I Take You Page 22

  I bet it would have been fun.

  Will finally spots me in the doorway. He jumps up and comes around the table. He kisses my cheek. “Wow. You look beautiful.”

  “Thanks. You look great, too.” I’ve never seen him in a suit and tie. He even shaved. He looks so handsome. I swallow hard. “Will? We need to talk.”

  “Let’s get a drink,” he says. “Just you and me.”

  He leads me back down the hallway and into the bar of the restaurant, where he picks a table in the corner. A waitress comes over, and Will orders a beer.

  “Anything for you?” she asks.

  I shake my head. It’s time to do this.

  “Will, there are a few things I need to talk to you about.”

  “Actually, can I go first?” He takes a deep breath and exhales it shakily. He runs his hands through his hair. “So I’ve been thinking about it all day, and … it’s kind of funny. When we were at the Audubon House this morning? The wedding became so … so real to me all of a sudden. In a way it never had been before. I knew it was going to happen, obviously, but … and all day, I’ve been thinking, you know, that …”

  He trails off. He looks down at the floor and wipes his hands on his pants. “You know what? I’ll cut to the chase.” He looks directly at me. “I know everything, Lily.”

  I stare at him, speechless.

  His beer arrives. He picks it up and takes a long drink.

  “I know you’ve been unfaithful to me,” he continues. “Repeatedly.”

  My stomach drops. My face is hot. I feel like all the air in the room has been sucked up.

  “How?” I ask. “How did you know?”

  “I’ve always known,” he says simply. “Almost from the very beginning.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Lily,” he says. “You come home from ‘work’ in the middle of the night, drunk as hell, your hair a mess. You’re always floundering for explanations about where you’ve been and who you’ve seen. I see how you look at other men when you think I’m not paying attention. And some of the things you do in bed make it clear that you haven’t spent the last decade in a convent. Finally?” He smiles at me almost pityingly. “You leave your phone lying around, with that rookie contacts list of yours. I’d have to be a moron not to suspect something.”

  He takes another long drink of his beer. How can he be so calm right now? I am completely at sea, until I manage to latch on to a single detail. “You figured out my texting system?”

  “Two phones, totally separate,” he tells me. “It’s the only way to go.”

  “Would you like another beer?” the waitress asks. He nods. She turns to me. I shake my head. I haven’t taken my eyes off Will.

  “What do you mean, two phones?”

  Will sits back in his chair. “That brings me to my next point.” He looks me right in the eye again. “I’ve been doing the same thing.”

  I stare at him blankly.

  He stares back.

  “What?” I say.

  “I’ve been unfaithful to you, too.”

  “No, you haven’t,” I say.

  “Yes, Lily. I have.”

  “Is this a joke?” I say in an unsteady voice. “Some twisted way to salvage your pride? Because listen—what I do has nothing to do with you.”

  “I know,” he says. “Believe me, I understand.”

  “No!” I cry, a little too loudly. “You don’t understand. You can’t. You’re not me. You’re Will Field. You’re thirty-two years old. You have, like, three Ph.D.s. You work at the Metropolitan Museum of Fucking Art! You’re funny, and dorky, and sweet. You love me. You can’t be me.”

  “I love you, and I sleep with other women,” he says.

  “That’s impossible.”

  He leans forward. I look away, but he reaches out and lifts my chin, forcing me to look him in the eye. “Not impossible, Lily. True. Remember the waitress Monday night? The one you teased me about—you said she thought I was cute? She did. She gave me her number when you went to the bathroom. I met up with her the next night, after my bachelor party. And again on Wednesday afternoon.”

  I pull back, but I can’t look away.

  “That night, when I came back to the room and you wanted to have sex but I couldn’t get it up? I wasn’t hungover, Lily.”

  “Why are you saying this?” My voice sounds small.

  Now he takes my hands in his. His eyes are eager, imploring. “Because I don’t want us to lie to each other anymore! It’s killing us. I tried to tell you the truth Monday night, but I chickened out.”

  Monday. The night of our long, strange discussion about the past. I thought he was pumping me for information. Not working up his courage in order to make a big confession of his own.

  I pull my hands away. “I don’t believe you.”

  He gazes at me for a moment, perplexed. Then he takes a phone out of his pocket and sets it on the table between us.

  “What’s this?”

  “My work phone,” he replies. “Quote-unquote.”

  “Why are you—”

  “Read the texts,” he says.

  I look down at the phone. “It’s locked.”

  “The code is 5459.”

  I type it in. The screen activates.

  “It spells L-I-L-Y,” he says. “I hope you keep that in mind, after.”

  I look up at him. “After what?”

  He takes the phone from me, opens the messaging application and hands it back.

  “After now.”

  I scroll through the log of conversations. There are hundreds and hundreds of them. Weirdly, it doesn’t show the names of whoever Will was texting—only phone numbers. I open one at random. Someone writes:

  —where ru

  Will responds:

  —In bed.

  I click on another conversation. Someone else writes:

  —whatre you doing right now?

  Will responds:

  —I’m at work.

  —take a break.

  —Impossible.

  —ill make it worth yr while

  —My while is worth a lot.

  —haha how much

  I choose another:

  —cant wait to see you again

  —Don’t wait. It could be dangerous.

  —lol give me an hr

  It’s dated yesterday morning.

  The waitress places another beer in front of Will. I pick it up and take several long swigs. I start to choke. Will tries coming around the table to pound me on the back, but I wave him off.

  “This is not your phone,” I gasp. “It can’t be.”

  I read:

  —tomorrow nite?

  —How about right now?

  —srsly?

  —I’ll be there in 20 minutes.

  Sent two weeks ago.

  “These texts are so dumb,” I say. “You’re much wittier than this. I—”

  —want u to tie me up and—

  No no no. No way. I check his contacts folder. It’s empty. “Why are there no names?”

  “I memorize the numbers,” he says. “It’s safer that way.”

  “You made this up. You doctored it somehow.”

  But then I stop talking. I just clicked on a text with a photo of a girl. A redhead. She’s naked, smiling at the camera, stretched out on a bed with one hand behind her head.

  It’s Will’s bed in his old apartment. I recognize the headboard.

  I look up. He takes the phone from my hand. I can’t breathe. I feel all hollowed out inside. Is this actually happening? Can this really be Will?

  A yawning pit has opened up below me, and I’m falling through a world that I had no idea existed. Everything is new. Everything is strange.

  “There’s one more thing you need to know.” He’s scrolling through the texts. Then he hands me back the phone. He’s opened a conversation from Saturday night. It begins with a message from a Brooklyn number:

  —where r u?

&n
bsp; He responds:

  —At home. You?

  —club. So bored

  —I’ll meet you at your place.

  —haha

  —I mean it.

  —I cant.

  …

  —wait. Shes leaving.

  …

  —shes going to work. Ill be there

  “Saturday night?” I say. “During my party?”

  Will taps the number, and the phone dials. He puts it on speaker and sets it on the table between us. We hear the tinny ringtone through the speaker. Then someone answers.

  “I said I didn’t want to hear from you again.”

  I know that voice. That sharp, slightly nasal intonation. It’s the voice of a thousand late-night conversations whispered in the library over books and coffee. The voice of dozens of study sessions, when we crammed for final exams. The voice that was the first to call and congratulate me when our bar exam results were posted.

  “Hello?” Nicole says. “Will?”

  I look down at the phone. Will ends the call.

  Nicole. And Will.

  My friend Nicole. And Will, my fiancé.

  The man I love.

  I lunge for him across the table.

  He grabs my wrists before I can claw his eyes out. “Lily!” he cries. “Stop!”

  “You whore!” I scream.

  I try lunging again, but he’s holding me tight. The entire bar has gone quiet. I struggle—all I want to do is get at him, to make him feel some fraction of the pain and fury that I feel right now. I want to bite and kick and scream.

  “Did you know her apartment has bedbugs, Will? If you gave me bedbugs I will fucking kill you!”

  “Everything’s fine,” Will says to the waitress, who’s approaching us hesitantly. “We’re okay.” To me he says, “Lily. Calm down. You can’t be mad.” Slowly, cautiously he releases me.

  “Can’t be mad!” I say loudly. “How interesting. I can’t be mad!”

  “Lily, stop.”

  “And yet, here I am,” I say, a fresh gust of rage filling me with energy. “Feeling the teeniest bit … mad. Isn’t that odd? Isn’t that astonishing? You should put it in one of your academic papers. Assuming that you are, in fact, an archaeologist, and not a fucking garbage man!”

  I lunge at his face again, but he catches me. “Stop!”

  “How could you, Will? She’s one of my bridesmaids!”

  He brings his face close to mine. “That’s what bothers you—the fact that she’s in the wedding party? Are you sure you want to go there, Lily?”

  I stop struggling. I’m leaning toward him over the table—I try to pull back, but he won’t let go.

  “You’re not angry,” he says again. “You’re surprised. You’re shocked. But you can’t really be hurt by this. Not you.”

  I look at him. My fury is gone, vanished as quickly as it came. He must sense it, because he releases me and sits back warily, waiting for another assault.

  But all I have left is a single question, and I ask it calmly and quietly.

  “Why did you ask me to marry you, Will?”

  He leans forward and takes my hands. “Because I love you.”

  I pull them away. “That’s impossible.”

  “Lily Wilder,” he says. “I have been in love with you since the first second I saw you. When you walked up to me at that bar and put your hand on my arm, and I turned to you, and you smiled at me? My life started. Everything that came before was … preparation. Spring training.” He smiles. “Foreplay. You walked in, and it was like the world went from black and white to color. You heighten everything. When you’re around, music sounds better. Food tastes better. You make alcohol completely superfluous. I never know what you’re going to say or do, and that’s so exciting. Sometimes I have a hard time breathing when I’m near you. I’m worried that my heart is wearing out from beating so fast. You’re smart and beautiful. We have real conversations. You’re sweet and caring and funny. I love you so much that it makes me a little crazy. And if I can’t spend the rest of my life with you, I’m going to have a really hard time figuring out what to do with myself.”

  I feel my eyes fill with tears.

  We’re going to sort this out. We’ll fix it. We’ll find a way.

  “But I still want to sleep with other women,” he adds.

  I slap him as hard as I can. The sound rings through the restaurant. All the people who weren’t already staring at us turn to look. Will says nothing, holding his burning face.

  His phone is on the table. I pick it up and drop it in my bag. “I’m going back there,” I say, jerking my head toward the room where our families are waiting. “Don’t follow me.”

  I pull off my engagement ring, my beautiful, romantic ring, and I set it down in front of him. Then I turn and walk away.

  22

  I enter the private room and walk right up to Anita. “The wedding is off,” I tell her. The room falls silent. “Your son is waiting outside.”

  She rises. Harry is staring at her. “Anita,” he says. “What did you do?”

  She doesn’t respond, so he turns to me. “What did she do?”

  “Please go,” I say. And they do.

  I pull out a chair and drop into it. I pour myself a healthy glass of wine and knock it back. I nod appreciatively.

  “Isn’t it lovely?” Dad smiles. “Try the white.”

  I set my glass on the snowy tablecloth and look at each of them in turn. Gran. Mom. Jane. Ana. Dad. There’s so much love, so much sorrow and sympathy and compassion in their eyes.

  Not for long!

  “You are a bunch of miserable, lying scumbags,” I tell them, “and you’ve ruined my life.”

  “Lilybear,” Ana says gently, “you must feel awful right now, but you did the right thing.”

  Mom adds, “I’m sure this has been difficult, but don’t take it out on us.”

  “Difficult?” I cry. “You’re sure that this has been difficult? How the hell would you know? You’re all wrapped up in your own dramas. I have some major problems here, people! I also have about seventeen parents, and it would be nice if I felt like I could turn to any of them for advice or encouragement. But no!” I wave my hands in the air wildly. “Oh, no! I only hear from you when you want to berate me, or give me suggestions on seating arrangements, or when you accidentally text me instead of your booty call!”

  I look pointedly at Dad. He’s giving me a look like Please no please no please no.

  “I know you!” I cry, pointing at each of them in turn. “I know you all! You are guilty, guilty, guilty!”

  “The hell I am!” Gran snorts.

  “You’re fine,” I concede. “Although you coddled me. You let me run wild. I should have been thrown in chains as soon as I could crawl. No, it’s the rest of you I’m talking about. What a stellar collection of role models. You, Mom.” I point at her. “Spending my entire childhood mooning around after a man who abandoned you. And Jane.” I turn to her. “You’re a soulless, social-climbing vampire.” I look at Ana next. “And you. Possibly the worst of the bunch.” My lip curls in disgust. “A member of the United States House of Representatives.”

  Ana throws down her phone angrily. I raise a hand. “No. You’re not the worst. Not by a long shot. No, the hands-down winner here is Henry.” I train my sights on Dad.

  “Darling, you’re going to make yourself ill,” he says soothingly.

  “Do any of you know why I’m in this mess?” I shout. “Do you have the slightest clue?”

  They’re all pissed at me now, so they have a few suggestions.

  “Deficient genes?” Gran says.

  “Overactive libido?” Jane suggests.

  “Chronic substance abuse?” Ana adds.

  “Okay, yes!” I cry. “Yes to all that! But more importantly, I was never given a strong moral foundation. Children learn by example. Look at my examples! We’re all a bunch of big, fat liars. It’s got to change. We need a new family commitment to honesty.
Henry?” I point at Dad. “You’re on.”

  Dad is looking at me with panic, but then something happens. Comprehension dawns. I see him transform from a pleading, helpless, hunted creature into someone resolute, brave. He squares his shoulders and stiffens his upper lip. He turns to his ex-wives.

  “I’m sleeping with all of you,” he announces.

  Dead silence. They stare back at him, then turn and glance at one another.

  “Ana too?” I say.

  He gives her a sidelong glance. “I’m afraid so.”

  “You’re unbelievable!” I cry. “I suppose this one’s also my fault. You and Ana ran into each other and started talking about the wedding, and—”

  “Oh no.” My father chuckles. “Ana and I have been sleeping together for years.”

  I gape at him.

  “We never really stopped,” Ana adds. Then she turns to Jane. “What about you?”

  “It’s only been a few weeks,” Jane replies. “Kat?”

  “A couple of months,” Mom says. “Mostly via Skype.”

  I stare at them. They really don’t mind? I glance at Dad. He seems as shocked by their attitude as I am.

  I turn to Mom. “But you’re in love with him! You’ve been pining away for decades!”

  “Oh, honey. That was over a long time ago.”

  “It was?” Dad says.

  “Of course, Henry.” Mom smiles. “Now I’m just using you for sex.”

  More silence. Then there’s a chortle. I’m not sure who from—maybe Ana. A giggle from Mom. Someone guffaws. Soon, all three of them are roaring with laughter, clutching at one another, gasping for breath. Ana is bent over, pounding the table. Mom is wiping the tears from her eyes. Jane is actually emoting.

  Dad and I gape at them, astonished. Gran looks disgusted.

  “Darlings,” Dad says, “are you truly not upset?”

  This sends them into fresh gales of laughter. “Darlings!” they howl. “Darlings!”