The Ex (26 page)

“I swear that was on a poster in my Catholic youth group’s meeting space.” I laughed.

Penny laughed, too, and I was grateful that we hadn’t weirded her out with all our sex talk. She refilled her glass, as well. “I just want to find someone who makes me feel like I can trust them and like we have potential for a future. Somebody who wants the same things that I do and who doesn’t mind taking things slow until we get there.”

I had to admit I’d totally underestimated Penny. With her talk about signs in cookie fortunes and her constantly bubbly attitude, I’d branded her a little piece of fluff. Now, I was deeply ashamed for creating such a one-dimensional picture of her.

Something clicked in my mind. I was a horrible with set-ups. But I couldn’t resist them. “You know…I might know someone who would be perfect for you.”

Penny tilted her head. “Yeah? I’m not sure I’m ready for that, yet. Maybe he’ll still be available when I make up my mind.”

“He just might be.” I didn’t know how Ian’s divorce was going to go down—and I didn’t know when he’d be ready to get out there again, either—but imagining them as a couple made my heart flutter a little “awwww,” despite how much I liked Gena.

So, I’m a sucker for the May/December thing.

“Okay, it’s your turn, Sophie.” Deja nudged me with her arm. “What’s your most embarrassing sex moment?”

“No, no,” Holli interrupted. “As you are the bride, we wanna hear your most embarrassing sex moment with your intended. I know you and Neil are, like, sexual dynamos, but there has to be something that hasn’t gone as planned.”

“Well, there was the time that his daughter overheard me screaming, ‘fuck me harder,’ and we hadn’t even met yet.” My face still flamed red at the memory, even though Emma and I both found it more funny than uncomfortable now.

“Yeah, we knew about that already,” Deja said, giving me a thumbs down. “I told my strap-on anal violation story. You better bring it.”

I scanned my memory. As great at sex as Neil and I both were, we weren’t perfect. There were a number of potentially humiliating incidents. I settled on the most mortifying one. “I can’t believe I’m telling you guys this.”

Holli leaned forward and put on interested therapist face. “We’re all friends, Sophie. This is a safe space.”

I flipped her off. “All right. One time, we were doing it in the shower, and I was trying to do this whole soapy-hand-job-turned-sexy-blow-job thing, and I guess I didn’t rinse him off well enough, and soap went up my nose. But his dick was, like, down my throat, so I did this weird snort/gag combo, and it triggered my gag reflex, and I barfed all over him.”

“You barfed on Neil’s dick?” Deja covered her face, her eyes peeking out from between her fingers.

“More like around his dick. And out of my nose.” I cringed just remembering it. “And I aspirated some, which was extra super sexy. Thank god we were in the shower. Holli, you go,” I ordered. Holli always had the most interesting sex stories, because she’d had a lot of really interesting sex.

Her eyes lit up. “Okay, I’m gonna win this round. This guy I met in L.A. liked to have me dress up in a tiger mascot costume and take this huge dildo, it was like fifteen inches—”

“Nope!” Deja and I shouted, vetoing the story immediately.

“You guys have no imagination,” Holli grumbled and splashed some water in my general direction. I splashed back and inadvertently caught Penny in the crossfire.

“Everybody stop!” Deja shouted, jumping to her feet. “Let the woman who just got her hair relaxed on Tuesday get out of the tub.”

“I’m getting out, too,” Penny said, though she didn’t stand as confidently as Deja had. “The champagne and heat is getting to me.”

“Amateurs,” Holli scoffed.

When Deja and Penny left to get dried off and changed, Holli leaned her head back and closed her eyes. “So, are you ready to be a married woman?”

“Um, yeah.” My stomach sloshed a little. Not from the champagne. “I’m nervous.”

Holli made a face to go along with her “pfff” sound. “What’s there to be nervous about? You and Neil have practically been married since you moved to London with him.”

“It’s change. You know how much I dig change.” I rolled my eyes. “When you were about to marry Deja, weren’t you nervous?”

“No. Why would I be? I needed to get that hot piece of ass on lockdown before some other bitch swooped in on her.” Abandoning all pretense of using a glass, Holli grabbed one of the half-full champagne bottles from the lip of the tub and took a big swig before handing it to me.

I downed my glass to free up my hand for the bottle. “Once you’re married, though…it’s like getting closer to a cliff, isn’t it?”

“That’s romantic.”

“No, I mean…” What did I mean? “It’s more like a roller coaster. Being engaged is like waiting at the top of the first hill, and the wedding is that moment when you hear the brakes click. Once you hear that, you’re going over. There’s nowhere else to go.”

Holli frowned. “You know, this doesn’t sound like you’re that into the idea of getting married.”

“I want to be married,” I protested. “But once you go down that hill…you can’t go back up. When we get married, everything gets so much more serious, doesn’t it? And if I don’t like the change, there’s no way to undo it and go back. It’s not like you can say to your husband, ‘hey, I don’t care for being married, let’s go back to dating.’”

“No, you’re right. That’s kind of divorce territory, at that point,” she agreed.

“Exactly! So, what if we do this, and I don’t like being married? Everyone says, ‘oh, it’s so different from just living together, your whole life is going to change.’” I heard the panic creeping into my voice.

So did Holli. She moved through the water to sit beside me. “Can I tell you a secret, as a wife? Everyone says it’s completely different from living together, but it’s not. It’s a piece of paper you’re never going to think about ever again. I thought getting married to Deja was going to make some big change in our lives, too, and that we’d be thankful for it every day. And don’t get me wrong, I understand how lucky we are that we can even get married. But, most of the time, I don’t even think about the fact that we’re married. I just think, ‘wow, I’m with this person I love so much, it makes me happy and bonkers and terrified all at the same time.’ And that’s exactly how I felt about her the night before our wedding, and the week before our wedding, and the month before our wedding. The only thing that’s changed is that, if we break up now, it’s going to cost a lot of money.”

Sometimes, best friends are worth more than any therapy bill. “You know, for someone who thought jackalopes were real until you were twenty-three, you’re actually pretty smart.”

“I maintain that they could be real.”

I raised an eyebrow. “They’re rabbits. With antlers. How could they fit down their rabbit hole?”

“Their rabbit holes are extra big, because they dig them out with their antlers!” she argued. She went on, “You’re going to be fine. You’re the third most responsible person I know. You just don’t have any common sense. If you love Neil now, you’re still going to love him after the ceremony. You’ve just got some jitters.”

“Yeah. You’re probably right.” I leaned my head on her shoulder and sighed. “I should get out of here before I cook myself.”

“Good idea,” she agreed.

In the shower, a few moments later, I considered what Holli had said. I knew deep down that she must be right; getting married couldn’t possibly change a relationship that was already a lifetime commitment. But it seemed like everyone around me was breaking up.

Maybe instead of focusing on the negative, I should look to the positive examples of married couples around me. Like Holli and Deja, or Emma and Michael. If anyone could convince me that marriage wasn’t potential relationship death, it would be those four.

* * * *

With
the wedding speeding toward us, I knew I had to get the whole tell-Emma-about-the-book thing out of the way, or it would drive Neil and me to the brink. I arranged to meet Emma at the apartment under the pretense of having Sunday brunch with her father and me, though Neil was at home in Sagaponack meeting with his therapist.

“I’ll kill him. I’ll divorce him then I’ll kill him,” Emma said without so much as a hello as she lugged Olivia’s car seat into the foyer of the apartment.

“Something wrong?” I asked, hurrying over to take the diaper bag from her and ease her burden.

“The idiot refused to come along with me today,” she huffed, sliding the car seat onto the big, round table in the center of the room. “Where’s Dad?”

I scrunched up my face and held up my thumb and forefinger, millimeters apart. “I may have told you a teensy lie to get you here.”

“Okay…” She squinted at me as though trying to figure out the lie before I could tell her.

“You’ll understand once you’ve got the whole story. Just trust me.” My apologetic scrunchy face intensified. “And I also told Michael to let you come alone. Your dad asked me to talk to you about something important, and I thought it would be best if it was just the two of us.”

“Well, you’d better not have been lying about brunch, because I’m starving.” She pushed back the hood of the seat and unsnapped Olivia’s buckles.

I edged her slightly out of the way. “I’ll hold her while you eat.”

“I’m not eating yet,” Emma said.

“I’m going to pretend not to hear you and take technical grandma privileges.” I lifted Olivia gingerly. She was still so small, despite the weight she’d gained in the two weeks since she’d been born.

“You’re remarkably calm for someone who’s getting married on Saturday,” Emma observed. “I have to say, I was shocked to hear that you wanted to get together.”

“It’s your father who’s pulling his hair out. Which seems weird, because he’s at least done this before.” I cooed down at Olivia. Her big blue eyes blinked up at me. She seemed surprisingly critical, for a baby.

As we walked to the kitchen, Emma said, “You should have seen him before the first one. I was actually concerned that he might leave Elizabeth at the altar, he was so jumpy.” She considered a moment, holding the door open so Olivia and I could pass through. “Of course, with the way things worked out, maybe it would have been a good idea.”

“Nah. Your dad loved Elizabeth.” I had to grind the words out. Of all the partners from Neil’s past, Elizabeth was on the one I was most jealous of. She knew what it was like to be married to Neil, and that irrationally irked me. “I met her.”

“What?” Emma made a beeline for the hummus platter on the island. She shoved a baby carrot into her mouth before she asked, “When?”

“We were out shopping for baby stuff. Which was, like, the worst time to run into her.” I brightened. “She’s pregnant, though! Or, maybe she’s already had the baby, I have no idea. I didn’t ask her due date.”

“She did. She emailed me.” Emma went to the cooler for a water. “She wants to stay in touch, but after what my dad went through…”

“No, I get it, totally.” I gestured to the platter with my head. “Grab that, and we’ll eat in the living room.”

“Eating in the living room? Ooh, Dad will be furious,” Emma snarked as she followed me out. I held the door for her with my foot.

“Don’t tell him, but I painted my nails in here once.” I shifted Olivia to my shoulder, one hand over the back of her wobbly little head. I sat in Neil’s favorite chair, and Emma settled on the couch, criss-cross applesauce with the plate of hummus and veggies balanced on her knees.

“All right,” Emma said, taking another bite of carrot. “What is this big, important thing you’ve all been conspiring to tell me?”

It was terrible, knowing that I was about to give her some potentially very upsetting news while she sat there looking so relaxed. What was worse was that even though I’d carefully considered how I should tell her, my mental script suddenly seemed in dire need of a rewrite. Luckily, the fact that Elizabeth had come up gave me a much more natural way of beginning a difficult conversation. “So…speaking of Elizabeth… Remember how your mom told her that your dad was bisexual and he’d slept with your uncle Stephen?”

“Yeah?” She scooped up some hummus on a slice of jicama.

“Well, she wasn’t trying to sabotage your dad’s wedding. She told Elizabeth because it’s true.”

Emma froze mid-chew.

I couldn’t stand the silence, so I went on, “I mean, maybe she was trying to sabotage. I don’t know, you’d have to ask her. But that’s not the important part. The important part is that your dad really is bisexual, and he really did used to sleep with your uncle Stephen.”

She blinked, and her jaw worked slowly. With a painful-looking swallow, she choked out, “Well. I’m not sure why I need to know that, but…thank you?”

“There’s more. That’s just the first part.” I refrained from saying, “It only gets worse.” I patted Olivia’s back and smoothed her little pink romper. “The thing with your dad and Stephen ended badly. And, now, your uncle has written his book—”

“Mom mentioned that,” Emma interjected. “I take it the book has something in it about Dad?”

“Yes. And your father would rather you not read it.” I shifted uncomfortably. “It’s not an entirely truthful account.”

Emma nodded, still looking shell-shocked. “Okay. Dad and Uncle Stephen dated. That’s incredibly weird. The fact that my dad is bisexual and has been apparently since the nineteen eighties—”