Page 2 of Shades of Grey & Gold

“Brenda Stipes was his assistant. It’s okay, I’m not surprised he ended up with someone he was screwing on the side.” I shake my head, and my eyes drop back down to the blood-stained towel in my hands.

She stays silent.

“What? It’s fine.” My eyebrows furrow in confusion.

“It says, ‘Culminating their beautiful five-year relationship by tying the knot with family and friends over wine at some blah blah blah’. Five years, Max?” Her eyes look back at me and mine get big.

“Five years, that’s like…” My head is spinning as I’m doing the math. “That is almost half of the time we were together… what the fuck?” I stand up, grab the invite from her hands and read it over. I read it three times just to make sure it wasn’t my mind making it up.

“He is the biggest scumbag on the planet.” Becca takes my place in the desk chair and pulls her legs up underneath her. “Please, please, please let me burn it, and send a glitter bomb. Oh! What if we hire a clown to go instead?”

I shake my head and set the lacy paper down on my desk. My mind is spinning. Becca grabs the invite and pulls apart the various pieces of paper: the invitation, the registry information, the RSVP card and return envelope.

I look up at the ceiling while she fumbles with the papers. He was cheating even before I knew. He was cheating for almost half of our relationship; I meant absolutely nothing to him.

“She was working at the firm when I was officially hired after he graduated. Five years… he would’ve already had to be sleeping with her, or I guess dating her, when they hired me at the firm. He introduced me to her as his girlfriend.” My head feels light and I lean on my desk. “How could she just stand there and be introduced to the girlfriend of the guy she had been sleeping with for God knows how long?”

“People are psychotic, she was playin’ the long game and caught the nasty fish at the end.”

Becca hates Patrick. She has since day one. She said he was ‘slimy from the gel in his hair to the shine in his shoes’ when she met him. She used to joke that anyone who wore only monochrome blacks, greys, and whites had to be a sociopath.

I look around the room while she digs in my desk drawers. My office is tucked into the turret on the bottom level of the house—this old, creaky house with stained-glass windows and old wooden doors and a window seat in the big round room that makes it feel like it belongs in an old witchy film. The pale wood, beautiful velvet and leather furniture—it’s my safe space. I’ve worked so hard to build up all these things around me. The beautiful kitchen I never use, guest rooms that sit lonely, a laundry room ripped from a twenty-something-year-old’s Pinterest board where the dry cleaning gets picked upevery Wednesday, and a big backyard with a porch swing the squirrels like more than I do. The house is filled with beautiful things but it’s never felt so empty.

Especially tonight.

Becca is elbow deep in my desk drawer now, trying to pull something out. She grunts dramatically as a little box flies from the drawer at the same time as her hand. A pen flies from the box and she picks it up, scribbling with it—it’s blue and gold, some kind of fancy calligraphy fountain pen.

“What are you doing?” I sigh and start trying to get my eyes to focus again. I rub them and look down at the desk. “Becca! No!”

Becca smiles up at me devilishly and sets the pen down, sitting back in the chair, admiring her work. Where the card had said, ‘RSVP’ she crossed it out and wrote, ‘I-C-U-P’.

“Becca, ‘I see you pee’? What are we? Ten years old?” But the smile and the chuckle I was trying to hold back fall from my mouth as I shake my head.

“Ah, but it got you to laugh!” She claps her hands and picks the pen back up, dictating as she writes. “Number of guests attending? ‘One Maxine Simmons, ex of groom, and one pretty guest.’”

“Are you the guest?” I cross my arms over my chest and sigh. This situation is messed up, and I still don’t get why they sent this to me, but it is funny watching Becca write all over the RSVP card.

“Maybe, or maybe we will find you a hot date.” She continues to write on the card. “Chicken or steak, Max? I say steak, let’s make it cost them something.” She scribbles again and I look down.

Now, it says ‘ICAN’TWAIT!’ instead of ‘I-C-U-P.’

“That’s probably more appropriate,” she mumbles as I look over her shoulder and see the poorly scribbled over letters.

“It doesn’t matter, it’s not like I’m sending that or going, I’d rather die.” I shake my head and take a big breath.

Becca shoves the card into the envelope and looks up at me. “Why not? Look, you were hot three years ago, but you’re smoking now, and you’ve moved on, at least in ways that are visible, and—” She waves the envelope in my face. “This is at the winery we have always wanted to visit upstate!”

“Becca, no,” I give her a stern look and start walking back to the kitchen. “There’s no way. He cheated on me. I had to quit my job—which, arguably, I wouldn’t have wantedto stay at with him there, but still! I moved on, they should have never invited me. Brenda probably did it as some sick joke.”

I can hear her feet padding across the floor behind me. “Okay but hear me out. What if we found you the hottest date and you went just for the reception?”

I turn back to face her and she’s holding the card in her hands staring at me like a little kid who just wants to get their mom to say ‘yes’ to a playdate.

“Becca! No!” I cackle because it doesn’t sound half bad showing off how I have grown and succeeded in being a better person than Patrick. With someone who would never cheat on me and has more than three colors in their wardrobe. Even if it is pretend. I still shake my head at her and mouth ‘no’ one more time before throwing the bag full of glass in the trash can.

When I look back up, she’s not there. “Becca?” I hear the front storm door slam. “BECCA!” My voice echoes through the hallway, not unlike my suddenly pounding heart beating in my ears, and I’m running through the house out the door.

The early fall air hits me like a truck. It’s dark outside, but the streetlights cast their dim light against the orange leaves on the trees as I see my friend running down the sidewalk. “What are you doing!?” I scream as I chase after her.