Page 2 of Die for Me
“I see you’ve been by my place,” I snip. “You can take a ticket, if you’d like.”
Krause’s scowl thins his lips so much that they disappear behind his Colonel Sanders–esque white mustache.
“Marriage gives you stability. A home to go back to,” he says. “Eventually you’ll get old and gray, and all those suitors you turned your nose up at will head out for greener pastures. You should settle down before you run out of options.”
The laugh that escapes my chest is hoarse with righteous indignation.
“Is that why you cheated on your ex-wife?” I ask. “Because she was getting a little too old and gray for your tastes?”
Krause’s wife gasps, someone chokes on their drink, and Katherine gives me an appreciative look. Meanwhile, Krause’s hold on his fork tightens like he’s thinking about lodging it in my neck.
“Oooookay. Daggers away,” Haoran, ever the peacekeeper, says. “I propose a toast—to an open bar on Brandon’s tab!”
We raise our glasses, Krause begrudgingly. Then, before our tentative peace can be disrupted, the emcee clinks a glass; it’s time for speeches.
For the rest of the program, I keep my attention on the happy couple, who look up at each other with sugary smiles as friends and family exalt them and their relationship. The mood is light and airy, as if the happy couple formed their bond at a run club rather than through clandestine meetings in the cath lab supply closet. The Pendersens are many in number, but I note that Leila’s side is eclectic, strikingly young, and only takes up one table. I’d pieced together her backstory through brief conversations we’ve had since she started working at Broadview: parents who died young, an older brother who followed only a few years later. What family she has now she had to forge on her own—something that I felt had connected us. Before shebecame my best friend’s ex-husband’s love interest. Still, for a wedding celebrating such an unseemly union, it’s surprisingly mundane. By the time the third speech ends, I’m fighting back yawns.
Then Leila’s man of honor steps up to the microphone, and the whole room stills. He’s tall, brooding, a storm cloud of a man, crackling with an unmistakable and unteachable magnetism, and racially ambiguous in the sort of way that makes me wonder whether his hair would curl if he grew it out.
My type? Not exactly; I usually like my men to be a little lesspretty. And older. Considerably older than the twenty-something years this young man has on him. And yet here I am, working half the muscles in my face to keep saliva from oozing out of the corner of my mouth. Questionable choice in current husband/former affair partner aside, Leila sure has some good taste.
“Hello everyone,” he says, in a deep, vaguely British-accented voice that is as smooth and sonorous as a cello’s hum. “I’m Julian.”
“Hi, Julian,” the room calls back. He smiles, almost bashful, and every person in the room sits to attention as if someone has turned a crank.
Okay so this is very inappropriate, I text Winona, after I have picked up my jaw.But Leila’s man of honor is FOINE.
Really?Winona responds.Omg. You should snatch him up. She steals my husband, my best friend steals HER best friend. It’s perfect.
I suck in my inner cheek. Yes, Julian is glorious, but not glorious enough to settle my unease. All of these festivities, all of this money, has gone to celebrate the breakdown of Winona’s family. Almost everyone in attendance knows her, but not one person has asked after her, skirting around her existence like she’s a Bloody Mary who will appear in the middle of the ballroom if they say her name thrice. Only Sophie seems to serve as a reminder, her cascade of dark curls, sand-colored skin, and bulbous eyes too unlike the Pendersens’Scandinavian features for anyone who greets her to forget their origin. Over an elaborate crystal centerpiece, I catch my goddaughter’s eye, then throw her a thumbs-up. Sophie sticks her tongue out at me in response: our shared signs of resistance.
A few feet away, Julian is finishing up his remarks. His speech is pretty standard: cute anecdote about how he met Leila (age fourteen, in her high school cafeteria where he was visiting as an exchange student) and the first time he met Brandon (last year, on the North Avenue Beach volleyball court), well-wishes for the couple. In between staring at him, making faces at Sophie, and texting Winona under the table, I miss most of it.
“And Sophia,” Julian says suddenly, turning to the head table just as Sophie uncrosses her eyes. “I know today must be full of conflicting emotions for you. That you might feel like your dad’s happiness came at the expense of yours. That by celebrating his new union, we are betraying your old one.” He gives her a beatific smile, and she stares back, slack-jawed. “My hope for you is that whatever pain you might feel right now eventually makes room for some joy. Leila might never become another mother to you, but I hope that maybe someday she might become something like a friend.”
The tense silence that follows is suffocating, like someone’s just dropped a smoke bomb into the room. It’s only interrupted by a loud clatter—my phone, sliding off my lap and onto the floor.
At the head table, Brandon tries his best to maintain his composure, but his bride takes it out of his hands.
In a slow, sweeping motion, Leila raises her glass.
“Screw you, Julian,” she says, giving him a dazzling smile.
Julian grins.
“Only in your dreams,” he says. And then he takes his seat.
Two
Once the lights dimmed for the reception, I excuse myself from the festivities, lingering in the ballroom just long enough to see Brandon’s dad spin Sophie onto the dance floor to ABBA’s “Take a Chance on Me.” My mind shuttles to what feels like a lifetime ago: Winona, Brandon, and I meeting for dinner during residency. Somehow Brandon and I had been placed on the same cardiology rotation, and on a schedule that would allow us to see each other to boot. And so we gathered—Brandon pre-call, me exhausted and post-call, Winona post–proposal defense for her psychology PhD program—around the peeling dining room table we’d garbage-picked three years before, inhaling Taco Bell soft shells between complaints about our micromanaging preceptors. Halfway through her Crunchwrap Supreme, Winny suddenly braced herself against the table, then excused herself into the bathroom. Brandon and I exchanged a concerned look as he raced after her. It took ten minutes for them to emerge, and when they did, they wore identical expressions: shell-shocked but ecstatic.
“Food poisoning?” I asked.
“Worse,” Winny said. Then she held out a hand, turning over herfist to reveal a positive pregnancy test. Her eyes welled with tears, and Brandon buried his fingers in her curls to press an adoring kiss to her forehead. “You’ll be godmother, obviously. If all goes well.”
“Obviously!” I cried, standing up to pull both of them into a hug. Our tears intermixed, three and a half bodies pressed close, nothing between us but love.
And now the “food poisoning” is twelve years old and that love has been snatched away and repackaged for someone else, and here I am, meant to celebrate it all.
