Page 68 of My Favorite Lost Cause
And I left to come back to this bullshit.
“Have you seen Ellie Hermann and her husband?” whispers one of the women. “At each other’s throats.” I’m relieved they’re not focused on me, but I don’t love this conversation either.
“That marriage doesn’t have long,” says someone else. “Speaking of…did you hear about the Kellys?”
“He’d gotten into such good shape,” says another. “That’s always the first sign they’re on their way out.”
The conversation turns to someone’s Birkin, and who’s on Ozempic, then onto the amount of money a couple has donated to an event and how it’s simply because he’s trying to keep his dad out of jail.
They care so very much about everyone’s place in the hierarchy. They’d all shove me down a flight of stairs if it pushed them further up.
I’ve never felt more on the outside than I do now. But…do I evenwantto be on the inside? Do I even care about the things these women are so viciously fighting to win? I don’t think I do.
I excuse myself, knowing they’ll talk about me next—my money is on “Harvey left because she couldn’t get pregnant” or “she never got over Miller”—and cross the yard in search of someone I don’t loathe.
Before I can find that mythical person, I’m cornered by Malia, one of my mother’s old modeling cronies.
She pulls me to the side of the stage, her leopard-print caftan blowing over my arms as she clutches my biceps. “You’vegot to stay strong, Maren,” she says. “I was in your exact situation thirty years ago.”
I smile politely. “Oh, I thought it was more recent than that. Didn’t you just get divorced last year?”
She shakes her head, waving a hand to dismiss the idea. “Not that. Divorces are a dime a dozen. I mean—” And here she looks over at Kit and Miller, who are currently on the dance floor, gazing at each other as if they’re the only people in the world. “Not with my sister, thank God. But my best friend. He was the love of my life, and she swiped him right out from under my nose. They got divorced five years later, if that gives you any hope.”
Wow. Okay, so she thinks I’m upset about Miller,andshe thinks I want my beloved sister’s marriage to fail.
“That sounds very different from my situation,” I say mildly. “I’m thrilled for Kit. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“That’s the spirit,” she whispers. “You keep saying that to yourself and one of these days, it will start to feel true.”
My smile flags just as the photographer snaps a photo of us. Great. That’s going to be the picture the press runs with when they publish the story.
Maren Fischer’s Secret Heartbreakthey’ll call it. A source will claim, somewhere in the body of the story, that I spent most of the night in the corner of the yard, being consoled, because Miller was the love of my life. Someone else will claim to have seen me in tears.
“I just hope that you’ve found another man before they start having children. I know that’s something you wanted.”
My stomach drops. It’s already happening—I only ended things with Harvey a few weeks ago, but already people are acting as if he was my last chance at having a family, and perhaps my last shot at being loved. It’s the exact sort of gut punch I don’t need right now.
My mouth opens to reply just as a hand wraps around mywaist. I glance at the hand first, but already my heart is beating faster. Because I know that hand. I know its size, its possessiveness.
Charlie’s lovely mouth presses to my cheek. “Do you mind if I borrow her?” he asks, pulling me away from Malia without waiting for her to agree.
I turn and throw my arms around him. “You came!”
He shrugs. “The signature cocktail sounded good.”
I can’t stop staring up at him. At his lovely face and his sweet dimples and those glowing eyes. I shouldn’t go back to South Carolina, but my God, I’m not sure if I have enough self-restraint to stay away. All I want in the whole world is to be able to spy his face somewhere in the periphery several times a day and make sure he occasionally eats a vegetable. “I’m so glad you’re here. Kit will be thrilled to see you.”
“Kit doesn’t give a flying fuck about seeing me,” he says, glancing toward me and then away. “And I didn’t come here for her.”
He came because the situation would be tough on me. He came because he cares that much about my comfort. The smile on my face is so wide that no one here could possibly believe for a second that I am mourning Miller.
“Now the real question is this: why aren’t you drinking?”
My mother has set up two bars—one on the porch and one at the back of the yard, near the massive boxwood hedges separating us from the shore. He pulls me to the bar near the house and orders gin and tonics for us both.
Laughter chimes from the champagne fountain to our left. To our right, dancers on the temporary parquet floor my mother had installed squeal as they come close to falling into the pool.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” I tell him, letting my head rest against his shoulder. “The woman I was just speaking to tried to console me by promising Kit and Miller won’t last.”
