Skinny Bitch Gets Hitched (29 page)

I didn't want to say the words. But I had to. “Look, Zach. I've had it. Unless you're honest with me, we're over.”

He looked at me and closed his eyes.

I could see how weary he was, and I felt like hell about it. But enough was enough.

He squeezed my hand. “I'll call you when I get home. We'll talk, okay?”

“You'll tell me the truth?”

He nodded.

Except by midnight, he didn't call. I sat by the window in my apartment, looking out onto Montana and Fourteenth, at the building in which we'd met. So much had happened since
that day—he'd changed, I'd changed, we'd changed together so that we could
be
together. But now he was shutting me out. It was one thing to give a guy some space to do what he had to do—whatever that was. It was another to be a fool, to ask and ask and ask for an explanation, to be let in, and to be constantly given excuses.

He said he'd call and he hadn't.

So I called him.

“I guess we're over,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. Angry and hurt were duking it out, and hurt won. I could barely breathe.

“Clementine, I'm not even home yet. I said I'd call when I got home.”

“I can't do this anymore. You're not being straight with me, and I can't live like this. I can't marry someone who won't be honest with me. Good-bye, Zach.”

I put my phone down and slid down the wall onto the floor and did something I hadn't in a long, long time. I cried.

S
ara was at Joe's, it was too late to call Ty in Paris, and I could do only one thing to pick myself up. As in old times, I stood in the kitchen of my apartment, cranked up ABBA as high as I could for just past midnight, and dug my hands into a bowl of flour and agave nectar and vanilla and vegan margarine, forcing myself to think about chocolate chips. Yes, I'd add chocolate chips.

Except Zach loved chocolate-chip anything, and my stomach flip-flopped.

Just bake. Forget everything and bake.
I could serve the cookies as a special dessert tomorrow with my strawberry sorbet or—

The downstairs buzzer buzzed.

Sara forgot her key? I pressed
TALK
. “Sar?”

“Clem, it's Zach.”

My pulse sped up. Was he here to tell me it
was
over?

Maybe he was here to finally come clean. Which could still mean we were over. He'd fallen in love with a coworker. With Vivienne, his ex. Or he'd come to realize he couldn't live with a mouthy vegan, after all.

I opened the door, listening to his feet as he came up the five flights. He walked slowly and heavily, which meant trouble.

When he appeared at the landing, he looked absolutely miserable.

What the hell was going on?

He came in and shut the door. I backed away without even meaning to.

“Okay, I'm just going to say this straight out, Clem. From everything I can tell, someone is embezzling from Jeffries Enterprises.”

Relief came flooding over me, though it still sucked for Zach. It
was
just business.

“But why couldn't you tell me that weeks ago? If you'd just explained that—”

“I couldn't, Clem.” He stared down at the floor, toward the living room, back at the kitchen wall.

“Okay, I'm not computing. Why the hell not?
What
is the big deal?”

“Because the embezzler is your cousin Harry.”

Sucker punch to the stomach. I stared at him, waiting for the
Just kidding, it's some slime in the cubicle across from Harry's.
Or some wheeler-dealer in a corner office
. But Zach let his head drop back with a weary sigh.

This had to be a mistake. Harry Cooper?
Embezzler?
No fucking way.

“Everything points to him. Leads back to him. I've tried a hundred ways to prove to myself that he's not guilty, but he is.”

I shook my head. “Well, you're wrong. Harry is the most ethical person I know. He'd never steal from you. You're
wrong
.”

A memory flitted through my mind, of Harry, age ten, defending my honor to a bunch of moronic boys from our school who were making fun of the farm and my family for being vegans. He'd told them to shut their stupid yaps, and they'd set upon him, beating the crap out of him. I'd jumped in and had ended up with a black eye and a broken arm. Harry had a matching black eye and a bruised rib. But we'd pummeled those jerks worse and they'd never bothered us again.

Harry, who stood up for vegan cousins and got his butt kicked, who flew across the country for my cooking school graduation, did
not
do this.

“I know you care about Harry. I know you two were very close growing up. But facts are facts. My team is launching an internal investigation to document everything.”

“Document everything for what?”

“I'll have to involve the police, Clem. We're talking about millions of dollars that have vanished. Which indicates an offshore account.”

I stepped back. This had to be a mistake. “If Harry is guilty, I'll eat a bloody steak at the Silver Steer. You've got be kidding me, Zach.”

He turned away. “I don't know how we're supposed to combine our families with something this,” Zach said, his voice strained. “This thing with Harry, you can barely tolerate my mother . . . her relationship with Keira is falling apart. Clem”—Zach turned away from me—“I think we should postpone the wedding.”

The sound you hear? My heart cracking in pieces. “You know what?” I said, my voice breaking. “I think so too. I can't believe you think he really did something like this.”

Zach disappeared into the bathroom. Because he had tears in his eyes, no doubt. What the hell had happened? How could any of this be real?

He came out of the bathroom, holding something. “Oh my God, Clem.”

“What? What is that?”

He held out what looked like a pregnancy test. I stepped closer and saw a faint pink line. Holy gobsmackers. Sara was pregnant?

“I found this on the windowsill. Do you have something to tell me?”

I stared at him as though he had three heads.
Oh, yes, I'm pregnant, but thought I'd keep it to myself and just let you tear us apart anyway. What the hell?
“I have a
roommate
, remember? But it's your way to jump to conclusions, isn't it?”

He looked very, very relieved. “So it's not yours?”

I shook my head, wanting him to go, not wanting him to go. Wanting to find Sara.

“I'm very, very sorry, Clementine. I love you, but I think we'd better take a break.” He held out the stick, then set it on a side table. “I'm not sure we're ready for any of this.”

A second later, he was gone.

Sara wasn't answering her texts. Or phone. I sat in the living room, staring out the window, wondering what the fuzz had happened to my life. How had everything gotten so messed up? How could I fix things that were so out of my control?

I sat there, my mind about to explode, and eventually I must have fallen asleep because I woke up on the couch in a sitting position, the sun streaming in through the windows.

Go find Sara,
I told myself. Was she pregnant? Was that why she'd said yes to Joe? The pregnancy test confirmed it? Or had it been negative and now she was thinking of breaking the engagement?

And why hadn't she shared any of this with me?
We're best friends
.

Because all you think about is the restaurant and Zach. Because you practically live there. Because you're so committed to not being distracted that your own best friend didn't tell you she's pregnant. Or isn't.

I took a quick shower, grabbed my bag, and headed over to Joe's house in Venice Beach. His house was gated to keep out his rabid fans—and the challengers he'd humiliated in front of all America. I pressed the buzzer.

“Who goes there?” came Joe's booming voice.

“Joe? It's me, Clementine Cooper.”

“The skinny vegan?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah. Is Sara there?”

The gate swung open. Joe's house was a lot nicer than I expected. Manicured lawn and all. It was bizarre, of course, tall and white with weird angles and narrow windows.

Sara opened the front door. “Hey, Clem, what's up?”

“Take a walk with me? I have something important to talk to you about.”

We headed down the stone path and stood by the gate.

“I found a pregnancy test in the bathroom garbage. Well, Zach did. He thought it was mine.”

“Oh, shit, did I leave that lying around? I was so freaked out that I must have forgotten about the test.”

So . . . you are? You're not?”

“My period was almost three weeks late. It's never late. So yesterday, I told Joe I was sure I was pregnant. And you know what? He was thrilled. He spun me around, sent his assistant out for cigars, and wouldn't let me do a thing for myself. I tried telling him I hadn't taken the test yet, that I wasn't sure, but he said he could feel it. We were having a baby and he couldn't
wait for there to be a mini us crawling around.” Sara took a deep breath.

I waited for her to continue.

“So then I took the pregnancy test. And it was negative. So I took another one. Negative. And then I got my period. But for an entire day, I thought I was pregnant and Joe was so happy because he hoped I
was
.”

“And you told him you weren't?”

She nodded, watching two huge Rhodesian ridgebacks walk by. “Those few hours when he thought I was pregnant, when he ordered a special bed for a zillion dollars that you can remote-control so I could raise my feet up, you know what I realized?”

“What?”

“That I love the guy. Really, really love him. I was so focused on the fact that he loves me, that he wants to marry me, that I kind of blew off whether or not I loved him.”

“And you're sad because you're not pregnant?”

“Nah, I'm not really ready to be anyone's mother. I'm sad because my best friend hates him. Because my mother hates him. Because half of America hates him. I love the guy so danged much, Clem.”

I smiled. “I don't hate him. I love that he loves you. You're my best friend, Sara. All I want is for you to be happy. And I know Joe makes you happy. Happier than I've ever seen you.”

“Shut up, you're gonna make me cry.” She pulled me into a hug.

“Why didn't you tell me you thought you were pregnant?”

“I don't know. I guess because I know Joe's not your favorite person, and I was worried that he'd humiliate your soon-to-be stepsister-in-law and lose, and then you'd hate him even more. And, well, you're kind of busy all the time. It's not that easy to find you just hanging out these days.”

“I would drop anything for you, Sara. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I guess. I just know the restaurant is everything to you and—”