The Wedding Wager (McMaster the Disaster) (16 page)

“Jen, what’s wrong?”

She laughed through her nose and looked at the ceiling. Her eyes were glistening. When I looked closer, I saw they were rimmed with red and she’d been blowing her nose.

I don’t think I had ever seen her cry.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the envelope, which I noticed had my name on it.

Jen set the envelope down slowly. “We’ll get to that in a minute. First, you should look at these.” She pulled a few tabloids out from under the table where she’d set them on a chair.

Dave Miller’s Love Child Exposed!

Needless to say, the giant picture they had of Jen was not her best shot. Her shirt had blown up slightly in the wind, showing her bare stomach. I mean, the stomach looked great—it was obviously a shot from a while ago since Jen was already showing, though still able to hide it under baggy clothes—but seriously, who wants a picture of themselves with their shirt blowing up on the cover of a national magazine? Especially when they’re wearing as snarky a face as Jen was in that shot.

My stomach began to roll. I had single-handedly outed Jen’s pregnancy. “Oh my God, she didn’t,” was all I could say.

“So you did do it then,” Jen said, calm.

Too calm.

I shook my head. “No, I mean, I didn’t mean to. I was talking to Andrea and it was that night I was drinking and she saved this little boy and I guess I just let my guard down and…”

Jen held up a hand. “Save it. I don’t want to hear another second of it. It’s always Josie the victim, isn’t it? I mean, you’ve built a whole brand around it with your diary, haven’t you?”

“But you said I should…”

“I am talking right now!” she said, slamming her hand down over the envelope. “If you’re so innocent in all this, how do you explain this?”

I looked from her to the envelope and back to her. “What is it?” I whispered, silent tears running down my cheeks.

“Oh for Christ’s sake,” she said, standing up and putting her hands on her hips. “You’re seriously going to sit there and pretend you don’t know?”

“I don’t know,” I said, trying my best not to let my voice hitch.

“It’s your little reward for selling me out,” she said. “I guess everyone has their price. I mean, I thought you’d be okay after your little book deal and everything, but I guess those advances don’t come in as fast as you require, hey? Had to do a little deal on the side to cover rent for this month?”

“Jen, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to say anything, I swear. And Andrea told me she wasn’t going to sell it.”

“Oh my God, so now you’re stupid enough to believe what a gossip magazine reporter says. Cripes Josie, these people ruined your life.” She paused, pacing the room. “Well, when you weren’t doing a bang up job ruining it yourself, that is.”

I could not ebb the steady flow of tears dripping off my chin.

She looked me straight in the eye. “And now you’ve ruined mine. Do you know that this is how my mother found out about her first ever grandchild?” she said, shaking the paper at me. Her words were getting significantly higher pitched. “And now, I have nowhere else to go, so I, a grown woman, have to go sleep on my mother’s couch until I can find someplace decent to live.”

“Jen, you don’t have to go.”

“Oh my God, are you seriously going to try to get me to stay? What’s the matter? Don’t have enough to cover next month’s rent? Oh wait, you’ve got plenty here from pimping me out to the world.” She slid the envelope across the table to me, hard. “And then you should be just fine after you get your big check from pimping yourself out.”

She stormed out of the room. All I could think was how she was the one who thought I should do the book deal.

“Jen, I’m sorry!” I yelled. “I swear I didn’t mean to hurt you. It just came spilling out.”

“Just like everything else, right? It’s never your fault.” She was calm again, but this time she was carrying a huge suitcase, which she had packed and ready to go. “Everything just seems to ‘happen’ to Josie McMaster.”

She rolled her eyes for good measure and stormed out of the apartment, dragging the suitcase. “I’ll send movers for the rest,” she yelled behind her.

The door slammed with the finality of a jail cell being shut.

The sobbing started quietly, then quickly escalated into something more of a storm of regret and hatred.

Mostly of myself.

Everyone was gone.

I’d pushed every single person in the world that I cared about away.

I laid my head down, forehead on the table and sobbed until I fell asleep from exhaustion in my own pool of tears.

~ ~ ~

Sometime in the night I woke, my face itchy with wetness. I don’t know if it was still the tears, or drool that only came when I was completely and utterly worn out.

I got up to go to the bathroom and made the mistake of turning on the light. Looking in the mirror, I had never hated myself more. I deserved to look as bad as I did in that stark fluorescent light. And it was bad.

Real bad.

But I could hardly bring myself to care, not after the way I had treated every person in my life. I mean, what was I thinking not talking to Jake about the diary first? I knew he wasn’t keen on the idea, and yet, I just jumped into it anyway.

And how could I not know having two wedding planners, especially two with personalities like my mother and Mattie, would blow up in my face.

It was classic disaster material.

And the whole drunken paparazzi secret?

Well, only a person as stupid as me could befriend a paparazzo after the press had practically ruined her life. I mean, Andrea was the epitome of everything that I said I hated. But she goes and saves one kid and all my secrets just come flying out? What the hell was wrong with me?

I shut the light off again, no longer able to stand looking myself in the face, and stumbled to my room, wanting nothing more than to crawl into bed and be swallowed up, never to be seen again. Even better… never to be heard from again.

I didn’t even bother closing the door as I took one step into my bedroom… two… and then my feet were flailing out from under me, and I was in the air, coming down with a huge rumble, landing hard on my neck and shoulders.

The diary.

The God damned Disaster Diary that lay in pieces all over the floor.

Much like myself, I supposed.

It was rather fitting really, that the diary brought me down to size. Broke me like I broke it. My life crumbled to pieces, just like it was.

I don’t know if I was hurt, or just didn’t have the energy to pick myself up one more time, but I stayed there for a long time, just barely able to reach a corner of my bedspread to pull down over me and whimper myself to sleep again.

~ ~ ~

The phone rang. And rang. So many times.

But I never picked up. I couldn’t imagine who it would be anyway. Maybe Jen leaked the house number to the paparazzi or something, just to get back at me.

One thing was sure, it wasn’t anyone I wanted to talk to. They had all disowned me.

The days went by in a blur. I bundled up in scarves and hats and huge sunglasses when I had to go out to get coffee or food. I never saw Andrea on my treks.

A few days later, a huge bouquet of light pink peonies arrived:

Josie, I’m sorry to hear about the breakup. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do, and don’t worry about the next book, there are plenty of things we can do. In the meantime, maybe this will help cheer you up a bit.

Carla

Along with the card and the flowers was a check for the first part of my advance. The amount sent me spinning a little—I’d never received a check that big in my life—but it only seemed to distract me for a moment or two before I fell back into my funk.

I breathed in the flowers. They smelled like life… something that had been lacking in my little apartment since Jen left. The kettle never bubbled, the oven timer never dinged, no music played. The only thing that had any movement at all was the TV when I watched my movie marathons, chick flick after chick flick, sad independent film after sad independent film. I’d never made use of my streaming video provider so much in my life.

I stayed away from Jake’s movies.

I put the flowers front and center on the dining table so I could see them from all angles of the living area. I hoped, by default of their beauty and scent, that a little of their cheeriness would rub off on me.

Of course, a few days after that, when they began to go limp and brown, life just became too depressing to bear.

When I used to be down in the dumps I’d to go to the Disaster Diary for comfort. Sometimes to even give me a giggle or two. Sure, I could scroll through the typed up version, but it just didn’t seem the same.

I sighed, threw out the flowers, and bundled up for another coffee run. I swear I was single handedly keeping the coffee shop in business these days.

Putting on my incognito shades even though it was fittingly cloudy and gloomy, I tried to hold my head up as I went past the reporters whose numbers had grown since the day the breakup went public.

I’m not sure the disguises worked as I slunk past them though, wishing the world would just all go away. I mean, I was a nobody again, why couldn’t they just leave me alone?

The little bell chimed above the door as I entered the shop, breathing in the thick, comforting smell of coffee, baking, and spices. It was a magical place, the coffee shop, and I thought about how nice it would be to sit in there and click away on my laptop like most of the others in there. But with the paparazzi hanging on my every move, writing was a bit more of a solitary practice for me.

At least I could take my cup of deliciousness in a cup back to my writing cave. You know, if I could ever find anything to write about. That thought led me to thinking about how I was supposed to be writing a book about my wedding and that the wedding was never going to happen. Which of course led to more tears wanting to sneak their way out again. But I was getting good at fighting off the emotions lately.

Things had become numb.

The place was busy and the line was long, so I took my place patiently, or maybe not so patiently at the end of it, wanting nothing more than to just get back to the apartment.

Then suddenly someone was beside me and I didn’t know if I should look at what was going on or if it was some creep who just liked invading personal space. I finally glanced up.

Mattie.

“Truce?” he asked, holding out a steaming cup.

And it was a good thing I had on the huge glasses because the tears sprang to my eyes instantly. Angels started singing and I thought maybe, just maybe, I had one friend left in the world.

Almost as good, I didn’t have to wait for my coffee a second longer.

“Truce,” I choked, grabbing the cup and taking a long, slow drink. “Thank you.”

He smiled. “Now let’s get you back to your apartment. This getup,” he said, waving his hand up and down me, “is not fooling anyone.”

I fake pouted. “What, you don’t like my scarf?”

He rolled his eyes. “You look like you’re trying to make yourself into a beehive from the neck up.”

It was true, the scarf coiled around my neck, then the rounded knit cap did kind of resemble some sort of hive, but he didn’t have to kick me while I was down. “I was trying to be incognito,” I said.

“More like unkempt-nito,” he said, winking.

“Gee, thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, walking jauntily as if I’d actually meant it.

We got to my building and Mattie smiled at the paparazzi as I slunk further down into my scarf until we finally made it back into the serenity of the apartment.

Which, actually, at that moment, was not that serene.

“Oh my God,” Mattie said, as we entered. “I think I’m too late.”

I scoffed. “It’s not that bad,” I said, even though I knew that it was.

“It looks like it’s been ransacked.” His eyes were wide, though a look was forming on his face that told me it smelled just as bad as I thought it did.

Maybe worse.

“Wow. We have got to get this place cleaned up. It’s like this is where depression came to die.”

I sighed. “I know, I just… couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

“Well, don’t you worry, Mattie’s here.”

“Oh really, and what do you know about cleaning?” I knew very well that he hired a weekly maid service for his own apartment.

“Please,” he said. “It may not be my favorite thing in the world to do, but I’ve forgotten more about cleaning than you ever knew.”

I raised a skeptical eyebrow.

“Didn’t I ever tell you about when I was a Molly Maid?”

I snort-chuckled. “Really?” I asked, imagining him in a little frilly apron.

“Ye of little faith,” he said, shaking his head and picking up mostly empty and/or already starting to rot food containers off the table. “Oh God, this is disgusting.” He headed to the kitchen and brought the big garbage can back out with him.

“I know, I know, I’m a big disastrous mess.”

He looked me up and down, getting his first good look at me without the hat, glasses, and giant scarf.

His eyes went wide again. “Good God, when was the last time you had a shower?”

I shrugged. I was sure it must have been within the last couple days.

Maybe.

“Get your butt in the shower girl,” he said, making a shooing motion with his hands. “And make it a long one, it’ll never take otherwise.”

I sighed and trudged to my bedroom in search of some clean clothes. Those were getting to be few and far between too. I finally found some leggings and a long sweater and headed to the bathroom making the water as hot as I could stand.

A moment under the spray and I was already feeling a little better. A smile even showed up, something that hadn’t happened in a long time. It was good to have Mattie back. I couldn’t believe what a difference not having someone in your life makes, especially one with such a big personality. I hadn’t even realized how much I’d missed his well-meaning insults.

I scrubbed under the water for half an hour and came out feeling like a new woman.