The Status of All Things (5 page)

But what I couldn’t bring myself to say to my best friends now, even though I knew they’d understand, was I couldn’t care less about who got custody of the Vitamix blender or the surround sound system. I needed more answers from Max. I needed to know
why
. Why he waited so long to leave. Why I wasn’t enough for him.

“I need to go upstairs and call him.” I hold my hand up to halt their protests.

Jules stands and starts to speak, but I cut her off, already knowing what she’s about to say. “I’ll be fine—I promise,” I lie as I look at the circular metal staircase that leads to the master bedroom.
I can do this. One foot in front of the other.

“Okay, we’ll be right here,” she says, giving my arm a squeeze and glancing at Liam as if she thinks he can talk some sense into me.

“Kate.” Liam stands and envelops me in a hug, his chest warm against my cheek. “He has no idea what he’s giving up,” he whispers fiercely in my ear.

“Thanks,” I say, leaning in closer, the quickened pace of his heartbeat reinforcing his words.

I start to pull back, but he tightens his grip. “We love you exactly the way you are—just remember that. If he doesn’t, then he doesn’t deserve you.”

I smile up at him. “I don’t know what I’d do without you guys.”

When I walk into our bedroom and see the neatly made bed, a memory comes flooding back. The morning after Max first slept over at the apartment in Venice Beach I lived in
before I bought the condo, I’d walked out of the bathroom and found him pulling the sheet taut, then carefully tucking it under each corner, then smoothing the top. After watching him for several minutes, I said, “Hey there, Hospital Corners, you for real? Don’t tell me you know how to separate the whites too?”

On the morning we left for Hawaii, did he know it was the last time he’d be making
our
bed?

I sit on the edge of the bed and pull up Max’s name on my phone. He answers on the first ring, as if he has been waiting for my call. “Kate.”

“Hi,” I say, my voice catching in my throat.

“Are you okay?”

“Just tell me why you threw away everything we had,” I launch in, the edge in my voice harsher than I want it to be. “I deserve to know.”

The four beats between my question and his response feel like hours. The only sound is our neighbor’s dog, a Jack Russell terrier named Benji, barking urgently in the background. Always a big fan of Max’s, I imagine he’s yelling,
Be careful! This is a loaded question!

I suck in my breath, my eyes moving back and forth over several framed pictures of us on the dresser that are angled in two perfectly straight lines, finally landing on the one in the center, our engagement photo that was taken on the beach in Malibu last summer. Finally, the words tumble from his mouth—he’s so sorry, he didn’t mean to hurt me, he hopes I can forgive him. He tells me he hadn’t been happy for some time, but didn’t know how to tell me—describing the last few months as a roller coaster that he didn’t feel he could stop. He says something about how he’s doing us both a favor, even if I can’t see that right
now. Then he tells me I deserve better. “And there’s something else you need to know. Something I want you to hear from me,” he says.

“There’s more? Lucky me,” I say sarcastically.

“Yes . . .” He trails off.

“Enlighten me,” I say, hating that I sound bitter. Hating that it’s him who’s making me sound this way.

His shallow breaths sound amplified through the phone. “God. I don’t know how to tell you this. But I feel like telling you is the right thing to do. I’d want to know if it were me.”

But it’s not you. I would never do this to you.

“What is it?” What could he reveal that could hurt any more than
I don’t want to marry you
?

“I think I’m in love with someone else.”

Okay. I was wrong. That hurts worse.

I grip the phone tightly, my body temperature rising so quickly that I have to unzip my sweatshirt.

“Hello? Are you still there?”

“Yes,” I finally whisper as a lone tear escapes my eye, travels down my cheek, and drips off my chin before he finally starts to talk again.

I try to rub the tension out of the back of my neck with my knuckles. Max used to do that—I’d sit on the floor beneath him and he’d dissolve the kinks with such ease that I’d joke that if his lawyer thing didn’t work out, he’d definitely have another career to fall back on.

“But no happy endings!” he’d laugh. “I’m saving those for you.”

“Of course,” I’d chuckle, foolishly believing he would never so much as let his eye linger on another woman. Turns out I couldn’t have been more wrong.

“I want you to know I never cheated on you, not even a kiss,” I hear him say, his words sounding muffled like the sound you hear when you put a seashell to your ear. “We never expected this to happen. That—”

“Who?” I interrupt, but am only met with silence. “Who is it?” I demand again, running through a mental index of the women it could be. That glossy intern at his office? His ex-girlfriend from high school who’d friended him on Facebook last year? Some random girl he’d met when I wasn’t around?

“Courtney,” Max says, so quietly I think I’ve misheard him.

“Courtney?” I repeat, the shock of hearing her name smacking me across the face like a hailstorm.

That
Courtney?
My
friend
? My coworker?
The one I’d busted my ass with for five years—pulling so many all-nighters at the office she finally brought in her favorite fluffy pink slippers and chenille blanket and I hauled in my Keurig coffeemaker and iPod, us laughing that at least we had the comforts of home,
and each other
. I feel a burn in my chest as I recall the exact moment when our partnership at work transformed into a real friendship. It was one of those long nights—the janitor was cleaning the marble floor and we were lying on the couches in the entryway as we tried to think up a slogan for the athletic socks account we’d just acquired. As I listened to the whirring of the buffer, I burst out, “You know what? This really fucking
socks
! We should be home in bed with our husbands.
If
we had husbands!” And Courtney deadpanned, “Husbands? Who needs men when we’re married to our jobs!” and I’d started crying, the really ugly snotty kind. And she’d hopped off her couch and onto mine and thrown her arms around my neck and said, “You and I will have hot human hubbies one day, but tonight we only have each other . . .” She trailed off for a moment and reached down toward her foot, and
suddenly I felt a soft fabric against my cheeks. “And our socks,” she said, using hers to wipe my tears away.

I heave as all the air is sucked from my lungs like a Shop-Vac inhaling everything in its path as the memory of how Courtney and Max ended up in each other’s lives floods through me. How, when a smile had danced across my lips the morning after I met Max, Courtney was the first person I thought of telling after Jules and Liam. But as I’d reached for my cell phone, a part of me had worried she’d be resentful because being single workaholics had been our
thing
. I’d had boyfriends before and so had she, but we’d always known they were just seat fillers until the real thing came along.

And I could tell that’s what Max was—the real thing. When he’d walked me to my car at the end of the night we met, I’d tripped over my four-inch heels and fallen, grabbing my fender, my legs doing near splits so I didn’t hit the asphalt, but I couldn’t stop my dress from flying up and exposing the granny panties I’d worn to the wedding because I hadn’t done laundry. I’d looked up at Max in horror and he’d started laughing, tears running down his cheeks. “I didn’t see anything. I swear,” he had declared as he held up his hands so vehemently that we both knew that he had seen
everything
. And suddenly it was as if I could see the movie of our lives playing out: the third date when we let our hands linger over each other’s bodies in a way that said we were ready for more, the meeting of the parents, the first time he whispered that he loved me gently in my ear. I could see a future.

When I’d finally told Courtney—making myself wait until I could tell her in person at work on Monday—her eyes had registered it before I even opened my mouth. Her face immediately softened and she’d hugged me tightly and said, “So when do I get to meet this man who has made you look like you’re glowing
from the inside out?” and I’d scolded myself for doubting her, for projecting onto her the way I probably would’ve reacted had the roles been reversed.

Ironically, it had been Max I practically had to drag to meet Courtney the first time because there had been a big basketball game on he’d wanted to watch. But within the first few minutes, he and Courtney had hit it off. An innocuous comment from me about being an only child had spawned a conversation between them about their both being adopted, and I could barely get a word in for the rest of the night.
I brought them together and now they’re leaving me for each other.

So this was why I hadn’t heard from her since the night of the rehearsal dinner. I had thought she was just trying to give me space, but had felt slightly hurt that she hadn’t so much as sent me a text. Even my grandmother, who had instructions taped to the back of her archaic flip phone on how to use it, had figured out how to do that.

“Yes,” Max finally answers, breaking me away from my racing thoughts, his words soft, but the tears in his throat making his voice squeak from his mouth.

Oh, I’m sorry this is so hard on you, Max
.

“Fuck you,” I spit as I hang up the phone and throw myself on the army-regulation-made bed, pulling the covers apart like a child throwing a tantrum as regret, shame, and aching sadness wash over me at once.

I stare at the ceiling for several minutes before hauling myself off the bed and pulling my laptop open. With a mind of their own, my fingers seem to find their way to Facebook, where I spend the next ten minutes obsessively deleting every photo I’d posted of Max and Courtney, my heart simultaneously racing with anger and breaking in pain every time I click on another
picture that reminds me of the times we all spent together. I stop short when I come across a shot of the three of us, taken last month at the happy hour at STK, Max sandwiched between Courtney and me, his lopsided smile giving nothing away as he draped an arm over each of our shoulders. I click the trash icon, wishing there was a way to delete this part of my life too. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get rid of hurtful feelings and memories the same way we so easily send a bad picture sailing into our computer’s trash can?

I pull up my status box and type, imagining Max and Courtney’s reaction when my update appears in their feeds—hoping my strong statement will show them they can’t break me down.

Thanks for all your kind words—they have meant so much to me. But please don’t worry! I’m going to be fine!

I pause before clicking on the post button, the insincerity of my words sitting heavy in my chest. I couldn’t recall a time I’d ever written something negative on Facebook, instead focusing on the positive things I wanted people to know—a new account I’d landed at work, a fabulous restaurant where I’d scored a reservation, the roses Max had sent me on our anniversary. Even on days when I felt like absolute shit, I’d found something humorous to say or share, deciding no one would want to hear about my bad morning. Or maybe I just hadn’t wanted anyone to know I was having one? I had always thought myself above the Debbie Downers who posted about the (gasp!) problems in their lives—the ones who weren’t afraid to highlight unpopular opinions or rant about their kids, the people who didn’t fear judgment the same way I did.

But as I sit here now, staring at the candy-coated status update sitting on my computer screen, I wonder if those Debbie
Downers have been onto something when they tell it like it is. (Well, except the ones who post about government conspiracy theories—those people are just cray-cray.) Obviously, always trying to make my own life look like a Norman Rockwell painting wasn’t getting me anywhere. Maybe it was time to be real.

I quickly delete the disingenuous words I’d just written and type a new status, hitting send before I can talk myself out of it.

Thank you all for thinking of me. I’m devastated that I’m not getting married. I wish I could do the past month over. Please DM me if you have access to a time machine.

CHAPTER FIVE

Be careful what you wish for, people. You just might get it.

The high-pitched beeping of the alarm jolts me awake from a dream—I was standing on the balcony of my bridal suite, watching Max and Courtney making out on the beach as the soft waves lapped over them. I tried to yell at them—to find out what the hell they thought they were doing—but no sound could escape my throat. I attempted to move but my feet felt like they were glued in place. I had no choice but to watch helplessly as they laughed in between kisses, Courtney biting Max’s lip playfully.

“Fuck you both!” I scream into my pillow, where a pool of saliva has formed.

“Good morning to you too!” a voice says—one that sounds identical to Max’s. But it can’t be him. He’s probably entangled in Courtney’s floral bedspread. And she’s probably biting his lip just like she was in my dream.

I bolt upright to find Max wrapped in the sheets beside me, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “What the hell are
you
doing here?” I demand.

Max cocks his head to the side and frowns at me. “I live here, remember?”

“Not anymore you don’t!” I hiss, trying to figure out what happened last night—how Max ended up in my bed. My head throbs like it would from a hangover, but I couldn’t remember having any alcohol. My mind foggy, the last thing I recall is talking to Max on the phone and melting down after.

I flinch as Max puts his hand on my arm. “Honey? Are you okay?”

“Oh, I’m about as fine as anyone would be after what you did!” I jump out of bed and back away from him. “Did you slip in here last night after I was already asleep? I didn’t think I’d need to change the locks. I think you’d better leave—
now
. I’m sure your girlfriend is wondering where you are. She wouldn’t be too happy to find you back here with me.”

Max rolls off the bed and steps gingerly toward me, as if I’m a wounded animal he wants to help without getting bitten. “It’s me, Max, your
fiancé
. Last time I checked, you’re my only girlfriend. One I plan to marry in a month.”

The room starts to spin and I grab the edge of the dresser to steady myself.
Had it all just been a terrible nightmare?

“That’s not possible. It’s already July 1.”

“Okay, now you’re really scaring me . . .” Max inches closer, his plaid pajama pants hanging loose around his waist, exposing his tight abdomen, and I picture Courtney running her hands over it. Then I imagine cutting her hands off with the ginormous twelve-inch chef’s knife we had registered for at my insistence.

I shudder and yank one of his white T-shirts out of the drawer and throw it at him. “Could you
please
put this on? I can’t think.”

He pulls the cotton V-neck over his head. “There—
now
will you listen to me?” He eyes me cautiously. “Look at your finger. You’re still wearing your ring.”

That proves nothing. I still wore it after you left me.

I stare at the diamond for a moment. “This doesn’t prove anything. You need to do better than that to convince me that we’re still engaged,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest.

Max grabs his phone off the nightstand, drops it on the floor, and kicks it over to me, probably afraid I’ll start foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog. “Check the date. It’s
June
1.”

I feel his eyes on me as I inspect his phone. The date does say June 1. I quickly check his texts—there are ones that I’d sent him thirty days ago, the last asking if he’d pick up orange chicken from our favorite Chinese place on his way home. “How did you do this?” I ask.

“Do what?”

“Change the date on your phone. Delete all my other texts from the month of June. Was it Rafael? Did you put him up to this?” I ask, referring to his best man, who is an IT expert. “And if so, why? It makes no sense why you would go to these lengths to get back together with me. You made it clear how you felt.”

Max takes a deep breath. “Katie, I swear, I have no idea what you are talking about. Is the stress from the wedding getting to you? Is that what’s going on?”

I race down the stairs without answering him.

Where had all the wedding presents gone?
The ones that had just been piled in the corner under the blanket Jules had tossed on top of them.

“Max!” I yell. “What did you do with the wedding gifts? They
were right here,” I say as I stand in the empty space where they’d been. “We need to send them back!”

Max comes to the top of the stairs. “What presents? You were just saying yesterday that you were surprised none had arrived yet.”

I press my eyes shut. “Max, I have no idea why you’re doing this,” I say as he slowly descends the staircase, his hand making a squeaking sound as he slides it down the wrought iron railing. “Listen, the jig is up!” I tug the handle on the refrigerator door, expecting to find only half a bottle of chardonnay and a tub of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter. But the shelves are stocked and right smack in front is the Styrofoam carton from Chin’s. The same container full of orange chicken that we’d eaten thirty days ago.
Or last night, depending on whom you asked.

“What the hell?” I say as I open the lid and smell the chicken, the aroma still fresh.

“My sentiments exactly!” Max walks up and pulls me into his chest, and I drink in his familiar scent.

It must have all been a nightmare
. Thank God.

“Seriously, babe. Are you okay? Do you need to go back to sleep?”

“No,” I say, and pull Max closer. “I’m perfect.” I give him a deep kiss, letting the heartache drift from my body as we touch lips. “I just had a
really bad
nightmare.”

“Obviously!” He blinks several times as if trying to reason away my strange behavior. He flashes his uneven grin, reminding me of the selfie I’d deleted off my computer. Or
thought
I’d erased. Or thought I had taken in the first place.
I’m losing it.

I think back to the look in Max’s eyes when he told me he couldn’t marry me, the shame I felt as we broke the news, the
anguish that stirred inside of me when I came home to an empty condo. The sound of his voice cracking when he told me he’d fallen in love with my friend Courtney. “It really was. You have no idea!”

“I’ve never seen you like that. You sounded so—” Max rests a bag of Sumatra beans on the counter.

“Crazy?” I offer.

“I was going to say psycho.” Max turns and a smile plays on his lips and I feel the knots in my shoulders loosen. “Do you want to talk about it?”

I look at him now, taking in his wavy hair that always sticks up at the cowlick when he wakes up in the morning, the way his right dimple appears just when you’ve forgotten about it, the slightly chipped tooth from a childhood hockey game that he refused to have fixed because he thought it gave him character, and decide to keep the details of the nightmare to myself. Knowing Max, it would only make him feel bad to hear that he’d been such an asshole, even if he’d only done it in my dreams. That’s the kind of guy he was.

“I’m so sorry for jumping all over you like that—you didn’t do anything wrong. It felt
so real
—I’ve never had a nightmare like that before. I just need to shake it off and I’ll be fine,” I say definitively, even though I’m still able to recall every nuance, every pain, every single last moment. I’m not sure I’ll ever forget any of it.

“You sure?”

I nod.

“Okay, why don’t you go up and take a shower?” Max suggests. “And I’ll make you some of
this
,” he says, pointing to the bag of coffee. “Extra, extra bold, just the way you like it.”

“Thank you,” I say, leaning my head against his shoulder and
wrapping my arms tightly around his body, not wanting to let go.

Max hadn’t left me.
Thank God.

As I head up the stairs, I still feel the bad dream pushing on my chest—a small burn reminding me how devastated I’d felt only minutes before. I scrub my body hard in the shower, trying to wash away the emotional residue the nightmare has left on me, but it refuses to disappear, like one of those hand stamps you get at a theme park. Giving up, I finally push open the glass door, the steam enveloping me as I wrap my robe snugly around my body. I rub the foggy mirror in a circular motion so I can see myself, and as I take in my wet, stringy hair, I wish I had gotten that blowout yesterday. I absolutely despise blow-drying my hair—so much that Jules and I have a pact: if either of us wins the lottery, we will hire the other a full-time stylist.

I slide my laptop out of my computer bag and perch on the edge of the bed, pulling up my Facebook page, the photo I’d posted where I was mischievously sticking my head out from behind the dressing room curtain when I was at the boutique for my final wedding dress fitting filling the screen. I close my eyes for a moment, calmed by the memory of the feel of the organza gown hugging my body as I twirled in front of the three-way mirror, tears springing to my mom’s eyes as she’d watched.

This wedding is still happening.

Then Courtney’s face appears in my feed, and I click on a picture she’d taken after her appointment at Drybar—the one that I hadn’t joined her for. A shiver runs through me as I study her chestnut-colored eyes. I know now that she hadn’t really stolen my fiancé, but for some reason I still felt inexplicably angry with her, a raw rage that I’d never experienced before—one so intense it compelled me to want to find her and pluck every last silky hair out of her scalp.

I click back over to my own page, desperate to get away from Courtney’s perma-grin, her row of perfectly even beauty pageant teeth making my stomach hurt. For a split second, I consider grabbing my phone and pointing it at the bathroom mirror, capturing my hair as it looks in this moment, soggy and limp, half straight, half wavy, framing my face and making me look like a poodle that’s just come in from the rain. Then I’d upload it to Facebook and write:

The wet dog look is severely underrated. #whoneedsblowdryers

But of course I can’t do that. The only pictures I post have been taken by someone I’ve instructed to hold the camera far above my head and angle it just so. By the time I edit and upload the picture, I look like the latest celebrity on the cover of
Vogue
, like a plastic version of myself.

Glaring at my blow-dryer resting on the edge of the black-and-white tile countertop in my bathroom like we’re in a standoff, I know I’ve already lost this battle. The dryer and I both know I need him. I don’t care what those magazines say. A little mousse combined with a few zaps of my hair through the diffuser does
not
give me beachy waves. I quickly type my status.

Thinking of the time we’d all save if we had hair that would magically blow-dry itself. Is that possible? #wishingformiraclehair

• • •

When I look up again and see my reflection in the mirror, I jump back, my arm inadvertently knocking the blow-dryer off the
counter and sending it cascading down to the floor. I blink several times, but when I look at myself again, nothing has changed—the wet, stringy hair I had just moments ago has been transformed into smooth strands I’d never been able to achieve on my own.

Am I still dreaming?

I peer over the top of the stairs to see if Max is still in the kitchen. I spot him just where I’d left him, now pouring coffee into his favorite mug—the one with a picture of a bull and the word España printed on the side in bold block letters that he’d bought before we’d boarded our flight home from Barcelona last year.
We have to get something! Even if it is a cheesy airport souvenir,
he’d joked.

If this is a dream, how do I get the hell out of it?

I punch myself in the leg. Pinch my ear. I even kick that part of the bed that sticks out just far enough for me to stub my toe on it regularly. It hurts like hell, but still, nothing changes.

I try to think, letting out a gasp when I finally put the pieces together.

It was my status update.

Reaching for my laptop again, I check what I’d just written—that I’d wished for miracle hair. The ceiling starts to swirl as I remember the update I posted last night—or at least what I had thought had been last night—the one where I’d wished I could do the past thirty days over again. Had my last two status updates actually
come true
?

“It can’t be,” I say to myself.

“What can’t be?” Max asks as he strides into the bedroom holding out my favorite mug, lime-green with a huge chip on the rim that I refuse to get rid of, even though my lip brushes against the sharp edge each time I take a sip.

“Nothing,” I say quickly.

“Wow, your hair looks great—I didn’t even hear you turn on the blow-dryer!” Max says.

Because I didn’t!

“I got a new one—it’s the
as seen on TV
one.
You know
, p
erfect hair while you barely lift a finger,
”
I say, deciding I’m being sort of honest as I quickly recall the infomercial I’d seen late one night and the blow-dryer I’d come very close to actually buying.