Page 11 of Parallel
“Suchas?”
“Prostitutes, Quinn. I’m not joking. He wants me to bring inprostitutes.”
“Oh my God. Tostrip?”
“No. You hirestripperstostrip.”
I give a choked laugh. “So forsex? How would that even work? Is he thinking I’d just, like…go into the bathroom with one ofthem?”
“He said ‘guys do it, so why shouldn’t she? I want her to see what she’smissing.’”
I sigh. “He seems to be under the impression that just because I’m not all ‘do me, Jeff, right now,’ that we’re missingsomething.”
I expect her to laugh but she’s oddly quiet. “But you’re like thatsometimes,right?”
I slant a glance at her. “Et tu, Brute? Please don’t join the last-minute chorus of people telling me I’m making a mistake. I mean, you’ve hadyearsto tell me this, so mere weeks before my wedding is just…rude.”
“I’m not,” she argues. “You know I think Jeff’s great. And to be fair, I have asked you about this before. Right before you moved in withhim.”
I broke up with Jeff to move back to D.C., but when he followed me here—showing up on my doorstep with this impassioned speech straight out of a romance—it felt like fate, like the kind of thing I was supposed to give into. I was torn at the time, but it’s all kind of romantic, in hindsight.“I thought you just wanted to make sure I’d thought it through. I didn’t think you were trying to dissuademe.”
“I wasn’t, necessarily. I just didn’t…I wasn’t sure he made youhappy.”
“Of course he does,” I reply, shocked she’d even think it. Jeff might not be the most exciting guy, but that’s fine with me. What matters far more is that he is cute and kind, reliable and steadfast. While Caroline and Trevor sit around bemoaning men who forget to call, who change plans without warning or hook up with the blond at the gym, I’ve found someone who remembers every anniversary and doesn’t even seem to realize other women exist. “Where is this coming from? The other day you guys are telling me it’s not too late to change my mind and nowthis?”
She gives me an apologetic smile before she looks back at the road. “I know you love him, and I know he’s a good guy, but when was the last time you were happy withhim?”
My head jerks back. “I’m happy now! And if I don’t seem happy that’s not his fault. It’s just who Iam.”
Her eyes flicker to me once more and she frowns.But it’s not who you were, her looksays.
I turn up the radio and change the subject, because I cannot think about this right now. There are times in your life when you just have to focus, get through something and leave all the considering and mulling over behind. And despite the dreams about Nick, this is that time. I’m getting married in a matter of weeks. It’d be too late to change my mind if I wanted to. And I don’t wantto.
I reallydon’t.
* * *
We sitin the inn’s small restaurant with my mother, going over the guest list. The din of their lunchtime service grates, though it probably has more to do with how on edge I’ve felt ever since we got to town, just like I was the last time. It’s driving me crazy, this feeling. As if I’m supposed to know something Idon’t.
“Jeff’s friends from college,” my mother says, “do we keep them all together or split them up? And do you know yet if his friend Tim is bringing the baby?” She clicks her pen, poised for an answer I can’t provide. It’s easily the tenth question she’s asked about Jeff and his friends about which I have noclue.
I groan. “I should have made Jeff come forthis.”
“Well,” my mother says with a fond smile, “he had towork.”
“So did I,” Ireply.
She pats my arm. “When push comes to shove, you need someone who puts workfirst.”
Of course, she would say this. She’s spent her entire life on a farm, where work has to come first, where it begins early and ends late and doesn’t offer four weeks of paid vacation. And perhaps that’s why the transition to D.C. has been so hard on Jeff—because he was raised to believe that putting your nose to the grindstone is the path to success, and it hasn’t panned out for him here. No matter how hard he works, there is always someone craftier or cannier taking his clients, stealing histhunder.
My mother puts the guest list aside, apparently tired of asking me questions I can’t answer. “Let’s walk outside and look at the space again,” she says. “I think we need a feel for how it will all be laid out, and you barely saw it the lasttime.”
I feel a twitch, a tremor, in my chest, even as I agree. I realize the little white house in the distance didn’tcausewhat happened the other day, much like stepping on a crack will not actually break your mother’s back, but…it happened. And I don’t want it to happenagain.
Outdoors it is stifling, and painfully bright, the very air tinged a harsh gold, making things seem ominous in some way I can’t name. But my mother and Caroline are oblivious to it, so I push myself forward, alongside them. They’re talking about valets and overflow parking, but I can’t seem to follow theconversation.
We pass the edge of the inn. The lake is spread before us, so deep blue it appears bottomless. I inhale and then force my gaze up to the right, to the white house I wish wasn’tthere.