Page 51 of Best Woman
“What are you talking about? You said—”
“No,yousaid.” I hate how defensive I sound. “You assumed. And I let you, fuck, I’m so sorry.” I am a worm, a cockroach, a slug. I am the lowest creature to walk the earth. “I let you believe it so you’d…I don’t know, so you’d like me.”
She recoils, and I die a little bit more inside. But even worse is Aiden, how devastated he looks.
“I’m sorry,” I tell them both. Kim has her arms wrapped around herself and I can see her shutting down, going cold. A door opens and someone shouts Aiden’s name and he gives me a look that says, very clearly,I’m not done with you,and stalks off.
“Kim,” I say, ready to get down on my knees and beg for forgiveness. I will grovel until Aiden and Rachel’s first anniversary if I need to.
“Do you realize how fucked-up what you did is?” Her voice is flat, and her eyes are empty. “You manipulated me. That’s not normal, Julia.”
“I know.” Finally, I’m crying. I can’t help it. Not ugly sobs like I wish, sobs that would hurt but would be healing. Just silent tears running down my cheeks. “I liked you so much and I was sure that the only way you’d be into me was if you…felt sorry for me, I guess. That sounds so horrible.”
“It is horrible. You could have been honest, but instead, you used your fake sob story to get into my pants. That’s low, Julia.”
I nod.
She shakes something off, squares herself, and looks beyond me to where the reception dinner is still going on. Right, there are 150 people I know intimately just inside.
“I need…to not be here right now.” She glances around her, eyes locking on the sun setting in the distance over the golf course. Kim kicks off her heels, snatches them up, and starts walking through the perfectly manicured grass. She stops and looks back at me over her perfect shoulder, all the warmth I kindled gone from her eyes. “Don’t follow me. Go fuck yourself.”
She leaves and I’m alone again, but not for long.
“Julia? You OK, kiddo?” It’s my dad, the absolute last person I expected to follow me out.
“I’m fine, Dad. Just needed a minute.” He nods, takes a vape out, and puffs away. He holds it out and I take it, glad for something to do—at least until I start choking on the piña colada–scented vapor. Dad thumps me on the back, then leaves his hand between my shoulder blades, rubbing soft circles that are surprisingly soothing.
“You know,” he says, “I’m not supposed to drink with the back pain medication I’m on, and I’ve had two glasses of wine.”
“OK,” I say.
“And my doctor doesn’t like me driving at night. Says my eyes are going. Sure could use someone to give me a lift home,” he says, poker face firmly in place. My dad does not have back problems, and his eye prescription is so fierce I’m pretty sure he sees better than I do. He’s still rubbing those circles on my back, and it’s so much easier to just take the out he’s offering.
“I guess I could give you a lift home, though I don’t know how I’d get back to Mom’s.”
He pulls me close. “That’s OK, kiddo, the guest room is yours if you want it.”
It’s not really a solution to anything. Mom will have moved past any embarrassment by now and me crashing with Dad will just reignite their bitter resentment for each other, making it even easier for her to make the disaster of this whole evening my fault. And I don’t want my dad to think he’s scored some points with me—or more likely, against my mother. If I hadn’t messed up so massively with Kim I might have spent the night in her hotel room, but since I’ve screwed that up…why not.
“Got an extra toothbrush?”
He smiles. “Sure do. An electric one, even.”
I sigh. “Got any moisturizer?”
“No,” he says, “but I think Aiden left some hyaluronic acid serum the last time he spent the night.”
Of course he did.
“We’ll leave as soon as they cut the cake,” he says, rubbing my back the way he used to when I was little and had a cold.
“OK.”
“Now let’s get back inside,” he says, taking my hand in his. He doesn’t let go.
Rachel and Aiden’s first dance is to a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You,” which is remarkably tasteful for them—Mom had playedBlueon the record player most Sundays when we were growing up. This is followed by Fleetwood Mac’s “You Make Loving Fun,” which I don’t think the wedding band singer really has the voice for.
Brody and Brian suffer through dances with me before disappearing, probably off to sneak into the bar storage room or, more likely, kill lizards on the golf course. I can see rows of empty golf carts lined up through the window, backlit by the floodlights, an endless, manicured green meadow beyond. Somewhere out there Kim is hating me, deconstructing every moment we’ve spent together this week and seeing it through the new eyes of that hatred.
