Weak.
If I’d known what was wrong, if I’d had a clear diagnosis to share, it would’ve been easier. But “I can’t think straight and I throw up for no real reason” felt too pathetic to say out loud—not to mention, impossible to explain—so I’d never mentioned it.
Instead, I’d agreed to come because she needed me, and then Matt had just assumed he was invited, too, and I hadn’t been able to figure out how to tell him no.
It had been fine, though. Chess’s house was big and airy, and I’d started feeling better the moment I arrived. Matt had seemed better, too—lighter, less stressed—and when he’d asked Chess to take him golfing, I hadn’t thought twice about it. I’d spent that afternoon sitting by Chess’s pool, working a little on the ninth Petal book, content and happy, thinking how nice it was that my best friend and my husband could easily spend time together without me.
“What, did you fuck him in the back of a golf cart, Chess? At least tell me there was some kind of ‘ninth hole’ joke. You know, to set the mood, keep everything classy.”
“Don’t be crude,” she snaps back, and I almost laugh at that.
“Right, you’re fucking your best friend’s husband on the golf course, but I’m the crude one.”
“It wasn’t at the golf course, Jesus Christ, Em.” Chess throws up her hands. “It was in my car, okay? In my car, by the beach. Are you happy now? Do you want any other details? We had too many cocktails at lunch, and then we were driving back to the house, I told him there was this really pretty spot closer to the water where I was thinking of building, I drove him there, and then … it … just happened.”
I rise to my feet, hands shaking, a metallic taste in my mouth. “Why?” I ask, because what other question is there?
Chess bites her lower lip, looking away. “It was after I found out Nigel was getting married, you remember that,” she says. “I was so crazy about him, Em. I actually thought that prick would be my husband, and then not only does he dump me, he finds someone else, like, five seconds later, and…” She blows out a long breath.
“I’m sorry, Em, but Matt was flirting with me, and I was sitting there thinking, ‘See? Marriage is total bullshit. Even Emily’s marriage is bullshit.’ And I think … I think I just wanted to know if he would. If I would.” She pauses. “And besides, you’ve always had everything.”
That startles a horrified laugh out of me. “Chess, I’m pretty sure that by the time you were fucking my husband, you were also fucking famous. We were staying at your fancy beach house on an island, and you decided that the only thing you couldn’t live without was an accountant from Asheville?”
“I didn’t say it made sense!” Chess shouts in reply, throwing up her hands. “And I didn’t mean it like that. I mean when we were kids. You had this gorgeous house, and parents who called you ‘Pumpkin’ even after you turned thirty. When college was over, you went running back to this perfect enclave where you never had to worry about anything while I busted my ass to wait tables where people ate two-hundred-dollar meals and left five-dollar tips. I had to live in a shitty apartment with Stefanie while you probably had Deborah still making your bed for you.”
I gape at her, almost madder about this bullshit than I am about Matt. “I was miserable! I was a loser living with my parents, while you were reinventing yourself with new friends in a new city. Sorry, I didn’t realize that came across as ‘having everything.’ Maybe I should’ve put sadder pictures on my Facebook or something. That’s the one language you really speak, right?”
I’m so angry I’m practically spitting, and I point at her, adding, “And even if my mother was bringing me fucking filet mignon on a gold-plated tray, that’s no excuse to have an affair with my husband.”
“It wasn’t an affair,” she objects, holding up both hands. “I swear, Em. It was one time.”
“Then why was he giving you jewelry? Why were you obviously on the phone with him today, Jessica?”
Her shoulders sag. “After Kiawah, he kept calling. You know, that’s how I first found out you’d been sick. I had to fake surprise when you told me after he left you. And that hurt, Em. Knowing you were going through this big, scary thing and didn’t want to tell me.”
“If you think I’m going to apologize to you for anything right now, you are out of your goddamn mind.”
She holds up her hands. “I know, okay? I’m just … I’m trying to make you understand. Matt tells me you’ve been sick, that the baby stuff is on hold, that he wasn’t living the life he wanted.” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “He started reading my fucking books. Telling me he knew I ‘got it’ because this was the kind of thing I was always telling my readers, how to find their ‘authentic life.’”
I absorb those words like a blow, but don’t say anything, and Chess sighs.
“So that’s when he started sending things, and I … I don’t know. I couldn’t tell you obviously, but I also couldn’t let you stay with someone who’d fuck your best friend, either. I mean, I cover a lot of shit in my books, but even I had to admit that I was out of my depth. So, I kept talking to him, stringing him along, because I was afraid if I shut him down, he’d get angry and then he’d tell you what I’d done. And then you’d never speak to me again. I couldn’t have lived with that, Em.”
“Really? Because it sure sounds like you don’t even like me, Chess.”
She blinks, as surprised as I’ve ever seen her. “What? Emmy, I love you. You’re my best friend. More than that. You’re … you’re my sister, basically. Of course, I don’t always like you. Sometimes I hate you, but that’s only because I love you. Don’t you get that? Don’t you feel that way, too?”
I don’t answer, the words stuck in my throat, because if I say anything, I’m going to agree with her, and that is going to make me feel even crazier than I do right now.
Chess shakes her head, her bracelets jangling as she tucks her hair behind her ears. “I kept thinking you two would work it out. That it would just be this weird blip, and we could all forget it ever happened. Sometimes I told myself that it hadn’t happened, that I’d just … dreamed it or something. Or that it was this weird intrusive thought, like, ‘Wow, wouldn’t it be fucked up if you’d slept with Matt?’ That’s what I wanted it to be, Emmy. I wanted that so much.”
When she looks at me, her eyes are so sincere, so pleading, that I know she’s telling the truth. And it kills me that I want to believe her so much.
That I want to forgive her.
“And then, a few weeks before he left you, he called me late at night. He was drunk, I think, or … or upset, or something. And he started talking about how he’d only slept with me because you wouldn’t have kids with him. That if you’d only wanted to have babies when he did, he would’ve been faithful forever. That he’d actually thought about replacing your birth control pills with placebos or some shit, and I understood that as fucked up as sleeping with him had been, it had happened for a reason.”