The Pretend Wife by Bridget Asher Read Free Book Online Page A

bathroom to dawdle with lipstick, wasting a little time. There was a short line. When the door opened, Peter walked out. He cupped my ear. “I’m stoned. That blonde invited me to do some blow. But I declined.” He pointed into Helen’s study, where Jason was talking to the blond conversational vampire, but happily so.
    â€œJason isn’t supposed to be here.”
    â€œOh, I know. He’s doomed. He’s so fucking doomed. Look at him.” And we both did. He was effervescently joyful. He was pointing at the blonde saying, “See, you get me! You’re like a mind reader!” Peter shook his head. “He’s an idiot. He’s stoned too. He’s a dead man. It’s like looking at a dead man. A stoned dead man. But I’m being so good. Minus the stoned stuff. But getting stoned isn’t bad. It’s just not, you know, part of our lives. What with the kids and all. We have to set a good example.”
    â€œThat’s right,” I said.
    â€œThat’s right,” he repeated quietly, and then he straightened up to his full height. “Okay! Divide and conquer!” he said, and he was off.
    I talked to a man about his home brewery—a minikeg in the fridge, something about hops and whatnot. I talked to a drummer briefly, until his girlfriend got a call on her cell phone and started crying. I talked to a miniaturist—a woman who built custom-designed dollhouses for the rich and famous. She was very small. I listened to a behemoth comedian who started riffing on gas prices and skinny people and how his ex-wife feminized him by making him sleep on floral sheets. I didn’t have much to say to anyone. I wondered where Elliot had gone, if he would become a staple at these parties, if I’d pawned him off on Helen never to see him again. Vivica, in her studded leather, never showed up, and I missed her.
    Eventually the party quieted down, and I found myself reunited with Peter, Helen, Elliot, Jason, and the blonde—whose name I never did catch—lounging around on the white sofa. I wasn’t lounging. I was tense, poised. I had a plate of kabobs balanced on my knees. Having decided that I wasn’t really up for the party, why not eat my way through it?
    Everyone was a little drunk by now, including me. Helen was telling a story of a recent breakup. “He shut down when I gave him an ultimatum. He said it put too much pressure on him. But he doesn’t know real pressure. He has no ticking biological clock. That’s pressure.” Unlike Peter, Helen didn’t talk about kids at all—just the clock, as if having kids was some sort of time trial.
    â€œI was engaged just two years ago,” Elliot said. He was sitting there with his shin propped on one knee, holding a beer in one hand and rubbing his knee with the other, like his knee was paining him.
    â€œBut I thought Ellen ran off with a flight attendant after college,” I said.
    â€œI was engaged to someone else. Her name was Claire.”
    â€œBut isn’t marriage barbaric?” I asked, pressing him on this point. He had, after all, kind of made fun of me for being married. “A blood sport?”
    â€œIt is, but unfortunately I’m a barbarian.”
    Peter sat there puffy lidded. “A barbarian,” he said. “You? That’s funny.”
    Elliot didn’t say anything. He simply leaned over the lilacs in the vase on the coffee table and ate one.
    â€œThat was very barbaric,” Helen said.
    â€œVery lemony,” Elliot said, chewing.
    Maybe Peter felt like he was being baited. I don’t know. But suddenly he growled and slumped over onto Helen’s lap and bit her rose corsage. She screamed and smacked him on the head. He reared from her, covered his head with his arms, chewing the rose.
    â€œDid you see that?” she shrieked. “Did anyone see that?”
    We all had.
    I imagined telling Faith about this when she