Page 43 of My Favorite Lost Cause (The Favorites #2)
MAREN
I t’s been a month—a dreamy, drowsy month.
I’ve had more sex in the past thirty days than I’ve had, cumulatively, in my entire life. When I walk into Margaret’s room, I feel nothing…and I think it’s because I already feel everything . I’m giddy. I’m euphoric. And beneath it all is some grief, but I’m trying not to notice that right now.
Whatever it is Margaret wants from me, she seems to be getting it. There’s no one but me when I look in the mirror.
I’ve nearly completed the kitchen redesign. Every time I forget that it won’t be my kitchen, I come up with an idea to make it more spectacular. Every time I remember it will be the kitchen of Charlie’s future wife, I want to shred the plans and refuse to help at all.
I’m in the middle of selecting tiles for the backsplash when my mom’s agent calls.
Even the flash of his name on my phone is an unpleasant shock.
I should be thrilled, since it probably means he’s got a job for me.
Instead, I long to let him go to voicemail.
To pretend in a month or a year, or whenever it is definitely too late, that I never got the message.
But Charlie needs to be in San Antonio in a few weeks.
He’ll be gone through the fall, and it’s not like I can stay forever.
“Do I have a job for you,” says Scott. “How would you like to be this year’s face for Marais William went and got the broach back from George. Margaret used to watch William exercising in the yard, and I used to stare at you doing push-ups?—”
He laughs. “You still stare, but who could blame you?”
I ignore this. “You see my point, though.”
“This is why hot girls are a menace,” he replies.
“Because if you weren’t hot, I’d think everything you’re saying was pretty weird.
But you are hot, and therefore, it’s simply quirky and sort of adorable.
Rich men always wind up raising kids who decide to go into shit like performance art, and you know why?
Because they got seduced into breeding with a weird girl they found adorable. ”
It’s so deeply insulting, but I’m fighting a smile.
“So in this scenario, you’re the smart man, and I’m the weird girl who’s destroying your potential offspring?”
“We’re not passing our combined genes on, so it’s not an issue,” he replies. “But yes.”
On Thursday, I leave for New York to meet the ad director. At my mother’s urging, I’ve agreed to stay for the weekend.
Charlie drives me to Charleston and never says a word about where things stand, or who I’ll be seeing during my time in the city.
Maybe he’s looking forward to the break from me and has had his fill—he seems to hit that point pretty quickly with most females, and it’s not as if we have any kind of agreement.
For all I know he could be off to Smokies tonight to chat up the bartender with the teeth.
I hope that he won’t, but I’ve been wrong about people before.
Like the last guy I married.
He pulls in front of the terminal and we both climb out of the car. He meets me curbside and hands me my bag.
“So,” I begin. And then I say nothing because there’s nothing I can say and also too much to be said.
“So,” he replies. “I’m not going to later find out you were hanging out with Andrew, right?”
I grin. He found a way to introduce the topic, thank God. “I don’t know. Do I need to warn you about the bartender with the teeth?”
“Maren, I was never interested in the bartender with the teeth.”
“You said she was pretty.”
“She wears that Pink Floyd T-shirt all the time,” he says. “A, I hate Pink Floyd. B, I bet she can’t name a single song by them. She’s just wearing it because it’s trendy. ”
I laugh. “That’s incredibly picky, Charlie.”
“Do you want me to be less picky?” he asks, wrapping his hands around my hips.
What a ridiculous, roundabout way to discuss exclusivity without ever having to say it aloud. Because if we did say it aloud, we’d both be forced to recognize how pointless it is when this isn’t going to last.
“No.” I’m not entirely able to meet his eye. “I don’t want you to be less picky.”
His lips press to mine. “Maren,” he says. “No matter how picky or not picky I am, there isn’t a chance I’ll be doing anything except waiting for you to come back to me.”
I’m flooded with relief, my heart soaring high. We can’t come to anything, but it’s enough that he’s mine right now.
Kit and I are in my mother’s large, lovely kitchen, seated at the hundred-thousand-dollar lava stone table while my mother paces, wineglass in hand, telling Kit why she can’t have fewer than four hundred wedding guests.
“Do you want to tell her, Maren,” Kit says, “or should I?”
“Mom,” I say, “Kit is rebellious by nature and Miller will do anything she asks because he’s so sickeningly whipped, so if you keep pushing her, she’ll just elope, and you’ll be lucky if you ever meet your grandchildren.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” my mother gasps, sloshing wine from her glass as she rounds on Kit.