and matter-of-factly.

I grin at her, and steal a quick glance at the waiter. His eyes are wide, and he looks supremely uncomfortable. I stifle a laugh. He opens his mouth, but words fail him; instead he bows slightly and indicates that he’ll give us a moment to decide, before hastily retreating.

“You scared him,” I laugh.

Amber looks baffled, completely unaware of her words and their impact. “Who?” she asks, looking around, confused.

I laugh again, and then get us back on topic. “Maybe our next trip will be to Tokyo,” I muse, touching the number plaque once more.

“Seriously, Gem, if I hadn’t already met Logan, I’d think you were making him up,” she giggles. “Was this phone call before or after he almost made you come just by looking at you?”

I think back. “This was before,” I grin again.

“Then I’ll repeat what I said to you a couple of weeks ago —
marry him
!”

I smile, coyly.

Amber squeals in excitement, and then says, “OK, OK, start at the beginning of the weekend and tell me
everything
!”

We order our lunch, and then I do as I’m bid, sharing with Amber the events of my weekend, starting with the first wager that Logan and I made on Friday evening.

“I lost it,” I tell her, “though there were really no losers that night, if you get my meaning.”

Then I tell her about Saturday — the waiter-nearly-seeing-me-naked incident, the hotel exploration, the drive along the coast, the
I
’
ve got crabs comment
, the video call debacle, and the dance routine revelation. “And that was Saturday,” I finish prematurely, purposefully leaving out our nighttime activity. That will forever be just for Logan and I to know. “There’s not a lot to report about yesterday,” I move along quickly. “It was quite possibly the laziest day of my life. But I loved it,” I smile. “Logan did take me, via a boat he skippered himself no less, to look around a beautiful landscaped garden in the afternoon.”

Amber nods, impressed. “Nice move, Logan,” she compliments, as our food arrives. “It’s cool that he’s already picked up on your love of green things,” she says, eyeing my spinach and brie sandwich with disdain.

“If by
love of green things
you mean landscape design,” I laugh, “then yes, it was a
very
nice move. We spent hours walking around the grounds…it was brilliant,” I sigh reminiscently.

Amber smiles at me. “It sounds like you’re smitten, chicken,” she says. I nod, and she continues, “It must be hard returning to work after a weekend like that.”

At her words, images begin racing through my mind of Logan and I in the elevator this morning. I feel heat rise in my body and quickly reach for my drink.
Come back to the present
,
Gem
, I tell myself.

“You just flushed,” Amber says, watching me closely, her fork halfway to her mouth.

“Did I?”

“Uh-huh,” she laughs.

“In summary: it was a
good
weekend,” I say, before digging into my lunch once more.

“The sex is still great, then?” she correctly assumes.

“The sex is,” sensually, hot, loving, mind-blowing, “unbelievable,” I sigh. “The things he’s able to do to me…” I trail off, my heart fluttering.

“Oh my!” Amber grins, comically fanning herself.

“What we evoke in each other, it’s…it’s…” I shake my head, unable to find the words. I’ve never been able to understand the magic, the chemistry, the intensity between Logan and I. I’ve tried, countless times, but I always give up my need to understand in favour of simply enjoying the moment.

“It’s love,” Amber finishes for me.

I nod, before smiling broadly, the sight of which makes Amber laugh.

“I’m so happy for you, Gem,” she says affectionately. “And I’d be really jealous if I didn’t have my Irishman,” she grins, referring to Seamus.

“Your Irishman adores you,” I note.

“Oh, I know,” she says confidently. “Married life is the best, you should, uh,
really
consider it,” she says slyly, that look of faux-innocence back on her face.

“I thought peer pressure died out after high school?” I tease.

She rolls her eyes. “As if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life lying under those mirrors staring up at your sexy construction king’s ass.”

Construction king
? “I’ve a new nickname for him now,” I grin.

“You’re welcome to have it, but it does come at a price…”

Let the bartering begin, I think. “Which is?” I ask.

“Seeing as you’ve just agreed to marry him,” she says mischievously, and before I can correct her, she presses on, “I think it’s time to move on to baby talk.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I blurt out. I don’t want children, not now, maybe not ever.

“
Kidding
,” she repeats, her eyes wide. “See, your subconscious is already thinking about it.”

“No,” I laugh, “it’s
really
not, Amber. I don’t want children,” I repeat out loud, shaking my head.

“But
I
want you to want children,” she smiles and we both laugh again. “I don’t want to do it alone,” she adds.

I avoid rolling my eyes at her words, knowing that having a child is too important to Amber to dismiss her words in that way.
What
’
s the best way to end this conversation quickly
, I wonder instead. Thinking of something, I say, “We’ll talk about it closer to the time, when you’re actually pregnant.”

Amber smiles once more, but suddenly it’s a different kind of smile: an excited, fired-up, over-the-moon kind of smile. Abruptly I see a light and a joy in her, more so than usual, the intensity of which I’ve only seen in her once before. My mind starts racing…could she be?

“Are you pregnant?” I whisper. “Like…like, right
now
?” I mutter. This whole time I assumed I was sitting across from one person, but is there actually two of them? Has Amber been blessed with the one thing that she wants most in this world? With the only thing that’s lacking from her life? A long awaited, wanted, and worked-for child?

“There
was
another reason why I wanted to have breakfast with you,” she says modestly.

I gasp. I
knew
there was something else going on! “You are, aren’t you?” I’m quite suddenly beside myself with excitement.

Slowly, confirming my assumptions, she nods.

“
Oh my god
!” I scream loudly, forgetting entirely about our public setting. In my peripheral vision I can see nearly every patron in the vicinity turn to stare at us, but my inappropriate noise level fails to register within me. I scream again, out of my mind with delight. I jump to my feet and hug her in her seat as she laughs, overjoyed. Then I crouch down next to her seat and instinctively put my hand on her lower belly.
I can’t feel anything
, I think, before chiding,
duh
,
Gem
,
it
’
s probably the size of a pea
!

“Uh, people think you’re touching my crotch,” Amber murmurs, eyeing the nearby tables.

But I simply don’t care what they think. I can’t believe it — my best friend is having a baby!

“Are you really?” I whisper, looking up at her, having to make sure.

“Yes,” she smiles. “Finally,” she adds, beaming down at me.

So this is what it looks like to see someone’s dream come true
, I think. She couldn’t look any happier if she tried.

“You’re going to have big boobs. At last,” I tell her and she grins back, nodding happily. “And the shopping! Think of all the shopping we can do,” I shriek.
Jeez
, I need to calm down; but I don’t want to. I’m so,
so
happy, and my heart is beating overtime. “We can go to lamaze classes,” I say exuberantly, momentarily forgetting that she’ll be doing that with Seamus. “You’ll find out if sex is really better while you’re pregnant. And then…then you’ll have an actual baby…for the rest of your life.”

“For the rest of my life,” she nods.

I stand and return to my own seat, staring across at her, at them, with the dorkiest smile slapped across my face. I
can
’
t
believe it! It’s the last thing I expected to find out, especially now, after being with her for the best part of an hour. “Why didn’t you tell me the very
second
you saw me?”