She's With Stupid Page 17

  He remained silent for a long time, his head tilted at a painful-looking right angle as he watched her intently. Emilie really hoped he wasn’t preparing to lose it again; she didn’t think her nerves could handle it. Furthermore, if he didn’t go for the friend plan he was liable to knock her over the head and have done with it.

  You really know how to pick ‘em, Emmy, she silently scolded herself.

  Then, just like that, he was smiling eerily, as if the last half hour had never happened. “Everything will work out in the end as long as you believe in me,” he declared.

  “Uh-huh, sure,” she said.

  Leo suddenly seemed so pitiful, so obviously in need of help. Maybe they could be friends — the really distant kind that you sent a Christmas card to, but whose eye color and last name you had difficulty recalling. Once he settled down, he would see the wisdom of that plan and accept that their pseudo-relationship had had been doomed from the start. Then he and Clarissa could live happily ever after, far away from her.

  He kept rubbing his face against her abdomen, which was gross. She was debating how best to shove him off when he looked up at her with those pleading eyes, lucid and bright again now that his psychotic episode seemed to have passed. “Can we go somewhere to talk?” Emilie looked at him suspiciously, and he grabbed her hand and lightly kissed it. “Please, Emilie. I’ve missed you.”

  She exhaled softly and cautiously patted his head. “I don’t think that’s such a great idea—”

  “You said we could be friends,” he insisted.

  She had said that, hadn’t she? And he seemed harmless now… “Well, maybe we could take separate cars and go sit down in a nice, crowded restaurant to talk.” She pointed her finger in his face warningly. “Just talk.”

  Leo smiled up at her and squeezed her hips. “You mean it?”

  “Sure,” she said slowly. “That’s what friends do.”

  Emilie had a terrible feeling that she was definitely going to regret this decision when Leo’s arms curled even tighter around her waist.

  Chapter 12

  The next morning the girls sat in a rare uncomfortable silence as they waited for the cake lady to fetch her tasty wares from the back. The nervous-looking woman had scurried away about two minutes after sitting down with them, saying over her shoulder that she would give them a few minutes “to chat” while she got the tasting cakes together. She could not have failed to notice the tension between the three women — all of them had been acting jittery since their arrival, though it had nothing to do with getting up early on a Saturday to eat cake.

  In fact, Emilie and Lana had been painfully polite to each other all morning, as they both carefully avoided mention of their decidedly awkward midnight encounter outside the apartment the evening before. Emilie had been creeping around the corner, trying to be as quiet as possible, when she had literally bumped into Lana, who had been shakily trying to maneuver her key into the lock. They had shrieked like wet cats before realizing who they were screaming at. The alarm/mortification on Lana’s face at being caught in such an ignominious position had mirrored Emilie’s exactly.

  After Emilie, gaze firmly on the floor, had used her own key to unlock the door they stood uneasily in the living room for about ten seconds before Lana broke the silence.

  “I was with Brian,” she blurted out in an unnaturally loud voice.

  Lana had waited expectantly for Emilie to share her own whereabouts for the night. Instead, Emilie had shaken her head and said, “I can’t do this right now. Tomorrow — okay, Lan?”

  The pleading look in her eyes had somewhat softened Lana’s annoyance that Emilie was not honoring their unspoken roommate policy of full-disclosure, so she had reluctantly nodded her assent. After another brief, uncomfortable pause, both girls had simply put their heads down and rushed down the hall to their respective rooms.

  This morning they had eaten their cereal in self-conscious silence, neither mentioning the night before. It had been even more pronounced on the way to the Cake Shoppe, with the quiet in the car broken only by the faint hum of Billie Holiday coming from Emilie’s iPod.

  Emilie had finally broken the silence as she pulled into a shady parking spot in front of the shop’s front door. “Lana, I know we need to talk about last night. I know you’ve probably already guessed who I was with.”

  Lana nodded her head to confirm that she had her suspicions.

  “I’ll give you all the details,” Emilie had promised. “But can it wait till after this? It is too complicated to properly discuss here, and I refuse to tell Kate right now. She’ll have a field day and I just can’t stand the lecture, okay?”

  She had looked so glum that Lana had been forced to crack a smile. “Yeah, she’ll definitely have a hard time letting it go. Bummer for you,” she said with a not-unkind smirk. Then Lana’s eyes had widened as a new thought occurred to her. “And bummer for me. She’s going to be so judgmental when she discovers my relapse with Brian. I may have to move back to L.A. just to escape her self-righteous sermons.”

  Emilie had nodded her head in agreement. “Can I come? I’m thinking we might all be better off if we got away from this town and its male inhabitants.”

  Chuckling lightly, they had dragged themselves into the Cake Shoppe, expecting to find Kate waiting, teeth bared, over her friends’ lack of punctuality. Instead, it was Lana and Emilie who were left waiting.

  Kate had arrived twenty minutes later, tardiness having become her habit when it came to doing anything related to her own wedding. When she barreled into the shop, winded and gasping for breath, Emilie and Lana had rolled their eyes in exasperation while Kate ducked her head and mumbled something about being up late last night studying for an exam. Lana and Emilie had exchanged a telling glance, but refrained from pointing out that no one, least of all Kate, studied on a Friday night. It went against all the laws of God and man.

  So now here they were, surrounded by wedding cakes and lost in their own thoughts. When Cake Lady finally emerged from the back, laden with three plates full of cake slices, she set them before the girls like an offering and cheerily announced that it was “cake-time!”

  Noticing the gloomy expressions on two of the girls’ faces and the dismayed expression on the bride’s, Cake Lady furrowed her brow. Before she could comment on their odd behavior, the phone rang and she bustled back towards the kitchens with an “I’ll be back in a jiffy!” tossed airily over her shoulder.

  Kate eyed her friends briefly before leaning forward to whisper-shout, “What’s going on with you people? You’re acting like we’re about to sample a few poisoned apples instead of eating moist, delicious cake.”

  Emilie grimaced. This was Kate’s day, and she hadn’t meant to spoil it by fretting about her own life. A quick peek at Lana revealed she was having similar thoughts.

  “Sorry, Kate,” said Emilie. “We’re just daydreaming.”

  Kate harrumphed. “You look like you’re about to cry. Tell me you guys aren’t still pouting about Stupid and Stupider.”

  Emilie and Lana both gave offended protests, but they sounded weak even to their own ears.

  “I cannot be expected to eat cake and think happy thoughts with you two moping around!” Kate hissed. “Now tell me what’s going on! It’s not fair to keep secrets from me just because you’re roomies now. It’s hurtful.”

  Lana and Emilie might have felt bad were it not for the silly, melodramatic look on Kate’s face — and the fact that Kate was fairly skilled at keeping secrets of her own when the occasion suited her. Still, it was unfair to tell one friend important secrets and then refuse to tell the other.

  Lana was also thinking it might be a good idea to get her fall from grace out in the open, rather than giving Kate the chance to ferret it out of Emilie at a later date. “I accidentally slept with Brian. Again.” Kate’s jaw dropped at this regrettable news, but Lana forged ahead. “I know it was a bad idea, so I don’t want to hear it from either of you. Especially you!”
She pointed her finger at Kate, who hastily shut her mouth. “I’m not going to fall in love with him again or let him screw with my head or anything like that. We’re just going to — I mean, we’ve both decided to have an open relationship.”

  “An open what? Does this mean Brian has your permission to, like, cheat on you whenever he wants?” asked an outraged Kate.

  “No!” Lana squirmed in her seat at their skeptical looks. “It means we both want to keep things casual. We discussed it yesterday, and we are both on board with having a simple, friendly—”

  “Entirely sexual,” added Kate.

  “Relationship,” Lana said firmly. Noticing the dubious expression’s on both of her friends’ faces, she threw her hands in the air at all the judgment. “We’re really good together.”

  “Are you basing your compatibility on how well you get along in bed?” Kate demanded. “How many times do I have to tell you people that sex is a very small part of a much bigger picture? It’s the most fun part, granted, but if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times: just because a guy is able to get your panties in a twist does not mean he is your soul mate!” Kate threw her hands up and sighed, “Jeez.”

  “It’s my decision, not yours,” Lana stubbornly insisted. “I expect you both to accept it and not give me any grief.”

  She fixed her eyes specifically on Kate, who let out another harrumph but otherwise remained quiet.

  Kate glared crossly at Lana, annoyed that she had been denied the opportunity to offer a more detailed opinion about the extreme absurdity of her actions. Open relationship, ha!

  Shifting her attention to the curiously silent Emilie, Kate narrowed her eyes. “Why are you so tight-lipped? There’s no way you think Lana’s little free and open relationship is a good idea.”

  Emilie refused to meet her gaze, choosing instead to turn her attention to the little pieces of cake in front of her. Swiping some icing onto her finger, she brought it to her mouth and mumbled, “It’s none of our business.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous! Of course it’s our business. Since when do you not have an opinion, Miss Know-it-All? Unless…” Kate trailed off, her eyes widening with sudden suspicion. “No!”

  Alarmed by the horror in Kate’s voice, Emilie looked up. “What?”

  “Please, tell me I’m hallucinating. Tell me you’re not so quiet because you somehow empathize with Lana’s foolishness!”

  “So what if I do?” Emilie shifted uncomfortably in her seat, but still managed to glare at Kate. “You have a lot of nerve criticizing anyone’s decisions where men are concerned. In case you haven’t forgotten, we’re here picking out cake for your wedding to possibly the nastiest man on the planet.”

  Undeterred, Kate leaned forward and gave Emilie’s long hair a yank. “We’re not talking about me! We’re talking about you and—oh, no. Please tell me you haven’t decided to start messing around with a married guy!”

  “He is not married!” Emilie shouted before quickly lowering her voice in case Cake Lady came back. She leaned forward and whispered, “He is engaged, not married, which is entirely beside the point.”

  “And what point would that be, hmm?” asked Kate.

  Lips pursed, Emilie counted to ten before replying. “The point is, Leo and I talked, and he wants to be friends. I’m willing to give it a try in the interest of keeping peace at work, so—”

  “Have you lost your freakin’ mind?” Kate demanded.

  Emilie chewed on her bottom lip for a moment before sitting back in her seat. “Maybe I have,” she said with a helpless shrug. “He says he still loves me.” She placed her palm over Kate’s open mouth and gave her a forbidding look. “I do not want to hear one word about your dumbass cousin. I may have been in love with him before I was old enough to know better, but I’m not a little girl anymore. And he isn’t anymore interested in me than I am in him. I’m sick of you trying to convince me otherwise.”

  Hoping to prevent Kate from saying something that would likely earn her a smack, Lana patted Emilie’s hand consolingly. “Is that where you were last night? Talking with Leo?”

  “Excuse me? She was out with him all night?!” Kate shook her head, unsure whether to be appalled or impressed that Emilie had managed to surprise her.

  “Stop it, Kate.” Emilie gritted her teeth and focused on Lana. “Yes, we talked. At least, we eventually talked after I made him stop doing other things.”

  “So disgusting,” muttered Kate.

  “That is not what I meant!” Emilie glared at Kate. “I told him I had no intentions of being anything more than his friend. He wasn’t happy about it, but after what felt like a marathon of talking, he did eventually agree to respect my wishes. After I was finally able to shake him, I just drove around for awhile, thinking.”

  “About what?” asked Lana.

  Emilie sighed. “About the fact that our entire relationship was the biggest joke and about how maybe I don’t have the right to be so hard on Leo when it’s becoming brutally clear that I was never really as invested in us as I thought I was.” She rubbed her forehead and sighed. ”I was too distracted by my past to even notice how screwy things with Leo were becoming.”

  Lana watched the emotions flash across Emilie’s transparent face, and her eyes lit with understanding. “Oh,” she said sympathetically.

  “Yeah—oh,” said Kate, who remained oblivious to the undercurrent of commiseration between Lana and Emilie. “Oh, she’s acting like someone we’ve never met. Oh, she’s carrying on with a complete jackass who already has a fiancée. Oh, she is going to get her heart broken by a man who is so not worth it. Oh.” She threw her hands up in exasperation. “What is wrong with the pair of you? Don’t you see how absolutely insane your behavior is? What are you even thinking?”

  “Can we please discuss this some other time, at a less public venue?” Emilie said through gritted teeth.

  Before Kate could make a tart reply, Emilie poked her in the side and nodded towards the kitchen. Kate glanced over her shoulder and saw that Cake Lady was now peaking through the window in her kitchen door, the phone hanging limply in her hand and her mouth slightly ajar. It was clear that she found the girls’ argument fascinating, and equally clear that she would likely be spreading tales to anyone in town who would listen. Which basically meant everyone in New Bern would know their business by the time the sun set that night.

  Kate hesitated before grudgingly bobbing her head in agreement. “But we are talking about this again.” She threw a sharp look in Lana’s direction. “All of it.”

  Stiffly inclining her head, Emilie (much to Lana’s amusement and Kate’s reluctant respect) raised her hand and, regal as a queen, motioned to Cake Lady that they were ready to start the tasting.

  The woman quickly hurried through the doors and gingerly sat at the fourth chair, giving them all a slightly sheepish look before she began to talk cake. “Here we have an almond cake with strawberry jam filling.”

  The girls left the Cake Shoppe an hour later, having decided on alternating layers of white cake with raspberry filling and chocolate cake with mint mocha filling. Once outside in the chilly February sunshine, they stood on the sidewalk staring sullenly at each other.

  “Well,” Kate broke the silence. “Where do you want to go to talk?”

  Emilie searched her mind for a way to delay the inevitable and was relieved when Kate’s cell phone began warbling “Ring of Fire.” Lana and Emilie both frowned at the sound — Kate usually preferred the ever-annoying “Crazy Frog” for her ring tone.

  Kate stared grimly at the number and scrunched her nose as she put the phone to her ear. “What?” she said brusquely. “Can’t it wait? Hmm. No, I’m not backing out of anything—okay, okay!” Kate twirled her hair around her finger as her voice softened. “I do, too. What time?”

  Lana’s eyebrows reached her hairline when, halfway through the stilted conversation, Kate started giggling and cooing like she was Marilyn Monroe in the Seven Year Itch.


  When Kate shut her phone a minute later, she seemed distinctly discomfited by the curious faces of her friends. “I’m, uh, going to have to go.”

  “So much for that heart-to heart,” Emilie said dryly.

  “I have something I have to do,” Kate said in a rush as she looked in her purse for her car keys. “It’s kind of unavoidable, but I really do want to talk to you guys about this series of unfortunate events.”

  “What about tomorrow?” Lana asked.

  Kate hesitated, looking torn. “I’m busy all day tomorrow. I promised I’d go up to Columbus and see Stupid —I mean Will’s— mother and sister. We’re having lunch.” The scowl on her face made it plain she wasn’t looking forward to it. “Monday night? Will has to work a double shift at the drugstore, so we’ll have the house to ourselves. I’ll even cook.”

  “But that’s Valentine’s Day,” Lana said huffily.

  Kate gave her a sharp look. “You have plans?”

  Both Lana and Emilie protectively crossed their arms and began fidgeting.

  “No,” Lana finally bit out. She stuck out her lower lip and shot Emilie a questioning glance.

  Emilie hugged herself tighter and glumly shook her head.

  Kate, uncharacteristically refraining from saying anything unkind, merely nodded. “Then there’s no problem with having dinner, right?”

  Lana and Emilie both debated saying “no” anyway, but the determined look on Kate’s face made it clear she was going to get the dirt out of both of them no matter what. They might as well get a home-cooked meal out of the deal.

  Emilie heaved a grudging sigh. “Fine, but it will have to be quick. I promised to chaperone the Valentine’s Dance at school, so I’ll need to leave by seven-thirty.”

  Satisfied to have gotten her way, Kate moved around to the other side of her car. Distractedly unlocking the car door and shoving a pair of gym shorts back onto the floor, she settled into the driver’s seat and smiled. “Okay, how about we have dinner around six? Does that give you enough time to get back to school?”