Merrily Ever After--A Novella Read online

  Huh? Wendy lived in a one-bedroom condo, but after their wedding in February, they were moving into a bigger place. Or so Elise had thought.

  Aren’t you going to look for a new place after the wedding? Why would you redo your kitchen now?

  We changed our minds. Gonna stay in the condo for at least a few years. And I’ve always hated this kitchen. It’s got all the cheapest builder’s finishes. I’ve been surfing Pinterest and I’m thinking something like this.

  Wendy was surfing Pinterest? That made no sense. Neither did the picture that came through. It was a twee little country kitchen. Elise wasn’t in the practice of imposing her taste on her clients, but that kitchen was one hundred percent not Wendy.

  Also, she might not be in the practice of imposing her taste on her clients, but she was in the practice of imposing her taste on her friends.

  There are ducks on the wallpaper border in that kitchen. Or, let’s back up—there is a WALLPAPER BORDER in that kitchen.

  So maybe not ducks? Maybe, like, more of an abstract wallpaper border?

  What the hell had come over Wendy?

  Also, I ordered these stools last night for around the island. I thought they were kind of inspiring. I just need you to help me figure out what else to do.

  A picture came through of three classic backless wooden bar stools. The seat of each was stenciled with a single word. Together, the stools spelled out LOVE LIVES HERE.

  All right, something was wrong with Wendy—really wrong. She’d been hit on the head. Or…Was Wendy pregnant, too? Was this some kind of weird nesting impulse that manifested as bad taste? Well, whatever it was, she had to put a stop to it.

  Don’t do anything else. I’ll be right over.

  Chapter Eleven

  Elise ended up having a really fun day with Wendy. She’d missed her while she was on all her travels. And now that she and Noah were together, he was always with her when she was in town. Which Elise didn’t mind at all—she loved Noah. But it had been fun to spend the day one-on-one with Wendy doing one of her favorite things—planning a remodel.

  To her relief, Wendy had proven open to a change in her original vision. By the time they broke for a late lunch, they had picked out cabinets and tile and had canceled the order for the inspirational bar stools. Elise had done some drawings, arranging things so the small space was better optimized.

  “Where’s Noah today?” she asked as they tucked into sandwiches they’d ordered from a deli Wendy and Noah were oddly obsessed with.

  “He’s helping Cameron get ready for the Christmas Eve extravaganza.”

  “Yeah, what is up with that? Everyone’s over there getting ready? Jane was being kind of mysterious about what she and Gia were up to today.”

  “I think I want the LOVE LIVES HERE stools!” Wendy shouted.

  Huh? “What is the matter with you? You don’t want those stools.”

  Wendy shrugged and made an apologetic face. “I just thought they were weirdly sweet.”

  “Are you pregnant?” Because that was seriously the only reason Elise could think for why Wendy was displaying such an uncharacteristic and appalling lack of taste.

  “No.”

  She answered so fast that Elise spared a thought for whether she was protesting too much. But no. Wendy might have found her happily ever after—ugh, she hated that phrase for some reason—with Noah, but she was the last of the girls Elise would expect to procreate. She would be less surprised if resolutely single Gia announced she was getting herself inseminated.

  Speaking of pregnancy…“So, um, can I talk to you about something?” It had been a nice day with Wendy. But it had also been a distracting day. Elise appreciated that Jay was trying to make things okay between them. And they were okay. Or they would be. She just couldn’t shake the sense that his about-face had been too sudden. That there was unresolved stuff that hadn’t been dealt with. And Wendy would be a good person to talk with about this. Wendy would tell it like it is. Wendy did not suffer fools. “Jay’s suddenly on board now with the baby. Which is good! But—”

  Wendy’s phone started playing “Who Let the Dogs Out,” which was Jane’s custom ringtone. Wendy hopped to retrieve it. “Party time!”

  Elise looked at her watch. “Don’t we have two hours still?” The party was supposed to start at five. And where was Jay? She grabbed her own phone. Nothing from him except a text from midday, when he’d claimed to be out helping Cameron buy a tree. But seriously, had they gone to the country to cut it down themselves?

  “Well, it looks like everyone is there except us, so they’re starting early.”

  “Okay, but can we just—”

  “You were totally right about the stools.” Wendy shrugged into a coat and clapped her hands together. “Chop-chop!”

  Chapter Twelve

  Half an hour later, they were getting out of a taxi at Jane’s under a gray sky. Wendy had insisted on cabbing it, which seemed weird to Elise, given that it was three o’clock and they had hours and hours with nothing on the agenda but opening the final Secret Santa presents and being with each other. Jane, Cameron, Noah, and Wendy would spend tomorrow with Jane and Noah’s mom and Wendy’s aunt, and Gia would drive out to Belleville to be with her family. Jay’s mom, who was also Cam’s mom—what a tangled web they had created—was on a cruise with her boyfriend this Christmas, so Elise and Jay would spend a quiet day at home tomorrow.

  But for now, for Christmas Eve—which, with its candles and its calmness, had always been her favorite part of the holiday anyway—the friends were together. She loved the way they had made their own family, filling in the gaps where actual families were absent or insufficient.

  Maybe she was having a weird hormonal moment, because as they got out of the cab and Jane and Gia came out to greet them, her throat tightened. Gia, her bestie among besties, came home pretty regularly between jobs, and they FaceTimed every few days, but suddenly seeing her, after all the shit that had gone down, made Elise choke up.

  “Hey, love.” Gia hugged her tightly. “Empires have risen and fallen since I last saw you, eh?”

  They stood there for a few moments, Elise breathing in her best friend. It was funny. They’d met in university when Elise, who was older, had been the resident assistant on Gia’s floor of freshmen. Their relationship had started with Elise giving Gia advice, being the person Gia turned to as she struggled with whether to drop out of school to pursue a modeling career. How the tables had turned.

  Then Jane and Wendy piled on.

  “I love you guys,” Elise croaked.

  Wendy let the hug go on only so long. She did the same chop-chop clap she’d done earlier and said, “Enough emoting. Time to get this show on the road.”

  “What show?” Elise asked.

  Wendy linked her arm with Elise’s on one side and Gia did the same on the other. Jane ran ahead of them and opened her front door. She made a silly flourish with her arms and said, “Elise Maxwell, welcome to your Christmas Eve wedding vow renewal.”

  What now? Welcome to her what?

  And then Jay appeared. He was wearing a suit and tie. His wedding suit.

  What?

  Jane pulled a garment bag off a hook in the entryway and said, “We’ll be in my bedroom when you’re ready to change.”

  “What?” It was the only word she could manage to push past her lips. Because it was the only word in her brain. “What is this?”

  Jay offered her his arm. “This is a time machine.”

  * * *

  He had managed to surprise her. Jay had worried that she would sniff out what was happening. She was smart, his Elise. But he’d done it. They had done it. He’d reached out to their friends with his crackpot idea, and not only had they approved, they had jumped into overdrive to make it happen. That they had succeeded was evidenced by how truly shocked Elise was.

  He tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and led her into Jane’s living room. They were alone, as had been arranged. The girls w
ere sequestered in Jane’s bedroom, and the guys were out back futzing with the equipment he’d rented.

  “Oh,” she breathed when they stepped into the living room.

  Oh, indeed. Though Jay’s internal oh had more to do with what a nervous wreck he was. He hadn’t been this worked up when he was proposing to her. When he married her. Ever.

  Jane and Cam already had a little Christmas tree, but they’d all agreed that “little” wasn’t going to cut it for their current purposes. So while Wendy distracted Elise, and Jane went to their house to get the stuff Elise would need, he and Cameron had spent the day transforming the living room into a goddamned Christmas wonderland. It looked like Santa’s workshop had barfed all over the small room. Jay knew he’d never be able to achieve a look as classy as Elise would have had she been in charge, so he’d compensated by employing a “more is more” strategy. There were four trees in the room—one shoved into every corner. And they were covered with lights and ornaments. Like, dripping with them. Lights were also strung from and wound around every surface and object in the room—the mantel, the light fixtures. He had spared nothing. Even Jane’s Xena chakram—which had been part of a Xena: Warrior Princess costume that had been instrumental in her romance with Cameron and therefore occupied a place of pride on the mantel—had been bedecked with tiny white lights.

  Elise’s jaw was slack, which went a little ways toward slowing Jay’s out-of-control pulse. When she finally got it together enough to speak, she echoed his phrase. “Time machine?”

  He blew out a breath. Here it goes. “Yeah. We talked about going back in time, about the stuff we should have told each other. And you…” Fuck. His voice was getting all wobbly. He cleared his throat. “You keep saying that you’re not the woman I married. That I somehow didn’t sign up for you in your current incarnation.” She started to talk, but he held up a hand. He needed to finish. “I object to that. I object to that so strongly, Elise, I’m going to marry you again. You as you are now.” He reached out to rest his hand on her stomach. “Both of you.”

  She started to cry then, and covered his hand with her own. “I’m sorry I haven’t been able to…get on board with you being happy about this. You said last night to trust you, and I do. But I worry you don’t say what you’re feeling. You just tell me you’re suddenly fine with having a baby. But you started out so profoundly not fine. I get that you’re the guy who always has his shit together, and I love that. But…”

  Elise had come up with a term when he’d first met her. Radical honesty. She’d maintained that, for some reason that was mysterious to her, she could be totally honest with him. He had been flattered.

  But it had to go both ways if this was going to work, didn’t it?

  “You want to know the truth?” he whispered. “I’m terrified.”

  She smiled a little, and the vise around his chest loosened a bit. Who would have thought that confessing a weakness would make her happy? “I am, too.”

  He wanted to ask her what she was terrified of—like specifically what. But he knew the better action was to start with his fears. So he did. Just opened his mouth and said the stuff that made him feel simultaneously weak and out of control. Pushed the words through that vise around his lungs—the vise had loosened a little when she’d smiled, but it was still making its presence known.

  “I’m terrified that my father—and Cam’s father—have infected me somehow. My dad actually said to me, as he left, that he comes from a lineage of leavers. What if I do that to you?”

  To her credit, she didn’t dismiss his concerns, but he could see her biting her tongue. So, since they were getting it all out, he added, “Also, I get so angry sometimes, I’m worried that I might…do something.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Do something?”

  “Yeah. Look how I handled the news that you were pregnant.”

  “What do you mean?” The furrow deepened. She was truly confused. “You were upset, but you didn’t get angry.”

  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t yelling and throwing things maybe, but I freaked the fuck out. You’ve never seen that. I don’t like you seeing that. I want to be the man you need.”

  “You are the man I need,” she said fiercely. “You. Not some show you put on. I need a husband who will be honest with me. And I might be scared, too, but one thing I’m not scared of is you. Since the day I met you, you’ve made it your mission to protect me. To help me and lift me up. Why do you think it would be any different with our child?”

  “I don’t think that, not really. I mean, I did. That’s where my brain went first.” He smiled. “But Cam knocked some sense into me.” He pulled the LEGO piece out of his pocket. “Also, this happened.”

  “What is that?”

  “It’s the kidney bean. Except it’s not a kidney bean, because I don’t like kidney beans. It’s a piece from a LEGO set that’s the same size.” He shook his head. He was making no sense. To her, the words coming out of his mouth probably sounded like nonsense.

  But no. She gasped like he’d given her a diamond and plucked the piece off his hand.

  Okay, LEGO. He could run with that. He pulled another one out of his pocket. “I have the next piece ready to go, too, the nine-week piece. Nine weeks is supposed to be a grape. But this works just as well.”

  “What is that?”

  “It’s part of the base of one of the chairs from the picnic table from Mia’s Camper Van.”

  He was aware, as soon as he’d finished uttering that sentence, that it was the most ridiculous sentence that had ever come out of his mouth. It would definitely sound like nonsense to Elise.

  She must have agreed, because she tilted her head in confusion. “Who is Mia?”

  He produced the final item from his pocket. A small plastic girl. It should have been impossible to come to love an unborn baby in a matter of days. But as he was learning this winter, impossible was just a word. “She’s, uh, a LEGO girl.”

  “And you named her?”

  “No, she came with that name.” But…well, fuck it. Radical honesty—that’s what they were doing, right? “I like that name, though.”

  Elise smiled again, and this one was big. Incandescent. And he knew then everything was going to be okay. The vise was gone. “How do you know it’s a girl?”

  He shrugged. He didn’t. He just…hoped. But of course he’d love a boy, too. Miles maybe?

  “Mia.” She drew out the short name like she was testing the way it felt on her tongue. “Like short for Amelia? Or Maria?”

  “Nope. Just Mia.”

  She looked at him for a long time. So long that a single tear escaped the corner of her eye. “It’s…perfect.”

  “It’s not too close to Gia? It’s only one letter different.”

  “Well, Gia’s going to be stuck babysitting this kid all the time, so we might as well start flattering her now.” She threw herself into his arms, and then they were both crying—and laughing. He hugged her. Picked her up off her feet and just…held her. Eventually, though, he had to let her go. They needed to get on with the show. Keyword there being show. They had talked, cleared the air. He’d told her how he felt, but now he was going to show her. To marry her today, just as she was.

  He set her back on her feet. “So you’ll marry me again?”

  She grinned. “Of course I will.”

  “Gia, Jane, and Wendy are in Jane’s room with your wedding dress and…other girly stuff.” He looked around the room. “I’m sure this isn’t how you would do it, but I was thinking this baby is probably going to severely challenge both of our commitments to doing things a certain way, so why not get some practice in now?” He was joking to cover the fact that he was actually really nervous about how she would receive his gesture. Suddenly his “more is more” strategy looked like overcompensating. There hadn’t been a lot left in the stores today. He’d bought giant boxes of cheap ornaments, and his strings of lights were all mixed in terms of size and color.

  But Elise just
grabbed his hand, squeezed it, and said, “It’s perfect. It’s the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen.”

  * * *

  Fifteen minutes later, Elise, coiffed and made up and wearing her wedding dress, came out of Jane’s bedroom ready to marry her husband.

  He had been right when he said that their baby—Mia, if it was a girl—was going to test her perfectionist tendencies. But one thing she’d learned recently was that sometimes it was a good idea to expand your definition of perfection.

  Sometimes bar stools stenciled with stupid aphorisms could be beautiful?

  Okay, no, she’d been testing herself there, but she couldn’t go that far.

  But she hadn’t been lying before when she’d told Jay that the room he’d created was perfect. It had been like something out of one of those “happily ever after” fairy tales that so annoyed her. Just looking at it had taken her breath away.

  “May I?” Cameron appeared outside the bedroom door with his arm held out. “I am your brother-in-law, after all.”

  Her eyes filmed over as she looked at him. He was such a good man. She was a little embarrassed at how it had taken her some time to see that, back when she’d first met him. So here was another example of the “perfection takes many forms” lesson.

  “Yes, thanks, Cam.”

  “Let us go first!” Jane said. “We’re the bridesmaids, right?”

  “And, ha ha, this time we didn’t have to do any crafts—the guys did!” Wendy winked at Elise.

  “I know you’re the one who gave me that bridezilla, Wendy!” Elise said to Wendy’s back as she lined up behind Jane. Wendy shot Elise a mischievous glance over her shoulder and blew her a kiss, confirming that she was the culprit.

  Gia, who had been out in the living room, appeared, and the opening lines of “Sweet Child O’ Mine” started from around the corner.

  Elise cracked up, and Gia came over and planted a kiss on her cheek. After a short confab to sort themselves out, the girls took off one by one down the hallway, disappearing around the corner when they reached the edge.