Happy Place(7)

“No,” Sabrina cuts her off. “Wife Number Six doesn’t want Dad to have it, since he bought it with my mom, I guess. Never mind that there are four more-recent wives she could fixate her jealousy on.” She rolls her eyes. “Dad’s already got a buyer lined up and everything. It’s a done deal.”

Parth rocks Sabrina’s shoulders, trying to shake her out of the dark mood.

My gaze wanders toward Wyn, a subconscious part of me still expecting the sight of him to drain away my stress.

Instead, the second our eyes meet, my heart starts jackhammering. I look away.

“It’s not all bad news, though,” Parth says. “We actually have some good news too. Amazing news.”

Sabrina looks up from the champagne she’s been de-foiling. “Right. There’s something else.”

“Oh, right, there’s something else,” Parth mimics, teasing. “Don’t treat our engagement like a sidebar.”

“Your what?”

At first I’m not sure who shrieked it.

Me. I shrieked it.

Well, me and Cleo, who shoots up from her stool so fast, she knocks it over and has to catch it against the island with her hip.

Sabrina’s cackle is halfway between giddy and disbelieving.

“Your what?” I repeat.

“Dude, I know,” she says. “I’m as surprised as you are.”

Kimmy snatches Sab’s hand and gasps at the gigantic emerald winking on her ring finger.

Which is approximately when I realize that someone’s going to notice my missing engagement ring.

I stuff my hands in my pockets. Very natural. Just a girl with her fists in her tiny, useless women’s shorts pockets.

“You said you’d never get married,” Cleo says with a scrupulous dent between her brows, eyeing the gemstone and its white-gold mount. “Under any circumstances. You said ‘not with a gun to my head.’?”

And who could blame her? Even setting her father’s trail of ex-wives aside, Sabrina is a divorce attorney. She spends eight hours a day, at minimum, surrounded by reasons not to get married.

“Tell us the story,” Kimmy says as Cleo continues, “You once told me you’d rather spend five years in prison than one year as a wife.”

“Babe!” Kimmy pokes Cleo in the ribs. “We’re celebrating. Sabrina changed her mind. People do that, you know.”

People do; Sabrina Armas doesn’t.

Sometimes I’ll go back and forth about what I want for breakfast for so long that it’s already lunch. Sabrina eats the same exact yogurt and granola every day, the only variation being whatever seasonal fruit she adds.

Sabrina coils an arm around Parth’s waist. “Yeah, well. Finding out we’d be saying goodbye to the cottage cleared some stuff up for me.” Her voice gives the slightest waver before going steely again. “Whether Parth and I are married or not, I’m in this for the long haul, and I’m tired of trying to be smart at the expense of my own happiness. I want this to be forever, and I don’t want to pretend that’s not what I want.”

Kimmy sets a hand across her chest. “That’s beautiful.”

Parth smiles down at Sabrina, rubbing her shoulder tenderly. Her eyes light on me, a grin spreading over her classic-red lips. “And honestly, we were kind of inspired . . .”

It feels like the moment before a car accident, when the tires have started to hydroplane and you know something terrible is likely coming, but there’s still a chance the tread will find purchase and you’ll never know what agony you narrowly avoided.

And then Sabrina goes on.

“I mean, look at Harry and Wyn. They’ve been together like ten years, and they’re making it work, even while they have to be long distance. Clearly love actually can conquer all.”

“Eight years,” Wyn corrects quietly.

Kimmy squeezes his bicep. “Eight years, and you’re still never more than three feet apart.”

By my estimation, Wyn is approximately two feet eleven and three-quarters inches from me when she says this, but at the comment, he hooks an arm around my neck and says, “Yeah, well, even after all these years, Harriet has a way of making me feel like we’ve just met.”

Kimmy clutches her heart again, missing the irony he intended only for me.

A whoop goes up around the room as Sabrina pops the champagne’s cork. I feel like I’m floating over my own body. Adrenaline is doing weird things to me.

Normally, I’d rather roll down a mountainside covered in broken glass and sticky traps than create conflict, but the longer this goes on, the harder it’s going to be to get out of our lie.

“That’s amazing.” My voice lifts two and half octaves. “But I have to tell you—”

“Harriet.” And there he is again, at my side with arms coming around me from behind and his chin resting atop my head, and now, when Think of your m*****f****** happy place flashes through my mind, all I can think is, If only I were still on Sober Ray’s death trap airplane!

“That’s not,” Wyn goes on, “the end of the announcement.”

Again Kimmy claps her hands together on a gasp.

“Still not pregnant,” Sabrina says.

Kimmy sighs.

Parth’s beaming with his very distinct I’ve got an amazing surprise for you smile. The one that preceded the New Orleans–themed birthday he threw for Cleo, or the moment he presented me with the stethoscope he’d gotten engraved as a med school graduation present.