Page 23 of Breaking Emily's Rules
Yes, way to add salt to the wound. I had met Nika at a Bay Area nightclub, where she’d been hired as a bartender. But when it was clear she’d lied to get the job and didn’t know a screwdriver from a mimosa (adding vodka to everything, I later heard), she’d been fired on the spot.
I had heard the commotion, saw a statuesque blonde sobbing and yelling in a foreign language and stupidly followed her into the ladies’ room. I blamed it on years of fixing Molly’s messes, but before I’d known what I was doing, I was comforting Nika. Trying to fix it for her.
“Stupid American boss! Vodka make everything better. No?”
“I’m not a bartender,” I had answered, handing Nika more tissues.
“I need job.”
“What can you do?” Working as the head event manager at my family’s company gave me a lot of connections.
Unfortunately, it had turned out Nika wasn’t good at much of anything, but Greg needed a maid. I had taught her how to clean the house the way Greg liked it, and Nika was reliable and energetic, showing up three times a week. The house was always spotless.
“Watch out for that one,” Rachel had said to me the first time I’d introduced her to Nika.
“Why? You think she’d be interested in Greg? I mean, look at her. She used to date an NFL player.”
I never dated über-handsome men. Too much temptation to other women.
“All that money he makes is attractive, even if Greg isn’t.” Rachel had said in a thinly veiled warning.
It was true Greg’s software start-up was about to go public and his shares would put him into an entirely different income tax bracket. Not über-rich, though. Not athlete-rich.
But hindsight was twenty-twenty. Nika, like most women, wanted security. Being swimsuit model gorgeous didn’t take that need away, it turned out. Greg was the marrying kind. Nika saw that, and loyalty was not part of her repertoire. Survival was.
Now Greg reached for my hand. “I didn’t want you to hear about this from anyone else. Nika and I, we’re getting married.”
Greg already getting married? To the woman he’d cheated on me with? “Married?”
Greg studied his cup. “She’s pregnant.”
I swallowed the golf ball in my throat. It had been a year. I didn’t want to think about how Nika and Greg had spent that year and whether they’d eventually made their way to the bed for some of Greg’s paint by numbers sex. Or maybe he and Nika enjoyed something altogether different than we had.
“I see.” If there’s one thing Greg did know, it was how much I wanted to start a family. Right after the wedding, had been the plan. He’d reversed the order with Nika.
“I’m so sorry.” Greg gave me a look filled with pity.
Oh, no you don’t.“Don’t be sorry. You’re having a baby.” Nika would hopefully be a better mother than she had been a friend.
It was better this way, and I needed to keep telling myself that. After a few more torturous minutes, Greg left and I watched from inside the coffee shop as he drove off.
“What did that douchebag want?” Annie stopped by the table to ask.
“To tell me he’s getting married to Nika.”
“The Russian? No way!”
“Yep. It’s for the best.” I stood, picked up my purse and walked outside into the warm spring day.
Greg was getting married to Nika. I slid into the driver’s seat of my car and rested my head on the steering wheel. So much new information. my head felt heavy and thick from the overload.
More to the point, Greg had moved on. But I was still stuck where I had been a year ago. I hadn’t dated anyone or moved forward. Still stuck at home, spending most of my weekends with the Pink Ladies. A bunch of wonderful women, sure, even if the youngest was seventy-two.
Maybe I had to stop working so hard at hiding and throw myself back into the world full tilt.
Rachel was right. Getting my pilot’s license was at least something I could do in my free time. And if it didn’t work out, if for some reason the whole thing made me sick, I’d find something else to chase. Maybe I could make another list, kind of like a bucket list.
One way or another, I had to start living again.
