The Status of All Things (7 page)

“Really?” I push, her opinion holding so much more weight than she knows. If she thinks my relationship with Max is worth saving, then maybe it is. I hadn’t realized the power of that question until I’d heard it squeak from my mouth.

“Absolutely—I
know
he loves you,” she says, and the burden I’ve been carrying, the part of me that wondered if I had misread my entire life, instantly lifts off my shoulders. “And now you can stop him from leaving again. Do you have any idea how many women would kill for an opportunity like this—to keep their husbands from going down the wrong path? To be able to reconnect before it’s too late?” She looks down, studying her hands, picking at the flour that’s still wedged under her fingernails.

“What about you? Would you fight for Ben? Even if you knew his heart was somewhere else?”

Jules folds and refolds a hand towel next to the sink before responding. “I would—we have a lot of history, and that means something. Plus, it would be a second chance. And this is yours, Kate,” she says, perching on the edge of the countertop. “Sometimes even the best couples lose their way, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be together.” She breaks eye contact with me before looking up again, and I wonder if she’s thinking of the fight she’d had with Ben earlier. “Listen, I know you. You’re a problem solver. So I want you to understand this is not about anything being wrong with
you.
” She shakes her head. “Max stumbled for whatever reason, which happens sometimes, even in the most solid relationships, and she was there at the right time. But that doesn’t make her the right girl.”

I nod, but say nothing—it feels good to hear Jules defend me, to defend what Max and I have together.

I feel my pocket vibrate and frown when I read a message from Courtney.

We still on for drinks tonight at STK?

The baby hairs on my arm stand on end as I consider the timing of her text, and for a split second I forget I’m reliving this day—that she is simply reaching out because she’s confirming our happy-hour date for tonight. That the last thirty days as I know them never happened.

“What is it?” Jules looks over my shoulder to read the screen. “Why the hell would
she
think you’d have a drink with her? After what she did to you?”

“She doesn’t know I know, remember? It hasn’t happened yet. According to her, we are still girlfriends and coworkers—”

“—and apparently women vying for the same man!” Jules interjects.

“Yes, that too—thanks for the reminder.” I smile to let her know I’m being sarcastic. “And we’re supposed to go to happy hour with Max
tonight
.”

“Can you do that? Can you pretend
not to know
what they did or
are going
to do to you? You were so cool about it when they became good friends . . .”

“What?” I press, the rest of her sentence hanging in the air like a kite on a breezy day.

Jules shrugs.

“Just say it. I was too trusting, wasn’t I?”

“No! I was just thinking that it’s enviable you were able to be like that. Most women would be jealous.” She stops midsentence, thinking for a moment. “You know, even Ben got a little weird about Liam in the beginning. I’m not sure if I ever
told you that. I laughed so hard when he brought it up because it was Liam.
Liam!
I could never imagine . . .” Jules doesn’t finish her thought, but she doesn’t need to. The way she rapidly shakes her head at the thought of being intimate with him speaks volumes.

Max and I had discussed his friendship with Courtney
once,
when he’d come stumbling in the door from one of the concerts they had attended a few months after meeting, beer and cigarettes thick on his breath. They were both huge fans of nineties bands, and with my blessing would occasionally see whatever group was passing through town. Before, I had been the one who went to see Toad the Wet Sprocket or Good Charlotte with Max. But to be honest, I had been relieved to be off the hook, much preferring to stay home and curl up with the latest issue of
Entertainment Weekly
than bobbing my head with feigned enthusiasm as I listened to songs I didn’t particularly love when they were originally on the radio.

“You smoked?” I said to Max, recoiling slightly at the sound of my own voice, a voice I’d only heard inside my head, the voice that had started once the clock ticked past 1 a.m. My mind had involuntarily drifted to an image of the two of them dancing, their plastic cups of booze held high in the air above their heads, having so much fun together that time had slipped away. I’d made a vow that I wouldn’t confront him when he got home. I was simply feeling anxious because I couldn’t sleep, and in the morning I’d feel better. But when Max had gotten into bed well after 2 a.m., the smell of smoke triggered the insecurity I’d been trying to bury. When she was just my friend, Courtney’s model-like face and body never threatened me, but that night, it was the first time I had wondered if he’d also noticed her exquisite beauty.

“Courtney bummed one from some guy and I took a drag, but it was awful.” He mock coughed and suddenly I’d imagined him with his arm around her waist, leaning in and gently removing the cigarette that was dangling from between her lips.

“Should I be jealous here?”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Max laughed, grabbing my face between his hands and planting a drunken kiss on my lips.

“Just tell me I have nothing to worry about,” I said as I pulled back from his grasp and searched his glazed eyes for the truth.

“You have nothing to worry about,” he repeated, kissing each of my fingers softly, then, after a few moments of silence, adding, “Let me put it this way—you would never think of Liam like that, right?”

When he said those words, it was like everything clicked—I wasn’t being fair. Of course he could have a friendship with a woman if I could have one with a man. And if he felt the way about her that I did about Liam, I really had nothing to worry about. He’d rolled to my side of the bed and curled his arms around me, and I’d put the whole incident aside, burying the uncertainty so far down that I could almost pretend it was never there.

• • •

Jules rubs her temples. “This whole situation is like some kind of crazy brainteaser. It hurts my head.”

And it hurts my heart.

“I don’t know if I can go to the happy hour tonight,” I answer honestly, feeling like the one time I agreed to run a 5K with Max, the finish line seeming so far away.

“If anyone can do it, it’s you,” Jules says, and I raise my eyebrow at her.

“Really?”

“How do you not see how strong and smart you are? You drive me nuts, girl!”

“Well, it’s especially hard to see my strengths when my fiancé has just told me he’s upgrading to someone else.”

“Did he say that?”

“No . . . not exactly, but why else would he be leaving me for her?”

“It might not have anything to do with you—like I said, he was probably just scared to commit and looking for an easy way out.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were secretly watching
Oprah
again.”

“Hey, that was a short-lived phase after Evan was born—but I did learn a lot.” Jules smiles.

“Okay, Ms. Armchair Psychologist, how do you suggest I handle not only going to drinks with my fiancé and his secret love interest, but also my working relationship with her?” I know I will have to fake it everywhere—especially at the office. Simply asking to be reassigned to different accounts so I don’t have to brush shoulders with Courtney every day will never work. I can picture the disapproving frown forming on my boss Magda’s thin lips when she realizes my agenda—I’m trying to distance myself from Courtney. She will demand an explanation, one I won’t be able to provide. Disappointing my boss couldn’t also be part of this arrangement.

“Don’t ask me. I watched O, not Maury Povich!”

I jokingly push Jules in the shoulder. “Seriously! I need your advice here—you know I’ve never been good at masking my real feelings.”

“Okay, okay. Sorry! Start by remembering something. This
isn’t just about her. To really fix this, you need to figure out what went wrong with you and Max.” When she sees my face fall, she softens. “Don’t worry, I have no doubt you will—you and Max are great together.”

“You mean
were
great together.”

“No—I mean
are,
as in present tense. You said it yourself—they don’t know you know. So use this do-over you’ve been granted as an opportunity not only to get Max back, but to distract Courtney.” She winks. “And you know what I’m thinking?”

I can almost see the wheels turning in Jules’ mind.

I shrug.

“Instead of doing a makeover on her, let’s do a make
under.
Do something awful to that gorgeous hair of hers!”

I try to imagine Courtney’s blond locks transformed to a deep shade of blue, but it still doesn’t make the uneasiness inside of me disappear.

“Why are you frowning?” Jules asks.

“I know I’m lucky to have this second chance, but it feels weird—like I’m cheating.”

“You are
not
the one who cheated here.” Jules narrows her eyes. “And as far as I’m concerned, you deserve every crutch, cheat sheet, and crystal ball you can get.”

“Okay, so what are the Cliffs Notes on how I can stay professional at work when all I’m going to want to do is kick her ass?”

Jules smiles. “That would be something to see, but you know it won’t help you get Max back. Just stay focused on your goal—that means business as usual with her. Plus, you can use time to your advantage. What are you always saying? How you and Courtney are always in competition to be on Magda’s good side? That a compliment from her is as rare as—”

“—a California condor sighting,” I offer.

“Right—remember that you don’t only know about Max and Courtney, you also know what’s already happened at work. So use that information to your advantage with Magda. Save a deal that’s going bad or fix a mistake before it happens. Overnight, you’ll be the star.”

“Again, cheating—”

“So what! This is your life! Remember that.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

If only Jules had been right. It turns out living a day for the second time isn’t necessarily an advantage, especially when you have to pretend you don’t know your close friend and trusted colleague is planning to steal your fiancé. When I first arrived at work, I nearly collided with Courtney as I’d tried to duck into the bathroom. I studied her face for a moment, searching for signs that she was in love with my future husband, but there was nothing that gave her away. She’d offered me a warm smile and asked if she could grab me a coffee. I’d stammered something about already being overcaffeinated and proceeded to hide in the bathroom stall, trying to catch my breath until Magda’s assistant came looking for me, relaying a message that I was already five minutes late for a meeting about the Calvin Klein campaign we had landed the month before.

And the day didn’t get any easier from there. By the end of it, my tongue was sore from biting away the details I already knew but couldn’t share: that the start-up wedding website was going to fire us after lunch and there was nothing we could do to change their minds; that Magda’s latest boyfriend was going to break up with her right before a hugely important conference
call; and that we were going to discover a major accounting error that was going to cost the firm thousands of dollars.

Then there was the idea I’d pitched to Magda for the spa we were trying to acquire as a client—a concept I
knew
would secure us the business, even though Magda’s perfectly arched eyebrow and patronizing stare more than suggested she felt otherwise. She’d given me the same disapproving look she’d given me thirty days ago, the one that launched us into the same argument today, me defending my
Come find your happy ending
billboard idea and Magda scoffing at it, her ill-fitting jacket accentuating her emaciated body—something she took a great deal of pride in, grinning wildly when a homeless man had called out to her to
eat a cheeseburger already
as we’d strolled by. But what I’d forgotten was that thirty days ago, when I’d pitched this campaign the first time, it had been
Courtney
who’d swooped in, taken my side, and won Magda’s praise for being more convincing about my own idea than I’d been.

As Courtney defended my intuitiveness and raved about how I always knew what the clients wanted, I’d wondered how I could be so in tune with the people I did business with yet so clueless about those closest to me—
like her
. When Courtney had backed me up last month, I’d shot her a smile and stage whispered that I’d buy all her drinks later that night when we went out with Max. But this time, I could barely force a smile, reluctantly swallowing the rage I felt toward her.

As we’d walked out of the glass-walled conference room, Courtney had laced her arm through mine and I’d stiffened involuntarily. As she pulled me down the hall toward our offices, my mind kept wandering to what Courtney would look like if her eyebrows were “suddenly” shaved off.

I dialed Jules’ number as soon as I got inside my office. “I need a lifeline,” I whined as soon as Jules said hello.

“I always wanted to be your
phone-a-friend
!” Jules exclaimed, both of us remembering how we used to fantasize about being contestants on
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.
“You would’ve called me, not Liam, right?”

“Of course!” I laughed.

“So what’s going on? Because I know you’re not sitting there with Regis Philbin.”

“It’s just that being at work with her is even harder than I thought it would be,” I’d lamented. “Especially when she’s
nice
to me.”

“Well, of course she’s laying it on thick. She feels guilty about harboring feelings for
your man
.”

“That’s why she was kissing my ass so hard in the weeks leading up to the wedding,” I’d said after giving it more thought. “She was constantly swinging by my office with an extra Starbucks coffee or bringing me the latest
People
, even offering to stay late so I could go home and work on my wedding to-do list. To think I believed she wanted to help me because she was my friend, when she only wanted to relieve her conscience.” I rested my forehead in my hand. “This all feels hopeless.”

“You need to pull it together,” Jules said sternly. “Where’s the girl who graduated at the top of her class from Occidental? Where’s my best friend who held my hand during seventeen hours of labor? And most importantly, where’s the woman who
originally
captured Max’s heart?
She
would be able to do this!”

“I just wish I knew what went wrong between us, then at least I’d have a place to start.”

Jules sighed into the phone. “Do you have any ideas?”

We’d experienced a few tense moments in our premarital
counseling. I remember bickering about which parent’s house we should spend our Christmases at or if we should have a joint checking account, but we’d eventually compromised on both. I couldn’t think of an issue between us that we hadn’t been able to work through in the past three years, something I’d always considered one of our greatest strengths. But how would we work through this?

“Remember that ‘what-if’ game we played at your house that time?” I asked Jules.

“How could I forget? A few relationships almost ended that night!” Jules started to release a laugh then stopped herself.

“Do you recall the card Max pulled—the one about cheating?”

“Oh yes—”

“He said he was
so sure
he’d want to work things out if his spouse was unfaithful—”

Max had drawn the card with the question:
What would you do if your spouse cheated on you?
He’d thought about it for not even a split second before swiftly responding, “We’d work through it.” The room had erupted, everyone’s opinion flying through the air. I’d righteously thought,
But neither of us would ever do that
. And even though Max had sworn up and down that he didn’t actually cheat with Courtney, he had still betrayed me emotionally, even if their lips had never met. And instead of attempting to work out whatever problems we’d had, he’d simply chosen her.

“I don’t think anyone knows how they’ll really behave in situations they’ve never been in before. I think people would like to believe they’d act a certain way, but you just never know . . .” Jules’ words became softer, eventually disappearing.

“Obviously,” I scoffed. “But he didn’t even give us a chance to work on our relationship.”

“But remember, you have a rare opportunity here—to pinpoint where things went wrong,” Jules argued. “So you can try to fix it before it gets too far.”

“True. But I would never have expected this to happen
now
. You always think there’s a chance down the road, maybe ten years in, but not
before
you even say
I do
.”

I’d felt an instant spark when I met Max at our mutual friends’ wedding—after Jules had spotted him, I’d let my gaze follow hers and they’d landed on a man with olive-green eyes, dark brown hair that was slightly long on the top, and a strong jaw lined with stubble. He’d grinned as he recognized Jules, and as his mouth opened, he’d revealed the dimple that to this day remains hidden unless he smiles just a certain way—a feature he only brings out when he wants to charm executives, my mother, and probably Courtney too.

After she introduced us, we’d sat outside on the patio and talked for hours—Max throwing his jacket around my bare shoulders the moment I shuddered from the cool breeze that had begun to blow. After our first date, he’d insisted on walking me to my front door, where he’d given me a warm hug and gently brushed my cheek with his lips. Before I’d closed the door, he’d thanked me for a night of stimulating conversation. Max’s attention had felt so pure, so transparent; he had genuinely seemed interested in what made me
me
. In the past, I’d always felt as if I had to find a new way to sparkle to keep my date interested, but with Max, I could finally let go of the breath I always seemed to be holding
.
On our fourth date, I’d pushed aside the Chinese food that had just been delivered and pulled him close, whispering I had something else in mind. He hadn’t argued.

Somehow we’d found our way from there to here. What happened to the people who would watch an episode of
Top Chef
and then try, usually unsuccessfully, to re-create a dish that didn’t look
that hard
to make, musing that Padma would criticize us for our lack of salt? Where was the couple that dressed head to toe in Lakers garb and cheered on Kobe in our living room, often laughing that we should probably just buy a ticket to the actual game already? And what had become of the Max and Kate who I had thought were such a perfect fit that I’d had a silly puzzle made from a picture of us and given it to him last Christmas?

I wondered if Max had started to pull away during the wedding planning. I was more opinionated than Max was in general—especially when it came to the details of our nuptials—but that didn’t mean I wasn’t willing to take his feelings into consideration. In the days after he proposed, I had asked him a million questions as I scoured TheKnot.com with a fierceness that rivaled my approach to preparing for final exams in college, searching for the style of wedding we might want—backyard country or hotel chic? I’d wanted to know: Did he prefer I walk down the aisle to a popular song or to a harp? Did he think we should have a band or a DJ at the reception? Ahi or salmon for dinner? But had I only asked him to weigh in because I knew he’d wave me off, that he’d tell me that he trusted me to make the decisions? I knew my behavior was often commanding, and I’d always thought that was something he found endearing, but now my newfound gift of hindsight left me questioning if I had ever known anything at all.

“I think I might know where we went wrong,” I said to Jules as I rocketed up out of my desk chair.

“What? Where?” She’d asked.

“I need to give him control—let him plan the wedding however he wants. Make him feel more involved!”

“But it’s only a month away.”

“I don’t care. Whatever he wants, he can have it. I’ll change anything.”

“Even yourself
?” Jules said carefully.

“Yes, if that’s what it’s going to take. Just trust me, Jules. I got this,” I said as I’d hung up the phone and grabbed my purse, deciding if I was going to suffer through drinks with Max and his girlfriend tonight, I’d better look damn good doing it.