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“Well,” I say. “I really couldn’t afford the time away from work.” Each word sounds foreign as it falls from my lips. Except that I’m speaking in English.
“Sure,” Luke says. “I know. Your job is important to you. I know that now. This break has taught me that. Really, Lizzie. It has.”
I sneak a peek over at Chaz. He’s watching the television over the bar. It’s broadcasting a golf game. Based on his television viewing habits back in the hotel room—the few times we actually turned it on—I’m starting to realize there really isn’t any sport Chaz won’t watch.
“That doesn’t freak you out, does it?” Luke asks. “I mean, that I’m enjoying it here so much?”
“Why should that freak me out?” I ask. What’s freaking me out is that I’m sleeping with my fiancé’s best friend, a guy who also happens to be my best friend’s ex-boyfriend. Yeah, my best friend who’s a lesbian now. That’s what’s freaking me out.
Not that I’m going to mention this to him.
“Well, that’s a relief,” Luke says. “I mean, I haven’t given up on the medical school thing yet. Not completely. I’m just… I’m not totally sure it’s for me, and Paris… well, Paris is so incredibly great. I just think you’d really love it—”
Okay. Now I’ve officially freaked myself out. I have to get off the phone. I have to get off the phone now.
“Uh-oh, they’re calling my flight,” I lie. “I have to go. I’ll talk to you later, Luke.”
“Oh, right,” Luke says. “Love you!”
“Love you too,” I say and hang up.
What just happened? What just happened there? I don’t even know if I can deal with it. I hurry across the crowded concourse to slide back onto my bar stool at the Fox Sports Bar, pick up my screwdriver, and drain it.
“Slow down, there, slugger,” Chaz says, observing me with some alarm. “They have more vodka back there than just what’s in that glass, you know.”
I set down my empty glass and lay my head down upon the bar. “He wants me to come to Paris to see him,” I say to the beer nuts that have fallen to the airport floor.
“The bastard,” Chaz says. “Next thing you know, he’s going to want to set a date for the wedding.”
I lift my head and look at him. He’s wearing a Wolverines baseball cap and is looking adorably—and sexily—rumpled, as if he’s just rolled out of bed.
Which, in fact, he has. With me.
The guilt over what we’ve done slams me—as it does a hundred times a day—yet again.
I drop my head back onto the bar. I want to start sobbing. I really do.
Chaz lays a large hand on the back of my neck. “Cheer up, sport,” he says. “It could be worse.”
“How?” I demand of the bar top.
“Well,” he says after stopping a moment to think about it. “At least you’re not pregnant.”
This doesn’t have the comedic effect Chaz apparently intended it to.
“Chaz,” I say miserably. “Everything you said that morning after Jill’s wedding is true. I know it. Luke really did ask me to marry him only because he was scared of being alone. I realize that now. He doesn’t care about me. I mean, he does, but not… not the way you care about me. If he did, he’d have shown up for Gran’s funeral. You did. But even so. Now look at the mess I’m in. I’ve got a fiancé I don’t love who wants to marry me. And a lover I do love who doesn’t. Why don’t you want to get married, Chaz? Why?”
“I’ve told you why,” Chaz says. “And if you won’t accept me as I am, warts and all, then maybe you’re better off with Luke. He’s the one offering you the ring, the investment banker’s bonus, and the place on Fifth Avenue. You’d be crazy not to go with him. All I’ve got is a walk-up in the East Village and a low-paying teaching assistant’s salary. Oh, and no ring. I don’t know what you’re doing sharing this bowl of beer nuts with me in the first place.”
I stare blearily down into the nut bowl. He’s not, I know, referring to beer nuts. At least entirely. I can’t help remembering that cold night when we’d sparred so unpleasantly at O’Riordan’s, and I’d asked myself afterward what, if you didn’t end up getting married, the point was.
The crazy thing is, with Chaz, I’m sort of starting to see. I mean, the point is just to be together. Who cares about a stupid piece of paper?
Wait—did I just think that? What is happening to me? Who am I even turning into? Can I actually be turning into that kind of girl? The kind of girl who doesn’t care about marriage?
I guess so. I mean, I’m already the kind of girl who cheats on her fiancé—with his best friend.
I groan aloud suddenly. “How can I do this to him? How can we do this to him?” I cover my face with my hands. “I’m going to throw up. I swear.”
“Please do it in that trash can over there,” Chaz says. “And stop beating yourself up. He hasn’t exactly been a Boy Scout himself while you two have been together.”
I blink at him from between my fingers. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Do you want another drink? They just delayed our flight by another hour. I think you need another drink.” He signals the bartender. “This young lady would like another screwdriver. Ketel One.”
The bartender nods and takes away my old glass to make a new drink.
“I’d rather have a Diet Coke,” I say to the bartender. I’ve lowered my hands and am gripping the bar in an effort to stay upright. The vodka I’ve just downed so quickly has made me light-headed. “What do you mean, Luke hasn’t exactly been a Boy Scout while we’ve been together?” I ask Chaz.
“I told you, nothing. Look, I’ve always wanted to ask you. What’s with the garter?”
“What?” I stare at him in an alcohol-befuddled daze.
“The thing with the garter,” Chaz says. “At weddings. You know, when the groom peels the garter off the bride and throws it to the guys.”
“Oh,” I say. The bartender has delivered my Diet Coke, and I take a grateful swig. “That’s from olden times, when people in the court were required to follow the newly wedded couple to their bedroom after the ceremony to make sure they consummated the marriage. They’d demand the royal bride’s garter or stocking as proof that the defloration had occurred. Since peasants like to imitate the behavior of nobility, it became standard practice to demand that all brides give up their stockings or garters after the ceremony—sometimes the wedding guests would take the garter by force, so it became traditional for the groom to take it off during the reception so people wouldn’t follow the bride and groom back to their bedroom, and also so that the wedding guests wouldn’t rip it off her.”
Chaz makes a face. “Now, see,” he says. “That right there is reason enough why the institution of marriage ought to be abolished.”
I stare at him, comprehension dawning. “It’s not marriage you’re against,” I say. “It’s weddings.”
“True,” Chaz says. “But you can’t have one without the other.”
“Yes, of course you can,” I say matter-of-factly. But it doesn’t, I realize, matter. Not really. Not considering the grave we’ve already dug ourselves. “Do you really not feel guilty about what we’re doing?”
Chaz finishes off his screwdriver. “Not in the least,” he says. “I’ve done a lot of terrible things in my day, Lizzie. But loving you is not one of them. I don’t know what’s going to happen when Luke gets back in the fall. But I intend to enjoy the weeks I have left with you to the fullest. Because as I know from my study of the philosophy of time, whatever is going to happen in the future is already unavoidable.”
I blink at him. And say the only thing I can think of to say. Which is, “So?”
“So… what?” he asks me.
“So… what next?” I am really hoping he has the answer. Because I feel completely lost. And sort of scared. In a heart-pounding, excited way. The way I felt when Shari and I got off the plane from Michigan and were standing in the line for taxis at LaGuardia Airport, not knowing what we were going to find when we got into Manhattan. I didn’t have the slightest idea where I was or what I was doing.