chapter eight
Erin is giving Mindy and Jenna a tour of her house. My very pregnant sister and I have already seen it, so we stay in the kitchen making drinks for girls’ night.
The house is quite impressive. Erin’s fashion sense obviously spills over to home decoration. The brownstone she and Griffin live in is only nine subway stops or a six-dollar cab ride from my apartment. They managed to get their hands on one of the rare properties in the city that has an actual backyard. They are lucky. It’s perfect for kids.
I couldn’t imagine growing up without a place to run and play. Our house in Maple Creek wasn’t flashy and modern like a lot of New York City residences. But it was a place you could feel comfortable putting your feet on the coffee table or leaving a bottle of water on the counter. And the acres of fields surrounding our property made for endless hours of playing tag and hide-and-seek.
Somehow, Erin has accomplished both. Her house is flashy. It’s modern-contemporary with all the latest technology. Yet, it feels content and homey. It’s a place where I can see kids running around the maze of rooms that span four floors.
Their great room has a paneled wall of glass that slides open, disappearing almost completely into a wall, creating one massive indoor/outdoor space that extends to a large tiled patio complete with a kitchen and hot tub. From where we sit at the gigantic kitchen island, we have a clear view through the open floorplan all the way to the backyard. I wonder how long it will be before Griffin adds a play set. Or maybe a tire swing dangling from the sole oak tree.
Hanging over the kitchen island is a stainless steel chef’s rack adorned with what I know is thousands of dollars of high-end pots and pans. It’s any cook’s dream kitchen. I laugh to myself thinking how Griffin doesn’t even know his way around a stove. No wonder Erin wants him to learn to cook. It would be a shame if she were the only one to make use of all this great stuff.
The three of them come back to join us. Mindy and Jenna are raving about Erin’s exquisite taste as I set up my laptop so Piper can join us via Skype.
Baylor pours daiquiris for everyone, making the two of ours virgins. On the black marbled granite of the kitchen island, Erin sets out the trays of hors d'oeuvres we all contributed.
“Where’s the hot husband?” Mindy asks Erin.
I smile, glad at the fact I’m not the only woman affected by his gorgeous looks.
“Out with my hot husband,” Baylor says. “Gavin, Griffin and Griffin’s friend, Mason, went out to a club.”
I realize in this moment just how well Erin and Griffin have fit into my circle of friends. I wonder if they know that once you’re in, you’re in for life. That means I’m sentenced to a life of lusting after my best friend’s husband.
My brother-in-law, Gavin, has lots of connections being in the film production business. He got them a VIP invite to the exclusive pre-opening of a new club in SoHo.
“Too bad Jake couldn’t join them,” I say to Jenna. “But then, I’m sure Jake gets plenty of his own VIP invites coaching with the Yankees and all.”
Jenna nods and in mock pretention, says, “Yes, darling, but it does get rather tiring hobnobbing with the rich and famous all the time.”
We laugh. Jenna can’t pull off being a snob, even though, as a literary agent, she works with plenty of them.
“Jenna, that reminds me,” Erin says, “do you think you could get us a few tickets for an Indians game next week? Griffin has been talking about it non-stop ever since Skylar mentioned it to him. He’s such a baseball junkie.”
“Sure, what day?” Jenna asks. “They play Tuesday through Thursday.”
“The only day I can get a sub is Wednesday,” Erin says. “Would that be okay?”
“Yeah, of course,” Jenna says. “I won’t be able to go with you, though. I’m always booked with meetings on Wednesdays. How many do you want?”
Erin winks at me. She knew Jenna couldn’t go on Wednesday. She wants Griffin to be able to root freely for his home team. She asks me, “You’ll go with us, right? I don’t really get baseball and Griffin needs someone there who understands what’s going on.”
“I’m a Yankees fan, Erin,” I remind her.
“Eh, baseball is baseball,” she says.
Jenna and I share a look. We giggle at Erin’s naiveté about team loyalty. Erin is beautiful. She’s smart. She has a lot of hidden talents. But sports to Erin is like rocket science to a goldfish.
Jenna says, “Oh, that should be fun. I’m sorry I’ll miss it.” She knows what a die-hard fan I am, so I’m sure she thinks it will be amusing watching me sit next to the enemy.
“Fine.” I roll my eyes. “Get three tickets.”
Erin claps her hands like a giddy schoolgirl. “Griffin will be ecstatic!”
I hear, “Hey girls,” in a familiar voice. I turn my attention to the laptop screen to see Piper smiling, holding her own daiquiri. Baylor introduces Piper to Erin.
Erin looks from Piper to Baylor to me. “Wow,” she says. “Piper, you look exactly like Baylor except you have Skylar’s green eyes.”
“You don’t say,” Piper says, sarcastically.
The three of us laugh and roll our eyes. People say that about us all the time. Piper is twenty-one, three years younger than me and five years younger than Baylor. We were all very close growing up. The only time we weren’t together back then was when Baylor went to UNC for a year and when Piper spent a semester abroad her junior year of high school. Piper liked traveling so much that after she graduated, she decided to make it a lifestyle. Every once in a while she’ll come home, but we see a lot more of her on a computer screen than we do in person.
“When can we expect you to grace us with your bodily presence, little sister?” I ask. “We haven’t seen you since Baylor’s wedding.”
“Yeah, if you only come back for your sisters’ weddings, we’ll probably never see you again,” Mindy teases. She points to me. “It’d take a miracle to get this one married off.”
Piper laughs. “If you work that miracle and get my big sister to take the plunge, not only will I show up, I’ll plan the whole damn thing.” They all share a laugh when she mumbles something about pigs flying.
“Can we move on to more realistic topics?” I ask the group.
Obliging my request, Mindy raises an eyebrow at Erin. “So, Griffin’s friend, Mason. Is that the same Mason you told us about before?”
Erin nods, smiling.
Mindy’s lips curve up in a devious smile. “As in, Mason Lawrence, the young smoking-hot backup quarterback for the New York Giants? He’s out with your husband. Right now?” She sighs and I can just picture the fantasy going on in her head.
Erin must notice the same thing as she quickly says, “He doesn’t do hookups. Not since one led to him becoming a dad.”
Mindy gives her a deflated look and announces to all of us, “A film producer, a photographer and a professional quarterback. Holy shit—I almost feel sorry for all the women who’ll get shot down tonight.”
I giggle thinking about it. Even though I haven’t met Mason yet, I’ve seen pictures. And, of course, I’ve seen him play a few times. Mindy’s right. Not only do their jobs ooze sex appeal, but they’ve got the looks to match. It’s a deadly combination, the three of them together.
Erin refills everyone’s glasses. The four who aren’t drinking virgin daiquiris get more interesting as the night goes on. It’s staggering the insight you get being one of the only sober girls at girls’ night.
Jenna gets funnier the more she drinks. She tells us about some of the horrible manuscripts that get submitted to her from writers looking for an agent. “One lady actually thought a book about a woman who falls in love with her cat would make her a million dollars.” She quotes some excerpts that have even the sober among us rolling on the floor.
Piper’s eyes get droopy the more she drinks. She looks like her head might fall down right onto her keyboard. Of course, that might simply be the six hour time difference and not the alcohol. It’s 3:00 a.m. where she is.
She slurs her words telling us how close she came to touching the Dalai Lama on her stint in Tibet. Her friend, Charlie, who has been traveling with her from the start, broke her leg, postponing their planned climb up one of the smaller Alps in Austria. And their latest adventure to help free some animals from a testing facility in Germany almost landed them in jail. Conspicuously absent from her adventure tales is any mention of men. I briefly wonder, not for the first time, if she isn’t into them. Maybe there’s more going on with Charlie than meets the eye.
Mindy gets horny when she drinks. She’s busy texting some of her past conquests to see who she can meet up with later on. I think she’s silently sulking over the fact that Erin won’t facilitate a hookup with the hot quarterback.
Erin is about as drunk as I’ve ever seen her. And dammit, all she wants to do is talk about her husband.
“Griffin is a remarkably considerate lover,” she throws out randomly, stopping all other conversations.
All eyes turn to Erin with raised brows. All except mine, that is. I wish my ears had ear lids that I could close and block out any Griffin stories that could have the potential of reappearing in my future fantasies.
“Did I ever tell you about the night he took my virginity?” she asks.
Mindy raises her drink. “Awesome!” she slurs. “Virginity-losing stories are the best. Let’s hear ‘em.”
Jenna and Baylor smile and nod, concurring with Mindy. Piper looks as if she swallowed a bitter pill. She claims she’s tired and signs off.
“Buzzkill,” Mindy says to the now blank laptop screen. Then she turns to Erin. “Okay, spill.”
Erin gets comfortable in her seat, holding out her half-full glass to Mindy for a top-off. “I was nineteen,” she says. “My hair had grown in a few inches after chemo was done, making me look like a young Jamie Lee Curtis. Of course, I’d had my . . . my hys . . . uh, my . . .” —she shakes her head— “my surgery, several months prior.” We all nod our heads in empathy. “Griffin went through chemo with me. We had been together almost a year. He was nineteen, too. A nineteen-year-old man who was a virgin. I still can’t believe someone as hot as my husband wasn’t sexually active before me. Especially considering how sexually talented—”
“Together almost a year, so then what?” I interrupt her rudely, earning me a hard stare along with a kick in the shin from Baylor.
“Oh, sorry,” Erin says. “I was kind of getting off track.”
“What?” a drunk Mindy squeals. “I love off track. Get off track!”
Thankfully, Erin leaves out tales of Griffin’s sexual awesomeness and sticks to the basics. “Well, we had just gone away to college. Our dorm rooms were in the same building, so he would sometimes sneak onto my floor even though guys weren’t allowed after midnight. Some nights when my roommate was gone, he would stay in my room all night and hold me. We would cuddle in my small twin bed.” She laughs, her face looking all dreamy and nostalgic. “It wasn’t easy. You know how big he is. Even back then, he was six-foot-three and built like a quarterback.
“I knew he was afraid to hurt me after all the chemo, radiation and surgery. But we were young. And we were horny. So one night, I finally convinced him I would be fine. I joked about the fact that he didn’t even have to use a . . . um . . . use a . . .”
“Condom?” Jenna asks.
Erin closes her eyes for a beat as she lets out a troubled sigh. “Yeah, a condom.”
I snicker at Erin. She keeps stumbling over her words. I wonder if that’s how I would get when I used to drink a lot.
Erin continues, regaling us with a romantic encounter that would rival even Baylor’s story. When she’s done, we all stare at her. Even I sigh, and I usually despise that sappy shit.
“Who’s next?” Erin asks.
“Well, mine’s no secret,” Baylor says. “You’ve all read the story about Gavin and me.”
“You know,” Mindy says to Baylor, “we’ll never be able to look Gavin in the eyes again now that we know he was the guy that did all those deliciously nasty things in your latest book.”
“Yeah . . . just, eww,” I add, not needing to be reminded of the visual of my brother-in-law bedding my sister in the many explicit sex scenes she wrote.
See—now why can’t I simply look at Griffin that way? As a brother-in-law. Gavin is hot, too. Male-model hot. But he’s never once been the object of my fantasies. That would be wrong on so many levels. If I could only get my mind to view Erin’s husband the same way.
Mindy tells us about her high school boyfriend and the awkward deflowering in the back seat of his mom’s car. Jenna’s was equally awkward, but with her brother’s best friend.
All eyes turn to me. I’m pretty sure I’ve told the story before, haven’t I? It’s no big secret. It’s just not anything special. It wasn’t with the love of my life like Baylor and Erin. It wasn’t even an awkward moment with a boyfriend. It was with a complete stranger.
“My story sucks,” I tell them. “I was at some underground club. A rave. It was in the city. My friends and I danced with these guys who had fantastic moves. It was like they were fucking us right there on the dance floor.” I wince. “Sorry,” I say to Erin.
“Don’t fucking worry about it,” she deadpans.
Every jaw at the table drops. I don’t think any of the others have ever heard Erin cuss before. Apparently alcohol makes her talk about Griffin and cuss.
“You’d better not let Griffin hear you say that,” I remind her. “He hates it when women curse.”
She narrows her eyes at me, forming a wrinkle in her smooth brow. “Huh . . . it never bothered him before. Girls curse in front of him all the time.”
Man, I really must rub that man the wrong way. Of course, maybe that isn’t such a bad thing after all.
After the giggles die down and the drinks have been refilled, I continue. “So anyway, I was young. I was drunk. So me and this guy went and found a closet or something and we just did it.”
Baylor shakes her head in sadness. She’s heard the story before. As a romance writer, I know she wanted more for me than a quickie with a stranger.
Jenna says abhorrently, “You lost your virginity in a dirty closet at a rave?”
“It’s no big deal. It’s just not very noteworthy,” I say. “And I didn’t say the closet was dirty. But I don’t really know because it was pitch black.”
“What was his name?” Jenna asks.
I shrug.
God, I was such a tramp. Who doesn’t know the name of the guy who took their virginity? I put a hand on my barely-there belly, glad once again to have a reason to change my ways.
Baylor puts a gentle hand on my arm and we lock eyes. She feels guilty, like she broke me somehow. As if my inability to get close to a man is her fault. It’s true, it was shortly after she came home from college, dumped and devastated, when I made the stupid decision to sleep with what’s-his-name in a closet so tiny we didn’t even have room to remove our clothes. And I suppose it doesn’t take a shrink to tell me that watching my big sister get destroyed by the love of her life somehow wrecked me. But it’s most definitely not her fault. Hell, it’s not even Gavin’s fault. It just happened. Shit happens. Not everyone gets a happily-ever-after like Baylor’s novels. Not everyone is meant to find their one true love. Not everyone is destined to be happy.
Erin looks at me with sad eyes. “You need someone like my Griffin,” she says. “He’s very easy to love. And so darn sexy, too.”
I roll my eyes at the millionth reminder of how great her husband is.
Baylor winces and her hand goes to her large belly. “Ouch! This little one can really kick.”
Erin’s eyes grow large. “Baylor, could I . . . would you mind if I . . .”
Before she can finish, Baylor grabs Erin’s hand and places it on her stomach. Erin stares at it like it’s the Holy Grail. I know the second she feels the baby move because her eyes instantly tear up and spill over.
“Oh my God, Baylor,” she says. She stares at Baylor’s pregnant belly in disbelief, muttering, “Oh my God,” over and over.
Then she cries. I mean—she ugly cries. She sobs unabashedly while keeping her hands firmly glued to Baylor’s stomach.
Finally, she pulls back, mascara smeared down her face. Her eyes are glazed over in an alcohol stupor. She speaks incoherently as her sobs wane. She hiccups, “I’m gonna miss this.”
I put my hand on hers. “Erin, having a baby doesn’t mean you will have to miss anything. We’ll still get to do stuff all the time. You and Baylor can even bring the babies to girls’ night if you want. Don’t worry. You’re going to be a great mother.”
She nods, wiping her tears. She stands, picking up one of the empty food trays to carry over to the sink. We all jump off our seats when we hear it crash to the ground.
I run over, not wanting her to cut her hand in a drunken attempt to clean up the shards of glass scattered about the kitchen floor. “Erin, I’ve got this. You go lay down. It’s getting late anyway and we should be going.”
Baylor walks Erin upstairs to her bedroom as I sweep up the floor. She comes down a minute later saying she’ll escort Mindy and Jenna home safely, but that maybe I should hang around to make sure Erin doesn’t puke. We say our goodbyes and I head up to the bedroom.
Erin’s bedroom is a contradiction of sights and smells. I’m instantly hit with Erin’s flowery perfume when I step through the door. I walk over to their large four-poster bed that is draped with white linens, making me feel like I’m approaching Sleeping Beauty.
When I sit beside her on the bed, I’m overcome by Griffin’s rugged scent. I silently wonder if the side of the bed I’m sitting on is the side where he sleeps. Then as if drawn there by instinct, my hand wanders to his pillow, stroking the soft linens that are fortunate enough to reside beneath his gorgeous head of hair night after night.
I look at the nightstand to find it messy with a John Grisham novel, a cell phone charger, some loose change, and a picture of Erin when she was much younger and mostly devoid of hair. I guiltily cease my intrusive caress of his pillow. I have to hand it to him; he’s got the romance thing down pat. He keeps a picture of his mostly-bald wife by his bed to remind her that he thinks she’s beautiful no matter how she looks.
I’ve been jealous of women plenty of times. Jealous of their looks. Jealous of their jet-setting lives. Jealous of their clothing. But for the first time in my life, I’m jealous of a woman because of the relationship she has with a man. Then I wince, as part of me wonders if it’s solely because of the man himself.
Erin moans, turning over to place a hand on me. “I love you, Skylar,” she mumbles. “Promise me. Promise me you’ll take care of them.”
I run my hand down her arm to comfort her. “Of course,” I say. “Don’t worry about Jenna and Mindy, Baylor is making sure they get home safely. We’ve got this.”