Chapter Eleven

We’re standing outside, Lauren and I; the rest of the girls are still – somehow – browsing the trinkets that Chuck LeVeau’s House of Crap has on offer. Personally, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. It wasn’t the animal skulls on the walls or the creaking floorboards that had had an effect on me, but something in his voice had given me the creeps.

Stupid, I think. You’re being stupid.

I had pushed my way out of the dark of the shop and into the warm, bright humidity of the New Orleans street, but the light wasn’t enough to set me back at ease. Two or three good breaths helped a little, but it wasn’t until I closed my eyes and rested my body against the wall that I started to feel a little more like myself.

I don’t know how long it is before I realise I’ve got company, but Lauren doesn’t look like she’s just exited the gift shop when I finally open my eyes. She’s staring down at me with a concerned look on her face, her brow wrinkled with worry.

‘El?’ she asks. ‘You OK?’

I nod. ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’

‘You sure? You high-tailed it out of there pretty quick.’

‘I just needed some fresh air, that’s all.’

‘Hmm.’ I recognise that noise. It’s Lauren-speak for I don’t believe you, not even a little bit, but I’ve also decided that I’m not going to push it. When she wants to, she sure can pack a lot of meaning into one little noise.

For a little while, we just wait there: me with my ass pressed flush against the side of Chuck’s shop, supporting myself as I get my bearings, and Lauren standing guard from anyone who might pass by. That’s my girl, I think. She’s always got my back.

I’m going to miss that, once she gets married. I know people always say things don’t have to change, but… well, I mean, they do, don’t they? Things always change. Lauren will have Drew, and a life of her own down here in New Orleans, and I’ll be up there in Chicago doing… I don’t even have the first clue, if I’m honest. Living a life with Carter, if we can work things out? Trying to adjust to a life on my own? Who even knows?

‘Well?’ Lauren asks.

‘Well what?’

‘“Well, what,” she says. What did he tell you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Really?’

Lauren, for all her practically-perfect-in-every-way awesomeness, has one glaring flaw: she absolutely cannot keep anything to herself. It’s great at Christmas and on my birthday, when I always find out what gift she’s bought me a month before because she’s incapable of not telling me; it was less great when we were seniors in college, when I found myself playing team strip poker against horny frat boys with a partner who couldn’t keep a straight face whenever she had anything higher than a pair of eights. Now, she’s beaming at me with a ten-thousand-watt smile, looking less like she’s genuinely curious and more like she’s trying out to be the new hostess of The Price is Right.

‘You were listening in, weren’t you?’ I ask.

‘I was not!’

‘Liar.’

‘Oh, fine,’ she says. But if it helps, I really was trying not to. I just couldn’t resist.’

‘So you already know it all, then?’

She nods. ‘Yeah. There’s not a lot of soundproofing in the closets of old buildings. Who would have thought, eh?’

‘I guess.’

‘But I don’t get it. What set you off like this? It wasn’t like he said you were going to die in some horrible accident or something. It all sounded pretty good to me.’

‘Nothing set me off. It’s… not about what he said. I mean, what he said was all fine.’

‘So what’s wrong?’ she asks. ‘You don’t believe in it anyway.’

How can I explain it to her without sounding crazy? Hell, it sounds crazy even to myself – because she’s right. I don’t believe in it. Somehow that makes everything a thousand times worse. If I believed it, at least I’d have a reason why it rattled me so much.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘I just don’t know. I mean, the whole thing with Carter is so up in the air right now, and then to have someone come along and tell me that it’s all wrong and I’m going to get married to him, that all of this is just… I don’t know, OK?’

Lauren pauses: a little too heavy, a little too long to be comforting. ‘El,’ she says eventually. ‘He didn’t say anything about Carter.’

‘Sure he did. At the start, when he was giving me all that crap about fiddling with my ring, and how he was a Pisces, and then how we’d be getting married in two years, and…’

‘No, honey,’ she says firmly. ‘He really didn’t. I promise you.’

‘But…’ I could have sworn it. He must have mentioned Carter, right? The image is clear as day in my mind: the two of us dancing together, reciting vows, cutting the cake…

Laughing…

Loving…

And then, when the reception is over and the guests have all gone home…

‘You heard what he said about a wedding, about things working out for the best in the future, and you just… filled his name into the gaps. That’s what happened, El. You know he couldn’t have known a damn thing about Carter.’

She’s right. Of course she’s right. Perfect, I think. I’ve had my future reduced to a game of MadLibs. And that’s the most annoying part: I do know that Chuck the Not-So-Psychic couldn’t really have known anything about Carter. I made sure, after his little trick with my engagement ring, that I didn’t give him anything he could work with. It was just my own overactive imagination playing tricks on me.

Shit.

‘Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s all garbage. I mean, what… he can really see the future? You know as well as I do that it’s a con trick.’

Lauren nods. ‘Yeah, I do.’

‘So what does it matter what he said and what he didn’t?’

‘It doesn’t.’

‘Exactly.’

‘It’s just…’ she says.

‘Just what?’

‘Have you ever considered that maybe Carter just isn’t a good fit for you? That this might actually turn out to be a good thing?’

You lost big before you got here, and trust me on this: it’s going to be the best damn thing in the world for you overall. Everything wrong is right. Everything down is up. Everything works out in the end.

‘No,’ I say. ‘No, I haven’t. Because he is.’

Lauren sighs. ‘El, look…’

‘He is, Lauren. I know you don’t see it. I know you think you’re helping by telling me to move on, to get over it, but I can’t. Do you get that? I just can’t.’

‘I know how that feels.’

‘You do?’

She looks at me with one raised eyebrow. ‘Drew? You know, my fiancé? Little guy, glasses, love of my life?’

‘Oh. Right.’

‘I can’t imagine how I’d feel if Drew broke up with me.’ Surprised, maybe? Shocked? Flabbergasted? If Drew broke up with Lauren, something would be seriously wrong with the world – like, biblically, end-of-the-world wrong. Lauren is beautiful, smart, funny, caring, and Drew is… well, he’s just Drew. ‘I really don’t even know if I’d be able to cope. I don’t even like thinking about it.’

‘Welcome to the club. If you think thinking about it is bad…’

‘I know. But just answer me, El – honestly, I mean. Were you happy with Carter? Did you ever get that sense that you just… fit?’

‘Sure I was. Sure I did. Everything just fit with him. We had this whole schedule planned out, and –’

Lauren’s shaking her head at me, like she’s dealing with a tourist who doesn’t quite speak good enough English to get to where she needs to be. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I’m not asking if he fit your plan. I’m asking if he fit you. Like a jigsaw piece, you know? His shape against straight up against yours. All the right curves in all the right places.’

That’s… harder to answer. I mean, it’s a yes, obviously – obviously – but I could understand that it didn’t necessarily look like that from the outside. That was always the thing with me and Carter. It was never about the hearts and flowers. It was never about the idea that we were soulmates. It just… made sense, I guess. And at the end of it all, isn’t that what everyone is looking for? Someone who makes sense?

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Yeah, he did. He does. I think.’

‘You think?’

‘I know.’

Lauren smiles, but it’s restrained: happiness at half-power. ‘Well, if you tell me you just know with Carter, that’s good enough for me. And when you get back to Chicago, I’ll do everything I can to help you make him see the monumentally stupid mistake he made in letting you go. But for now, I think maybe it’s best that you give him some time to come to that conclusion on his own. Let him come to you, OK?’

Let him go off and find someone else? I think, but I smother that thought as quickly as I can. The last thing I need is to think about what Carter might be up to right now, and who he might be up to it with. Sure, it’s possible that he’s alone in his apartment, thinking about what he threw away – but who’s to say he couldn’t be out in the world, in a bar not so far removed from the ones we spent last night in, making the most of his newfound freedom with a co-ed with a stupid stripper name?

No. Shake it off.

Although that would explain why he hasn’t called…

Stop. Stop it, stop it, stopitstopitstopitstopit—

‘El?’ Lauren asks. ‘You kind of spaced out on me there.’

‘Sorry. Just thinking.’

‘Penny for your thoughts?’

I shake my head. ‘Nothing important. Just… future stuff, I guess. Where I go from here.’

‘Oh, El,’ she says, and in an instant she’s right beside me, leaning against the wall of the voodoo shop, stooped down until her five-foot-ten frame is level with my five-foot-four. ‘No matter what happens with Carter – no matter what happens with Drew, for that matter – you’ve got me. I’m in your corner no matter what. You hear me?’

I smile. ‘Yeah, I hear you.’

‘Me and you. Always.’ She smirks a little bit, then puts a comforting arm around my shoulder and pulls me close. ‘In sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer, ‘til death us do part.’

‘Sap.’

‘You love it.’

‘Yeah, I do.’ I rest my head on her shoulder and sigh. If only things could stay like this, I think. I mean, sure, there’s Carter and Drew, and the stress of the wedding, and if I could choose to be anywhere in the world it probably wouldn’t be outside a gimmicky voodoo shop in New Orleans… but if I could stay the way I am in this moment, with my best girl right here with me, I could be happy. I really co—

‘Are you two just about done here?’ Danielle asks, her voice cutting through the fog of my contentment. She’s clutching a small plastic bag to her chest. Apparently the draw of Chuck’s merchandise was too much for her to pass up; thankfully, it looks like Paige and Jessica have decided to keep their money to themselves. ‘We should be getting back to the hotel, if we want to grab some dinner before we go out.’

So much for things staying the same, I think. I check my watch, but there’s no need: already, the streets are starting to fill with the first few spotted groups of revellers, all looking for the good times that New Orleans is famous for.

‘You guys head off,’ Lauren says. ‘I think Ella just needs a minute.’

I shake my head. ‘It’s OK,’ I say. ‘I’m fine. I just came over a bit weird, that’s all. Must be the heat.’

Paige’s face clouds over with worry. ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ she says. ‘Maybe you should take it easy tonight.’

‘I’m fine. Really.’

‘You see?’ Danielle replies. ‘She’s fine. And she’ll be a lot better once we hit the town, isn’t that right?’

I smile and nod. ‘Yeah. What’s the plan for tonight?’

‘Dinner at a cute little restaurant a little way out from the hotel,’ Paige chimes in, ‘and then…’

‘… and then enough alcohol to stun a rhino, and a shitload of dancing with strangers,’ Danielle finishes. ‘All cocktails, all the time. You in?’

How is it possible that someone who parties so hard managed to become a doctor? I think – but maybe I just answered my question; if I had a job like hers, maybe I’d want to party pretty damn hard on my time off too.

‘Sure,’ I say, finally standing upright. ‘Lead the way.’

‘Atta girl. That’s the spirit.’

I don’t know about the restaurant she’s chosen, or the part about dancing with strangers, but there’s one thing I do know, and that’s enough to leave me siding with Danielle just this one time.

I could really, really use a drink.