enemies about my crush on Jimmy Paglisi. Sarah, stealing my first steady boyfriend out from under my nose. We werenât close. Weâd never been close. For one thing, we werenât anything like the same. Sarah had been a professional woman . . . emphasis on the woman, not the professional. Sheâd set out to snare herself a millionaire, which sheâd done, and to live the life sheâd always wanted, and damn whoever had to suffer to get her there. Sheâd signed the prenup because, at the time, sheâd thought she had Chrêtien completely beguiled and could get him to tear it up with enough honeyed compliments and blow jobs.
I could have told herâhell, I had told herâthat Chrêtien was way too French for that to work.
Sarah was stranded on my couch: sniffling, humiliated, practically penniless. No marketable skills to speak of. No friends, because the kinds of country club friends Sarah had made all her life didnât stick around after the platinum American Express got revoked.
She had nobody else. Nowhere to go.
There was nothing else I could say but, âDonât worry. You can stay with me.â
Later, I would remember that and pound my head against the wall. It was the flickering warning light on a road where the bridge was out and, like an idiot, I just kept on driving.
Right into the storm.
Â
I set about getting Sarah settled in my tiny spare room. Sheâd been weeping with gratitude right up until I heaved her suitcase onto the twin bed, but she stopped when she took a look around.
âYes?â I asked sweetly, because I could see the words Whereâs the rest of it? on the tip of her tongue.
She swallowed themâit must have choked herâand forced a trembling smile. âItâs great. Thanks.â
âYouâre welcome.â I looked around, seeing it through her eyes. Her utility closet in California hadnât been this small, I was certain. The furniture wasnât exactly au courant âa rickety â50s nightstand in grubby off-white French Provincial with a cockeyed drawer, a campus castoff bed too hard and lumpy for even college students. A scarred, ugly dresser of no particular pedigree, with missing drawer pulls and a cracked mirror, salvaged out of a Dumpster with the help of two semipro football players.
A real do-it-yourself nightmare.
I sighed. âSorry about this. I had to move whenââ
ââwhen we thought you were dead,â she said. âBy the time theyâd tracked me down to give me the news, your friends already knew you were all right and let me know, thank God, or Iâd have just gone crazy.â
Which gave me a little bit of a warm, sisterly glow, until she continued.
âAfter all, Iâd just found out about Chrêtien and Heather. I swear, if Iâd had one more thing to think about, I donât think even the therapy would have helped.â
I stopped feeling bad about the furniture. âGlad I didnât set you back on the road to recovery.â
âOh! No, I didnât meanââ
I sat down on the bed next to her suitcase. The frame creaked and groaned like an exasperated geezer. âLook, Sarah, letâs not kid each other, okay? Weâre not best buddies; we never were. Iâm not judging you, Iâm just saying youâre here because Iâm all youâve got. Right? So you donât have to pretend to like me.â
She looked just like me, in that secondâwide-eyed with surprise, and a little frown crinkling her forehead. Except for the hair. Even my current poodle-hair curls were better than the badly grown-out shag she was sporting.
She said, slowly, âAll right, I admit it. I didnât like you when you were younger. You were a bratty kid, and then you grew up into somebody I barely even know. And youâre weird, you know. And Mom liked you best.â
No arguing with that one. Mom really