CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN WINNIE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

WINNIE

The next morning I go to the local OB-GYN and get lots of tests done. Ma and Georgie are there to hold my hand. They are also there afterward to drag me to Cottontown for brunch and some retail therapy to keep my mind off the results, which should arrive in the next four weeks.

It’s when we browse through dresses that Georgie parts a rack full of garments between us like it’s a confession-booth window, staring at me wide eyed. “I need to tell you something.”

“I know you were the one who stole and destroyed my favorite dress Memaw made for me senior year,” I say tonelessly, tugging on a price tag of a cute yellow sundress.

Georgie shakes her head. “Oh, Winnie, I’m denying destroying that dress until my last breath. It’s not about that. I need to tell you something I never had the guts to. Ma knows. Lizzy does too.”

“Okay .?.?.” I lift my gaze to watch her. “Go on.”

Georgie’s throat moves with a nervous swallow. “Paul.” She licks her lips. “The night you got married .?.?. he was really drunk .?.?. he tried to kiss me. Right before the ceremony. Didn’t force himself on me or anything like that, but tried. I pushed him away and gave him an earful—then I ran to Ma and told her all about it.”

I continue staring at her but don’t say a thing. What is there to say? I believe Georgie. Would have believed her if she’d told me back then too. Which is why, I’m guessing, Ma told her not to.

“What’d she say?” I ask. I care more about how my family reacted to this than about Paul. I already know he’s a scumbag.

Ma is outside the shop, fetching us iced coffee with extra whipped cream.

“She said to let it slide. That it might be the nerves on his part. But that if it happens again, we should definitely tell you.”

So this is why my family hasn’t spoken about Paul since the funeral. They saw through the good guy charade. They didn’t like him. Or at least, they had some serious reservations.

“You’re not mad, are you?” Georgie asks, giving me her puppy face.

I smile. “No. But next time, always tell me. I’d want to know.”

The day after, Georgie drags me along for two classes of Pilates, and the day after that, Lizzy absolutely insists I help her put her new nursery together.

I slip into my pre-Paul existence like it’s an old prom dress. Effortlessly, and yet it feels weird wearing my old life. My days are a whirl of social calls, cozy dinners, backyard parties, and leisurely walks by the river.

Three weeks after I get to Mulberry Creek, I decide I have too much free time on my hands. I take a volunteering post three towns north in Red Springs, on the Kentucky border, as a theater director for a Romeo and Juliet production, set by a group of underprivileged youth.

I spend the car rides rolling down the windows and putting country music on blast. I make cookies without feeling like a dumb hillbilly about it—and give them away to complete strangers. I write to Arya and Chrissy and attend baby showers. I eat home-cooked meals and hug the people I love, and whenever Paul enters my mind, I don’t push the thought away like it’s a hot potato in my hand. I let myself feel the pain. And move on.

It’s only when Arsène slips into my mind that I find myself doubting why I’m here. Which is silly. He told me time and time again we are nothing to each other. Proved as much, too, with his surprise visit where he berated me like he was a teacher. And yet, if he is planning to sue me, he is not being quick about it. I check my mailbox every day. Nothing but bills and paper-wasting ads is ever there.

I still don’t cry, unable to produce tears, but I’m no longer anxious about it.

My friends and family are incredibly supportive. Rhys, especially, is an absolute star. We meet for billiards once a week and talk about our high school years, about all the things we used to talk about. Nothing about our hangout feels like dating. The first time we met up over a beer and a quick game, I told him plainly that I’m not ready to date.

“Honestly, I figured as much.” He smiled and threw the cue-stick chalk across the table. “Can’t blame you, after what you’ve been through. But I’m willing to wait.”

Those words haunt me for two reasons. The first—because they contain a declaration of intention. He is willing to wait for me, which means he is waiting for something. He wants to pick up where we left off. I realize now that despite the last year, despite my idolizing what Rhys and I had after what I found out about Paul, I don’t necessarily think it’s a good idea to spark this old flame. “A wet match never reignites,” Memaw used to say when she was alive.

The second, more pressing issue with what Rhys said is that my reason for not moving on has nothing to do with Paul.

It’s been almost a year. A year to digest what happened, what he did, the things that can never be undone. I paid my widow dues. I grieved. I wept. I broke. Mended myself together, then broke all over again. Paul didn’t deserve me: this much I can now tell. He saw me in the same light as all his friends did. Those gently bred, private-schooled, helicopter professionals he brushed shoulders with. I was a trophy. A status symbol. Nothing more.

No. The reason I cannot move on from Paul isn’t Paul. It’s someone else.

Rhys tells me there’s a job waiting for me at the local high school, and now that I’m working with youth, I’m starting to seriously consider it.

Is that what I wanted to do with my life when I was a teenager? No. I wanted to act. To be onstage. But dreams change. People morph into different versions of themselves. And comfort is .?.?.

Terrible,Arsène’s voice completes in my head.

When the call from the OB-GYN arrives, and they ask me to come back to the clinic, I don’t fall apart like I imagined I would. I book a time, inform my mother and my sisters, put on a sunny dress, and grab my keys.

I have a love story to direct.

People need me.

Arsène was right. Commitment is bliss.

One month turns into three. Arya calls every week to ensure I’m okay and cement to me that she is not angry for bailing on her charity. Chrissy goes a step further and pays me a visit. It is a charged, albeit pleasant one. She is still unhappy about my decision to up and leave. She was the one who stayed behind to clean up my mess. But I’m also encouraged by the fact she is truly more than just an agent. That she made the trip to Mulberry Creek to see me even though my future at her agency is hanging by a thread.

We go out for a girls’ night in Nashville.

“Welcome to our Broadway.” I stretch my arms as I take her through the neon-soaked streets of Nashville. The redbrick, low-built buildings are laden with signs of guitars and beer. It might not be as ritzy as New York, but it’s entertaining. We enter a honky-tonk hole-in-the-wall where the floor is sticky and the playlist consists of Blake Shelton and Luke Bryan only.

We knock back shots, order a basket of beer-battered mushroom caps, and wash them all down with a local brew. While sucking on her electric cigarette, Chrissy tells me she is seeing someone. That he lives in Los Angeles and that she is considering moving there.

“It’s been on your agenda for a while.” I sip my ice-cold beer. “Moving west. Maybe it’s the final sign you should take the leap.”

“Maybe. We’ll see.” Chrissy frowns. “What about you? Please tell me you’ve been seeing someone and that you’re no longer obsessing over him.”

When she says him, I immediately think of Arsène, even though I know it is Paul she means.

“I’m not obsessing over him,” I confirm, which is true. About Paul, anyway. “But I’m not seeing anyone either. Just figuring out fertility stuff. Life-plan things.”

We talk some more. She doesn’t ask about the tests, and I don’t volunteer any information. I’m not embarrassed per se. Just a little more guarded than I was in New York, when I saw everything through the red-hot and frantic haze of the possibility I’d never be a biological mother.

I want to bring Arsène up in the conversation. To ask if she’s spoken to him lately. I know he found out my address through her. I would love to have a crumb of information about him. Anything would do. Now that I haven’t heard from him in months, I hate myself for every second I didn’t appreciate when he was here in Tennessee. I should’ve prolonged it somehow. Invited him in for dinner. Asked about the videos. What he thought of them.

I was so busy being on the defense that I didn’t have time to enjoy his proximity.

He came to drag you back to New York by the ear,I remind myself. Hardly a grand romantic gesture.

“Hello? Win? Are you there?” Chrissy snaps her fingers in front of my face.

I sit up straight. “Yeah. The shots got me, I think.”

“Did you hear anything I said?” She knots her arms over her chest.

“Something about Jayden, right?” Jayden is her new boyfriend.

She rolls her eyes, sighing. “All right, spill. What is it?”

“What’s what?” I blink, confused.

“What is it you’ve been wanting to say and/or ask since I got here? I know you’re holding out on me.”

I worry my lip. A telltale sign I am beyond nervous. But ultimately, I can’t stop myself.

“Have you spoken to Arsène at all?” I blurt out.

She sits back, smiling like the cat who got the cream. “Ah, Arya owes me fifty bucks. My senses never fail me.”

“Arya?” I blink, confused. “Why did you talk to Arya about this?”

“Well, initially, she didn’t think it’d be a good idea to give Arsène your address. Said he was a grade A bully. But I thought there was more to it. A man doesn’t up and leave to chase after an employee. It takes passion to arrive somewhere uninvited.”

“And what did you tell her?” I demand.

“That as far as I know, you and Arsène had a cordial, professional relationship and shared some notes about your late loved ones, but that’s the extent of it. She agreed with me.”

I nod, relieved.

“But.”Chrissy knocks down the rest of her beer and slams the mug against the sticky bar. “I also thought he likes you as more than just a friend, which, Arya said, was impossible, because he apparently doesn’t do feelings. Well, I don’t care what he wants to do, in practice, he caught a lot of feelings toward you, and there ain’t no cure for that.”

She pauses, tilting her head to examine the issue more carefully. “And I also thought it peculiar that you decided to ru—move after you managed to pull through Paul-less in New York. The timing was suspicious.”

“I didn’t run,” I grit out, remembering Arsène’s words.

“Sure, honey. Sure.”

“You haven’t answered my question.” I pop the last of the mushrooms into my mouth and chew. “Have you spoken to him recently?”

She shakes her head. “Not recently, and not really at all. He hasn’t been taking my calls. Apparently, he ripped your contract up for all to see the day he came back from Tennessee—made a whole big stink about it, Lucas said. That was the last anyone has heard or seen of him at Calypso Hall. He’s a hard man to pin down. I could, obviously, work my contact with Arya, but what’s the point? I wanted to talk to him about some of my up-and-coming actresses, and I’m pretty sure that bridge is burned.”

I don’t feel half as guilty as I should be about this piece of information. In fact, I’m more concerned with his public display of scorn for me. Ripping my contract in front of an audience? It is so different from the man I grew to know back in New York. The indifferent, aloof creature. He seemed like the kind of man who wouldn’t take anything seriously. He must really hate me.

“Please don’t make that face.” Chrissy sighs. “I wish I hadn’t told you. Who cares what he thinks, anyway? It’s not like he owns Broadway. And he’s a well-known asshole in town, anyway. No one’s gonna judge you for bailing on him.”

I let out a half-strangled laugh, just because I know she is expecting some type of reaction. But deep down, I want to weep.