She’d also negotiated with Bonespar Press for two months’
unpaid leave that began a week before the wedding. She had spent two days training the temp employee who would be covering for her while she was gone, and then she’d gone out for celebratory drinks with her coworkers on the last day before her leave. They’d gone to Abigail’s favorite East Village bar, and it was there that she ran into her ex Ben Perez, who came in at midnight by himself. For one brief moment Abigail thought that he had come there to confront her, but then she saw the surprise on his face and she realized that it was just coincidence. They said hello; he was drunk and kept telling her that he’d just been out with a bunch of writer friends and he was stopping in for one last drink before heading home. Abigail bought him a bourbon sour and told him she was getting married. “Yeah, I know all about it,” he said. “I run into your friends all the time.”
“Who do you run into?”
“Kyra, for one. She said you’re marrying a gazillionaire, and that she thinks you’re doing it just for the money.”
“She said that?”
“Something like that.”
It had occurred to Abigail that when you marry someone so conspicuously wealthy people are going to talk, but, still, hearing that Kyra had said something so catty made her chest hurt.
“I’m not marrying him because he’s rich,” she said, instantly annoyed that she was defending herself to Ben.
“I didn’t say it. She did.”
Her work friends were beginning to put on coats and settle up bills, and Abigail, who didn’t want to get stuck rehashing things with Ben at the bar, left with them. The next day she almost called Kyra to confront her, but called Bruce instead. She thought he might worry a little that she’d run into her ex-boyfriend of six years the night before, but he didn’t seem fazed.
“I’m sure Kyra’s not the only one who’s made a comment,”
Bruce said. “People are strange about money. You’ll probably lose at least one friend after we get married, someone who just won’t be able to handle it. I did when I got rich. The way I figure it is that they weren’t great friends to begin with.”
“Okay, thanks,” she said, feeling better.
After the talk with Bruce she stopped worrying about Kyra, and about what her other friends might think about Bruce. She had other things to deal with, mostly the logistics of who was staying at the Blue Barn Inn, which had only twenty-five rooms, and who was staying at the bed-and-breakfast half a mile away, and whether they should offer some sort of shuttle service back and forth so that people wouldn’t have to worry about drinking. And she had her own apartment to worry about. She’d given notice, and now it was just a matter of boxing up her possessions, mainly books, and figuring out what to do with her few pieces of furniture, most of which were not coming with her to Bruce’s place. And she was worried about Zoe, who still lived in Boxgrove, because she’d just had another massive fight with her boyfriend of seven years, and now she didn’t want him at the wedding. Zoe was a rock—well, she was Abigail’s rock—but when things went bad with Dan, all bets were off.
With the wedding looming, these were Abigail’s biggest worries, and she realized that she was in pretty good shape, considering.
The memory of the stranger at the vineyard in California now felt like a fuzzy, unreal dream, something that had happened to her either very long ago or maybe not at all. In some ways, it had even helped clarify for her how much she wanted to marry Bruce. The fact that the evening had been intriguing and romantic made her only crave the solidness, and coziness, of marriage more.
Everything was going to be all right.
And then she saw Scottie in the coffee shop.
That whole day she felt like a chasm had opened up in front of her, a big black hole she was powerless to escape. He’d come for her—all the way across the country—and he was going to wreck her life. In a way, it helped that she later got the email; it gave her a chance to answer him, to try to end it before it got any worse.
She did feel temporarily better after sending him her response, but that night she was anxious, her mind filling with images from California, a jittery sensation racing across her skin. Just to make it stop, to try to relax her body, she flipped onto her stomach and masturbated, feeling half aroused and half sickened by the thoughts that kept entering her mind. She made herself come, and afterward, exhausted, hollowed out, she at least felt that maybe she’d be able to get some sleep.