Her Best Friend (18 page)

“It’s me,” Amy said. Her voice cracked on the last word. She cleared her throat.

Lisa leaned forward and kissed her. “It’s really good to see you,” she said quietly. She stepped back and shifted her focus to Quinn. “Don’t worry, I’m not about to kiss you.”

She said it lightly, wryly, but he frowned.

“I thought we were doing this through our lawyers,” he said.

She seemed a little taken aback by his directness, but he didn’t see the point in beating around the bush.

“We are. I’m not here to see you. I’m here to see Amy.”

“Sorry?” Amy sounded startled.

“I came to see you,” Lisa repeated.

Quinn crossed his arms over his chest. He might not live with her any more, but he still knew when Lisa was lying.

“Is it too early for brunch?” Lisa asked. She very carefully kept her gaze on Amy, avoiding eye contact with him.

Amy slid a look toward Quinn. She looked torn, uncomfortable.

“Um, sure. I mean, no. It’s not too early,” she said.

Lisa smiled brightly and shook her head so that her long, straight hair flipped down her back. “Let’s go somewhere nice. My treat. I saw a new place on the way in. Sault or something like that?”

“Yeah. It’s got a good reputation,” Amy said. She slid another look Quinn’s way.

“We can take my car,” Lisa said. She moved toward the Audi.

Amy hesitated before following her, glancing at him. “Um. I’ll see you later, okay?”

He nodded. She didn’t move. He didn’t need to see her eyes to know she was feeling guilty.

“It’s okay,” he said. “Give me the keys and I’ll finish off that last wall in the main theatre.”

“You don’t have to keep working when I’m slacking off.”

He held out his hand. “Give me the keys.”

He thought she was going to argue but after a beat she reached into her pocket and held out her key ring.

“Don’t work too hard, okay?”

He wrapped his hands around the keys and her hand. “This conversation isn’t over. You know that, right?”

She pulled her hand free. “That’s a matter of opinion.”

“No, it isn’t.”

She glanced over her shoulder to where Lisa was watching them. “I have to go.”

He let her go. For the time being.

And no, Lisa’s betrayal of Quinn did not cancel out any obligation Amy had toward her friend. Two wrongs didn’t make a right.

“I’d forgotten how beautiful it is around here in autumn,” Lisa said as they turned onto the road to the restaurant.

Amy studied the towering oaks that lined the road, each a study in ochre, crimson and amber, their leaves lit up like fire by the morning sun.

“I forget to look sometimes,” she said. “I guess it’s true what they say, familiarity does breed contempt.”

“Story of my life.”

Lisa said it so quietly Amy almost didn’t hear her. Amy flicked her a glance as they pulled in to the parking lot at the restaurant.

“Good, it looks as though they’re open,” Lisa said.

They were shown to a seat on the rear verandah with a view over lush, colorful garden beds and down a grassy slope toward a dam. Everything was perfect, from the pristine tablecloth to the expensive exotic flowers spilling from a nearby urn. It wasn’t until the waiter was flicking a crisp linen napkin over her lap that Amy was able to see past her guilt to register how underdressed she was. Her ragged jeans and green-and-blue striped sweater had seen many better days. Her sneakers were scuffed and she wasn’t wearing a shred of makeup. By contrast, Lisa looked as sleek and polished as if she’d just left a photo shoot.

Nothing new there. Ever since the summer of the red bikini, Amy had been standing in Lisa’s fashionable, sexy shadow. Why should anything have changed simply because they hadn’t seen each other for a while?

“Mmm. The bruschetta looks good. And there’s French toast made with brioche. Yum,” Lisa said, after studying the menu.

Amy’s stomach churned uneasily at the thought of food, particularly food that came accompanied with maple syrup. “I think I’ll have black coffee with a side of black coffee.”

Lisa gave her a sympathetic look. “I thought you were looking a little under the weather. Big night, huh?”

“You could say that.”

“Have the omelet. The protein will do you good,” Lisa advised.

She took charge of the ordering when their waiter came, then they both sat back in their seats and regarded each other.

“You look good, Ames,” Lisa said. “It’s hard to tell under the hat, but your hair’s much shorter, yeah?”

“Mmm. More by accident than intention,” Amy admitted. “I got chewing gum caught in it a couple of months ago and had to lose four inches.”

Lisa laughed, but her smile quickly faded and she shifted nervously in her chair. “I know you’re probably wondering why I’m here. Why I wanted to talk to you.”

For an absurd, irrational moment Amy thought that Lisa knew. That somehow she’d gotten wind of the kiss and Amy’s confession and that she’d come to confront her with her perfidy.

Then sanity returned and she released her grip on the arms of her chair and tried to calm her pounding heart.

“To be honest, I’m still kind of getting over the surprise of seeing you so suddenly.”

“It’s like this, Ames—I’m seeing a therapist.” Lisa blurted it like a kid swallowing cod liver oil, as though she was trying to get the awfulness over and done with as quickly as possible.

Of all the things Amy had expected her friend to say, this was the last. Lisa had never been big on self-exploration and contemplation.

She was aware that Lisa was watching her tensely, waiting for her reaction. She tried to formulate a reply.

“Are you finding it helpful?”

“You think I’m nuts, don’t you?” Lisa asked.

“No! Of course not. God, it’s not like I couldn’t benefit from professional intervention half the time.”

Like last night, for example.

“You’re the first person I’ve told. In case you couldn’t tell.” Lisa smiled self-deprecatingly.

It was Amy’s turn to squirm in her chair. There was no way Lisa would be confiding in her if she knew what Amy had done, what Amy wanted. No way.

“So what made you…you know?” Amy asked.

“Seek professional help? Get my head read? It all caught up with me, Ames. The affair, losing Quinn. My own shitty behavior, in a nutshell.” Lisa took a mouthful of water and ice cubes clanked against her tall glass. She met Amy’s eyes and shrugged. “I told myself I was fine, that Stuart and a new life was what I wanted. I even started looking at houses, was on the verge of putting an offer in on this amazing place in Vaucluse…. Then suddenly I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning, and I couldn’t stop crying. Stuart took me to the doctor’s and he wanted to put me on antidepressants. But I knew it wasn’t a chemical thing. It was a me thing. I’m so screwed up, Ames.”

Lisa blinked rapidly. Amy reached across the table and took her friend’s hand.

“Just because you screwed up doesn’t mean you’re screwed up,” she said.

“Tell that to my therapist,” Lisa joked. “My relationship with my parents…my relationship with Quinn…the way I see myself. Basically, I’m a therapist’s wet dream. Paula’s going to be able to name a ski lodge after me by the time she’s straightened me out.”

Amy could hear the pain beneath Lisa’s lighthearted words.

“I think you’re very brave,” Amy said. And she meant it. It took a lot of guts to confront your own bad decisions and try to learn from them. “Lots of other people would have taken the tablets and bought the house and never looked back.”

“Well, if I could have got away with it I would have,” Lisa said. “But apparently my subconscious had other ideas.”

“You’re still brave.”

“We’ll see. Anyway, my therapist is the reason why I’m here. We’ve been talking a lot lately about when I was growing up. You and me and Quinn. God, we used to have fun, didn’t we? Remember the time we had that party when my parents were away?”

Amy smiled. “Denise passed out in the backyard and we tried to lock Quinn in the toilet off the laundry room by tying a bit of rope between the door handle and the washing machine.”

“But instead of staying trapped, he pulled the washing machine over he yanked on the door so hard,” Lisa said.

For some reason they both found this hysterically funny and for a long moment there was nothing but the sound of giggling and wheezing at their table. Lisa fixed Amy with a steady regard once she’d regained her composure.

“I know I messed up with Quinn, and I know how close you two are and how much you’d probably love to punch me in the face for hurting him, but I really don’t want to lose you, too, Ames. That’s why I’m here. To tell you that I value your friendship. And that if you want to punch me in the face, that’s okay with me—as long as we can still be friends.”

Guilt wrapped itself around Amy’s chest and squeezed hard. If Lisa knew how bad a friend she really was…

“It’s not my place to judge you, Lis. At the end of the day, whatever happened is between you and Quinn,” she said uncomfortably, “it’s none of my business.”

“Do you mean that? Really?”

“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t.”

Lisa sagged with relief. “My God. You have no idea how terrified I was of having this conversation with you. I’ve been talking about coming down here for weeks, and my therapist has been telling me to do it. But it wasn’t until I was lying awake staring at the ceiling last night that I got the courage up. I jumped straight in the car before I could chicken out.”

Amy glanced down at her faded sweater and grungy jeans. She didn’t consider herself to be a particularly intimidating person. The idea that Lisa had been losing sleep over talking to her was hard to get her head around. “Am I that scary?”

“Hell, yes.”

Amy blinked. “Okay.” She wasn’t sure, but she thought that maybe she was a little offended.

“Not in the way you’re thinking,” Lisa said quickly. “It’s just that you’ve always been so straight down the line, Ames. You’re probably the most honest person I know. Well, you and Quinn, I guess. But then you two were always a matched set. I used to be so jealous of you.”

Amy made a scoffing noise. “You’re the one with the law degree with honors and the big fancy job and the legs that go on forever and the kind of car I will never, ever be able to afford.”

Lisa dismissed it all with the flick of her hand. “You have something that’s worth more than any of that, Ames. You know who you are. I’ve always admired that about you. Why do you think I was always over at your house when we were kids? When I was around you, I felt grounded. You don’t bullshit and you care and you’re not embarrassed to show it. And you know what counts in life.”

Amy felt like a huge fraud. If she was even close to being the person Lisa thought her to be, she’d tell her friend the truth right now. Confess everything, lay it all before her.

Amy looked down and smoothed her fingers along the crease in her napkin. She couldn’t do it. Unlike Lisa, she wasn’t brave enough to expose her greatest failings to public scrutiny. So much for being a bastion of no-bullshit and honesty.

“I’m no angel, believe me,” she said quietly. “I’ve got my own fair share of flaws, Lisa. More than my share.”

The waiter appeared with their meals then and Amy said yes to cracked pepper and no to more sparkling water and made all the right noises about how good her omelet looked.

Lisa leaned forward as the waiter once again left them alone.

“I promise no more heavy talk from now on, Ames. Tell me about your plans for the Grand. And how are your folks? And who should I be on the lookout for while I’m in town?”

Amy forced a smile and took a moment to gather her thoughts. Then she started answering her friend’s questions.

He had no idea why Lisa had chosen to come to town while he was here, but he knew it wasn’t a coincidence. He thought about what Duffy had said in his e-mail about having trouble pinning down her lawyer, and used more force than was strictly necessary to push the sander across the pocked and scarred counter. If she was angling for something more in the divorce…

The sander bucked in his hands and he hit the trigger to turn the motor off. He’d hit an exposed nailhead, something he could have avoided if he’d been paying closer attention. He checked, and sure enough, the sandpaper had torn, as well as a corner of the base pad.

Great.

“You look like a ghost.”

Quinn glanced over his shoulder. Lisa stood in the front entrance, the afternoon sun turning her hair into a halo and casting her face in shadow. She walked toward him, a tentative smile on her face, her high heels clicking on the marble floor.

“Where’s Amy?” he asked, glancing over her shoulder.

“I dropped her at home. She’s still pretty hungover. I think she was going to try to have a nap.”

He turned back to the concession stand, wiping sawdust off the countertop with his flattened hand. The silence stretched between them but he wasn’t about to break it. She was the one who’d come here and sought him out. She could do the heavy lifting.

“Do you really hate me that much, Quinn?”

“I don’t hate you.”

“You can barely stand to look at me.”

She’d always loved a bit of melodrama.

“I’m busy, in case you hadn’t noticed. The more stuff I get done while I’m in town, the less Amy has to do on her own.”

“You’re angry with me.”

He turned to face her fully. Clearly, she was determined to have a confrontation.

“What do you expect? You knew I was here, helping Amy. And you suddenly turn up, acting as though it’s a coincidence.”

“I’m not playing games, Quinn. I’ve been thinking about home a lot lately. About us, and Amy, how things were when we were all growing up. Do you know that apart from the two times when we broke up in high school and that one time at university, I haven’t been single since I was fifteen?”

It was on the tip of his tongue to point out that she’d been so far from single at one time that she’d actually had both a husband
and
a lover, but it would only prolong the discussion.

Six months ago, he would have relished the opportunity to go at her hammer and tongs, lash her with all her wrongs, parade his hurt and sense of betrayal in front of her. Now he didn’t see the point. Why waste the energy? They’d been married. He’d given it his best shot. He’d made mistakes. So had she, the last one being a real doozy. What had once been between them was broken, never to be repaired. There was nothing left to do bar sign the papers that dissolved their marriage so they could both move on.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” he said.

“Well, that makes two of us.”

That surprised him. Lisa fiddled with one of her rings. It took him a moment to recognize it as her wedding band, worn on her right hand now.

“Believe it or not, I never meant to hurt you, Quinn. I know that probably sounds disingenuous considering what I did, but it’s true. I was so miserable, and I didn’t know how to fix anything, so I made it worse.”

Man, he hated hearing that she’d been miserable in their marriage, even though he knew it must have been true for her to have the affair. He’d thought over those last years again and again, trying to work out in his own mind what he’d said or not said, done or not done that had pushed her into turning away from him instead of toward him. He’d never come up with a satisfactory answer.

“You want to conduct a postmortem? Is that it?” he asked.

“Do you think it would make any difference?”

“To what?”

“To us. To you being able to look me in the eye and have a civil conversation with me. Maybe even be friends again.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “You want to be friends now?”

Was that what this was all about?

“It would be nice to think that we could salvage something from this mess. We used to be good friends, you and I. We used to enjoy each other. Remember?”

He studied her for a long beat, looking into her clear blue eyes, noting the slight flush on her high cheekbones, the expensive sheen of her hair. She looked beautiful, as always—and very unhappy. He could see it in the way she clenched her hands together, in the tension in the tendons of her neck and the new lines around her eyes. She felt guilty about what had happened, obviously. Wanted to try to make things right between them, ease her conscience.

He shook his head. “We can’t turn back the clock, Lis.”

“I’m not expecting you to invite me over to your place to hang out and watch the TV or anything. It’s just…I miss you. I miss talking with you.”

Her quiet words affected him more than he wanted them to. He picked up the sander and started removing the torn sandpaper. As he’d just said, they couldn’t turn back the clock.

When he didn’t say anything, Lisa cleared her throat. “I guess I’ll get out of your hair, then.”

She waited a moment longer, giving him one last opportunity to step in. With what, he wondered. Absolution? A knock-knock joke? Then she turned and headed for the door.

He fingered the torn sandpaper once she was gone.

She wanted to be friends. She missed him.

He threw the sandpaper in the trash. It pissed him off no end, but he felt guilty for not responding to her overture. Despite all the great reasons he had for not wanting to have her in his life. Which showed how impossible it was to completely sever the emotional ties that had bound the two of them together for so many years.

Perhaps it would be different if they hadn’t grown up together as well as having been married. She was part of his personal history in so many ways. She’d been his first kiss, his first girlfriend. She’d been there when he took his first tentative steps into adulthood.

She was right. They had once been good friends. She had a sharp mind and he’d always enjoyed debating the merits of an argument with her. And no one could party like Lisa—when she let her hair down, anything could happen. Some of the worst hangovers of his life could be laid directly at her door. She’d always been generous with praise and gifts and her open-handedness was one of the things he’d loved about her the most.

He’d lost a good friend as well as his wife and lover when she’d betrayed him. And no matter what happened between them in the future, they would never be able to recapture the old ease. It was gone, for good. And it was bloody sad.

Outside, a car sounded its horn and he realized he’d been staring at the silent sander for too long. He checked his watch, then made a decision. Lisa had said she’d dropped Amy at home. It was time for them to finish the conversation they’d started this morning.

He locked up the theatre and headed for his car. In a perfect world, he should probably wait until Amy had had a chance to recover from her hangover with a few hours’ sleep before descending on her, but he’d waited all night and most of the day. He wasn’t waiting any longer.

His gut was churning by the time he pulled into Amy’s street. As much as he hated to admit it, Lisa’s visit had thrown him. He parked in front of her house and took a moment to shake the sawdust from his hair, trying to clear his head at the same time. Then he swung the door open and started to climb out of the car.

Do you really hate me that much?

We used to be friends.

We used to enjoy each other.

He froze, one booted foot on the road, the other still in the car as Lisa’s words echoed inside him.

If he and Amy entered into a relationship and it failed, would he be having the exact same conversation with her in a few years? Facing the same sense of failure and loss? Would he one day be looking at her with anger in his gut and thinking about how much they’d lost?

He lowered his head and stared at the asphalt.

He thought about Amy, and her drunken declaration, and that kiss…God, that kiss. He thought about Lisa and his divorce and the loss of something that had once been good.

I can’t do this.

The thought came from his gut, pure instinct.

No way could he risk losing Amy the way he’d already lost Lisa. Not Amy. She meant too much to him. She was so much a part of him, of his life. If things screwed up…If he let her down or she let him down or if life somehow conspired to throw more at them than they could handle, he didn’t know how he would be able to move on from the loss.

He needed her in his life. It was that simple. And if the trade-off for guaranteeing the endurance of their friendship was the sacrifice of his desire to kiss and caress and hold her…then so be it.

He let his breath out on a long, heavy sigh. Then he pulled his foot back into the car, closed the door and started the engine.

As he drove away he thought about how much courage it must have taken for Amy to break sixteen years of silence and declare herself. Some of it had been liquid courage, sure, but he had no doubt that she’d had to work herself up to appearing on his doorstep with her heart in her hands.

He felt as though he was letting her down, denying them a chance without even exploring the potential of what lay between them.

Then he thought about the sadness in Lisa’s eyes and the bitter taste his marriage had left in his mouth.

I’m sorry, Ames. I need you in my life too much to risk screwing things up with you, too.