By Design Read online

  She pulled the door open and walked out of the bathroom, coming up behind a couple who had just entered the bar. The man had his hand on the small of the woman’s back to steer her in. Emmie made a face; she always hated it when Kyle did that to her—as if she was so stupid that she’d wander off in a random direction unless he guided her. As they moved farther inside, the man flung his arm around the girl’s neck.

  Emmie’s alcohol-influenced synapses were firing slowly, so it took her several seconds of following the couple, and an exchange of glances with an astonished-looking Trish, who had a better view from her barstool across the room, before the penny dropped.

  “KYLE!”

  The man ahead of her spun around, startled. Kyle acted like nothing was out of the ordinary—he could have been holding a motorcycle helmet under his arm for all the guilt he displayed. He smoothly took his arm from around the woman (that poofy-haired tart, Caitlynn, again) and eased her away from him with practiced skill as he put on a welcoming smile. “Hey, baby! What are you doing here? I thought you were at that housewife party.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Emmie saw Caitlynn snicker as she retreated to the bar. Ever loyal, Trish gave the girl her best vicious mommy-glare, and Emmie felt bolstered by the support. She wasn’t sure what to say to Kyle. He was caught red-handed, but acted like nothing at all was wrong. He didn’t even look nervous. And that was the worst part.

  Finally Emmie spat out, “You bastard.”

  “What?”

  Ah. That goofy look on his face meant Kyle was nervous. That habit of his was infuriating. Whenever Emmie wanted to argue, but Kyle treated it like a joke (even though he almost didn’t realize he was laughing), it only made her want to throw things.

  Then, without another thought, that was exactly what she was doing.

  She reached out to her right and made contact with a pyramid of shot glasses stacked up on the bar—one of Carl’s misguided attempts at classing up the joint—and suddenly the air was full of a hailstorm of flying glass. Emmie, who might or might not have been shouting epithets at her boyfriend—or, rather, ex-BF as of about twenty seconds ago—as the missiles started flying, didn’t really know exactly what she was doing. But whatever it was, it sure felt good, especially when Kyle put his arms over his face and, survival instinct kicking in, turned sideways to let his thick tan Carhartt jacket absorb the worst of the impact.

  “Geez, Emmaline!” Kyle shrieked several times, but Emmie didn’t stop. She couldn’t stop.

  One shot glass for all the times he’d used her as a booty call. One shot glass for how he repeatedly belched in the middle of a meal and thought it was funny. One for all the times he steered her through doors with a hand to the small of her back. One for all the times he had throttled her with a possessive arm around her neck. One for his damned fake-cowboy persona. One for all his beer. One for the bleached-blond ho at the bar. One—no, two—for all the lousy sex. One for each month of her life she’d wasted with him. Those ten took a while to fling at him, one by precious one.

  The observer part of Emmie’s brain wondered why she wasn’t stopping, or why nobody was stopping her. After a few moments enjoying the entertainment, however, Carl and Trish saw fit to show Kyle some mercy. Or Carl finally calculated the cost of replacing the shot glasses, most of which lay shattered on the floor, although a few rolled in lazy arcs, safe and whole, at Kyle’s feet. Whichever, Carl rounded the bar at a trot, preceded by his large belly, elbows akimbo, and Trish launched herself off her barstool to stop the barrage.

  “All right, Emmie, take it easy,” Carl commanded, holding out a beefy hand in front of her, but staying out of the way of her pitching arm. He might have had a faint smile on his face, but he was all business.

  Trish was less cautious. She stepped in front of Emmie, grasped her by the shoulders, and said, “Emmie, honey—stop.”

  Emmie stopped. As she stared at Trish and sniffled, stunned, Kyle straightened up, brushed himself off, and glared at her. “What the hell, Emmaline!”

  “I said don’t call me that!” Emmie lunged for the last of the shot glasses, but Trish held her back.

  Over her shoulder, Trish snapped, “Shut it, Kyle, or I’ll let her loose so she can go apeshit on you again.”

  Carl also spoke up. “Kyle, move it, you hear me? Go over there”—he indicated the bar—“and I’ll get you a beer.” To Emmie, he said, “Honey, you got every right to be upset. But you can’t trash my bar. And you can’t beat up my customers—at least not in here, okay?” he murmured with a wink. “I think it’s about time Trish took you home.”

  The commanding presence of the mountain-sized man before her got through to Emmie, and she visibly wilted. Trish put a comforting arm around her. Carl fetched their coats and handed them to Trish, who draped them over her free arm and guided Emmie toward the exit.

  Trish almost got Emmie out the door without further incident, but at the last moment, Emmie glanced over her shoulder at Kyle. The idiot had the audacity—and the stupidity—to raise his beer in a toast to her.

  With a last burst of energy, Emmie spun away from Trish, swept up the plastic bin of lime wedges, and flung it at him, a hailstorm of green and seeds and bitter juice. Only then did she walk out sedately, as dignified as she could wobble, and she allowed the tears to well up only when she was safely belted into the passenger seat of Trish’s minivan.

  Once they were on the road, Trish said simply, “It’ll be better tomorrow. I promise.”

  Emmie nodded and snurfled a little.

  “You okay?”

  Emmie whispered something toward the window.

  “What was that, sweetie?”

  “He had it coming.”

  “Trish, dammit! Where the hell are you?” Emmie hissed into her cell phone.

  Emmie had summoned up enough courage to get herself back to Juliet’s for the rescheduled cookie party. She had to, after Juliet sent her a Circle-O message late Saturday, expressing concern about Emmie’s wackadoodle performance at her house that afternoon. Of course, Juliet had put it in much nicer terms. She asked if “everything was okay” and said she was “kind of surprised” when Emmie “left so suddenly.” She even added a thoughtful PS: “I put your cookies in the freezer to keep them fresh and will defrost them in time for the party. Hope to see you there!”

  So Emmie had girded herself and entered the Hallowed Halls of Winslow a second time. Juliet, gracious as always, had acted delighted, not put out, when Emmie told her that she had asked Trish to come along. Then she had confiscated Emmie’s jacket and purse and hidden them somewhere upstairs, making her a party prisoner for the rest of the evening.

  Emmie glanced around furtively for the first few minutes, on the lookout for Graham, but she didn’t see him. Maybe he had made himself scarce, and who could blame him, with a house full of women talking baked goods? Emmie was relieved that he wasn’t there, but a little disappointed as well. She tried desperately to ignore that last feeling. Inappropriate, she reminded herself.

  She waded into a crowd of vaguely familiar-looking women who were squealing whenever they recognized one another. All she had to do was socialize with people she hadn’t seen—and hadn’t missed—in years. Luckily, she’d have Trish alongside her. Right?

  But when Trish didn’t show right away, Emmie retreated to the powder room to rail at her missing friend with some degree of privacy. She got voice mail, but that wasn’t going to stop her from freaking out if she wanted to freak out.

  “The place is filled with weird, old doppelgängers of people we used to know in high school, and I’m outnumbered! It’s like being in a zombie movie!”

  Emmie took a deep breath and clicked off. Trish had to be almost there. Maybe she didn’t answer because she was getting out of her car and walking to the front door at that very minute, and she didn’t want to waste time digging her phone out of her purse. That was probably it.

  Emmie looked around for a box of tissues, didn’t find one, and b
lew her nose on some toilet paper. It looked like Juliet had just moved in—the powder room was as stark as the rest of the house; the entire place echoed emptily with only the barest amount of furniture and absolutely no creature comforts. She expected Juliet to have decorated every inch of the place by now, but there was not one stylish accessory in the place yet. Maybe Juliet was a good candidate for Wilman Designs, she thought.

  Emmie was passing through the kitchen with the drinks table as her target—she had lost her first thimble-sized plastic “wineglass” somewhere along the way, and she desperately needed a replacement—when her phone rang in her pocket. She scrambled to answer it.

  “Hey, honey,” came a distant voice.

  Emmie frantically turned up the volume on her phone. “Trish! Where are you? Tell me you’re on your way.”

  “Uh, no, sweetie, I’m afraid not.”

  “Why not?”

  Emmie was ready to rend her friend six ways from Sunday, but she stopped short when Trish said in a tight voice, “We’re at the hospital.”

  “Oh my God. What happened?”

  “Nothing major,” she rushed to reassure her friend. “It’s Logan; he just had to try out Justin’s skateboard even though we’ve told him a thousand times he’s not allowed, and he fell. He might have a broken arm.”

  “How awful for the poor little punkin. I’ll be right there.” And Emmie started to look around for Juliet to find out how to get her personal effects released.

  Trish actually laughed. “You’re not getting out of the party that easily.”

  “Oh, screw the party. I’m worried about Logan. And you,” she added.

  “Logan’s arm is iced and he hasn’t even had X-rays yet. He’s watching television, and I’m going to get him some dinner. Do you know they have McDonald’s in the hospital? Isn’t that kind of a conflict of interest?”

  “Good for repeat business, at the very least.”

  “Anyway, we know the drill, after Justin’s concussion and both of his sprains from soccer. Stupid sport,” she muttered. “I feel like we should have a Campo Memorial Cubicle here or something. I’ve got a nice one picked out; I’m going to ask the charge nurse if we can have a plaque and a little ceremony—you know, maybe some canapés and champagne for the local dignitaries, nothing big.” Emmie started to insist again that she was going to show up at the hospital, but Trish interrupted her. “Honestly, Emmie, we’re fine. I mean it. Okay?”

  “I don’t like it,” Emmie grumbled.

  “Well, suck it up. Now get in there and mingle with those zombie alums!”

  After eliciting a promise from Trish that she would phone when she had an update on Logan’s status, Emmie ended the call and looked around, a little desperate. She was on her own. She’d rather be at the hospital with Trish and Logan. She’d rather be at home. She’d rather be in a foxhole under heavy mortar fire.

  Suddenly Juliet was at her elbow. “Emmie, is everything okay?”

  There it was again—everything okay? Emmie didn’t even want to speculate on what Juliet thought of her—most likely that she was the biggest drama magnet on the planet. Funny how it wasn’t so long ago that Trish accused her of having a boring life. Proved her wrong, Emmie thought smugly. As for Juliet, well, Emmie was going to show her just how downright normal she was.

  She put on a smile and dragged her best vocabulary out of mothballs. “Yes, everything’s fine. But I’m afraid I imposed on you to add an extra guest a little prematurely. That was Trish. She can’t make it.”

  Juliet put on a concerned frown. “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. I hope nothing’s wrong.”

  Emmie told her about Logan, and Juliet expressed just the right amount of dismay at the news. She commiserated by talking about the health crises of her own children, which another guest overheard. That woman added her accident-prone-kid anecdotes, and they were off and running in the small-talk department.

  Pretty soon Emmie realized that she was actually having a good time. The other partygoers were not, in fact, vicious animals sizing her up as their next meal; instead, they were friendly and welcoming. Sure, the Popular Girls were out in full force, and still glamorous, but the high school celebrity contingent was balanced, possibly even outnumbered, by the frumpy, the overweight, the shy—the resoundingly average. Emmie fell somewhere in the middle of the scale, which made her feel . . . normal.

  She was honestly enjoying her conversation with a few of the dowdy and a few of the still gorgeous—their own little alumnae UN—enough that, when they asked her about her life, she felt comfortable telling the truth—that she was with Wilman Designs right now, but really wanted to start her own company.

  “Oh, Emmie, you should,” enthused one of the Popular Girls, who owned her own yoga studio. “It’s so rewarding. Hard work, but worth it.”

  “I’m seriously looking into it,” Emmie replied, punctuating her words with a wave of her hand, then exclaimed, “Damn!” as a dollop of cream cheese flew off her appetizer and landed on the front of her fawn-colored sweater.

  Instead of raising their eyebrows at this faux pas, the women in the group cooed their concern. “And as you can see from my demonstration,” she commented as she started wiping at the cream cheese with her cocktail napkin, “tan-colored walls can be nicely augmented by an off-white or ivory faux-finish that we can achieve by applying the lighter color and then ragging most of it off.”

  Amid appreciative laughter at her self-deprecation, Emmie kept wiping but realized she was going to need some soap and water to really clean it up properly. Then she felt the lightest of touches on her shoulder.

  It was Juliet, breaking into their small circle to announce, “Sorry to interrupt, girls, but it’s time to divvy up the cookies. Emmie, yours are on the kitchen counter.”

  “I’ll grab them.”

  Still swiping at her cream cheese smear, she headed for the kitchen as a door slammed at the back of the house. In an instant she was nearly run over by a boy about thirteen and a girl a few years younger as they thundered down the hall, into the foyer, and up the stairs, shedding coats and shoes and backpacks along the way. She recovered in time to hear Juliet shout, “Zoë! Brian! Pick up your things! No TV up there; I want you to get your homework done—”

  Emmie was sort of pleased that Juliet had to yell at her kids like any other mother. It brought her back down to earth somewhat. She crossed to the sink, put her empty plastic wineglass and crumpled napkin on the counter, flipped on the water, and tore off a paper towel from the roll, all before she noticed the other person in the room.

  “Hello there.” A shortish man with a pleasant, freckled face and thinning, sandy hair was taking off a baseball jacket and hanging it on the back of one of the tall chairs at the breakfast bar. “How’s the party?”

  “Great; we’re so rowdy we’re flinging food. Okay, I actually flung it at myself, but still.” Emmie smiled, blotting at the stain on her sweater.

  “Sounds like a good time.” He smiled back.

  She finished cleaning up and tossed the paper towel and napkin in a nearby garbage can but held on to her wineglass for a refill. No worries about not being fit to drive; the amount of wine these glasses held wouldn’t fill the gap left by her pulled wisdom tooth—and she was too embarrassed to get any more than this next refill so she didn’t look like a lush.

  The man held out a thick, calloused hand. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Kevin Underwood. Juliet’s husband.”

  The plastic glass slipped from Emmie’s grasp and bounced on the tile floor with a clatter. She realized her mouth was open, so she tried making some words come out of it. Unfortunately the first ones that did were, “Oh! I—I didn’t know you were Mormon!”

  As the man looked at her, bemused, she hid her burning face by crouching down to pick up the glass. That’s one man, many wives, Einstein, she berated herself. She stood up and tried again. “Er, it’s nice to meet you,” she said simply.

  And then Juliet was there. She cro
ssed to her husband—Emmie could not wrap her mind around this one—and they gave each other a peck on the cheek. They were the same compact height, but Kevin was twice as broad as his wife. “How were the kids?” she asked him, and he replied, “Just fine.”

  “I see you’ve met Kevin,” Juliet said cheerfully. Emmie must have looked puzzled, because Juliet went on, “I know it’s confusing . . .” Emmie let out a breath. No kidding. She listened eagerly for the explanation. “. . . I just always felt really strongly about keeping my own last name when we got married. Luckily Kevin didn’t mind.” She turned her smile on him. “This is Emmie Brewster, Class of ’95.” As Kevin nodded at Emmie, Juliet said, “Emmie, your cookies are right over there. Why don’t I take one container and you take the other—”

  “No, it’s okay,” Emmie said hastily, eager to have something to do, even more eager to leave the kitchen. “I can get them.” She picked up the tubs, balancing her empty glass on top—she had the feeling she was going to need that thimbleful of wine even more than she’d planned—and escaped to the living room.

  The next morning at work, Emmie was surprised to hear the bell over the door jangle. She put down the supplies she was unpacking and hurried out of the back room. No meetings were scheduled, Trish was home with a recuperating Logan, and she’d gotten past the phase where she thought every person who walked into the office was her dream man. So who else could it—

  “Juliet?” Emmie stopped short at the sight of the petite woman standing just inside the doorway, clutching the strap of a large designer purse on her shoulder. Emmie scrambled to put on her professional demeanor. “Please, come in. What can I do for you?” She gestured toward the guest chair next to her desk, but Juliet remained standing.