Page 37 of Now That It's You
“Meg, I know. Come on. You should probably meet the others.”
“Others?”
Chloe turned, and Meg followed numbly, allowing Chloe to lead her to the next room, which was smaller and more airless than this one. She let her gaze drop to the water goblet in Chloe’s hand again, and she realized why it looked familiar. The etched initials MM twinkled back at her from the rim, and Meg stumbled with the recognition.
Our wedding glasses, she thought, regaining her balance as she hurried to catch up with Chloe. The ones we ordered with our monogram. Meg and Matt, MM.
Chloe turned and caught her staring at the glass. She halted mid-stride and held it up to give Meg a better view. “It’s a nice touch, isn’t it? All the glasses have his initials. Matt Midland. We found them in the garage, and it seemed like he was sending us a message.”
“Right,” Meg breathed, not sure what that message might be. “They’re nice.”
Satisfied, Chloe turned away again and marched up to a trio of women chatting in the corner. None of them looked familiar, but they all had curly hair and wore dark sheath dresses that accentuated curvy figures.
A brunette turned and gave Meg a once-over with silver-flecked brown eyes that nearly matched the pair Meg saw looking back at her each morning in the bathroom mirror.
Beside her was a blonde with longer, looser curls pinned on top of her head. She turned, too, studying Meg with an interest that seemed oddly familiar.
The brunette shifted her monogrammed glass to her left hand and extended her right to Meg. “Cathy with a C. I was after you, but before Chloe.”
“Oh,” Meg said, wishing she could come up with another syllable or two to utter. “It’s lovely to meet you.” She shook hands with Cathy-with-a-C, admiring the silver bracelet that looked like something Matt tried to give her one Christmas before she told him she had an allergy to nickel.
“Kathy with a K,” the blonde offered, not extending a handshake. “I was before you, but after Brittney. Is Brit here?”
Chloe shook her head and took a sip from her glass. “She was invited, but she couldn’t make it. Opening night at her new restaurant.”
“I can’t wait to try it,” said a second brunette with curls tumbling to the middle of her back. She nodded at Meg. “I’m Marti. Matt and I had a short little thing right before you, but I worked with him for a few years after that, so I knew all about you.”
Meg swallowed, trying to process what was happening. She’d known Matt had other girlfriends before her, of course, and she’d assumed there were others after. He’d been five years older, so his life and love experiences had dwarfed hers when they’d met at her twenty-second birthday party.
Studying Kathy-with-a-K, Meg realized why she looked familiar. The girl Matt dated for three years before her, the one whose smiling face taunted Meg from Sylvia’s collection of family photos on the mantle, the one Matt had once described as “not that interested in sex” in a misguided effort to soothe Meg’s jealousy.
At the time, it made Meg feel smug and superior. Now, she just felt sad.
“Brittney sent her regards,” Chloe said to Cathy-with-a-C. “She wanted to meet you.”
“Brittney Fox?” Meg asked, trying to place the name.
“Before both of us,” supplied Kathy-with-a-K. “Though I found out later he was still hooking up with her the whole first year we were together.”
“There’s a shocker,” muttered Cathy-with-a-C, shaking her head. “A leopard doesn’t change its stripes.”
“Spots,” Marti corrected. “A leopard doesn’t change its spots.”
Cathy-with-a-C rolled her eyes. “A zebra, then?—”
“And anyway, he had changed,” Chloe insisted. “He was faithful to me from day one, and he’d made all kinds of changes in his life like trying yoga and giving up red meat and working with a therapist and?—”
“I used to hate you.”
Meg looked at Kathy-with-a-K, alarmed to realize the woman was speaking to her. Maybe she hadn’t heard right. “I’m sorry?”
“I hated you. For years, actually.”
Meg blinked. “But we’ve never met.”
Kathy shrugged and took a sip of her drink. “I hated that you moved in together so soon, when it took him two years to move in with me. And then when you two got engaged?—”
“After almost nine years,” Chloe pointed out, folding her arms over her chest. “He proposed to me after only three months.”
