Too Good to Be True - Kristan Higgins [22]
Natalie and Andrew sat at opposite ends of the Thanksgiving table. When Stuart broke out the Scrabble board and asked them if they wanted to play after dinner, Andrew accepted and Natalie instantly declined. The next day, we all went bowling, and they didn’t speak. Later, we went to the movies, and they sat as far away from each other as possible. They avoided going into a room if the other was there.
“So what do you think?” I asked Natalie, pretending that all was normal.
“He’s great,” she said, her face going nuclear once more. “Very nice.”
That was good enough for me. I didn’t need to hear more. Why talk about Andrew, after all? I asked her about school, congratulated her on winning an internship with Cesar Pelli and once again marveled at her perfection, her brains, her kind heart. After all, I’d always been my sister’s biggest fan.
Andrew and Natalie saw each other again at Christmas, where they leaped away from the mistletoe like it was a glowing rod of uranium, and I pretended not to be disturbed. There couldn’t be anything between them, because he was my fiancé and she was my baby sister. When Dad told Nat to take Andrew down the back hill on our old toboggan and neither of them could find a way to get out of it, I laughed when they crashed and rolled, becoming entangled in each other. No, no, nothing there.
Nothing, my ass.
I wasn’t about to say anything. Each time the irritating little voice in my soul brought it up, usually at 3:00 a.m., I told her she was wrong. Andrew was right here with me. He loved me. I’d reach out and touch his knobby elbow, that sweet neck of his. We had something real. If Nat had a crush on him… well. Who could blame her?
My wedding was in ten weeks, then eight, then five. Invitations went out. Menu finalized. Dress altered.
And then, twenty days before our wedding, Andrew came home from work. I had a pile of tests beside me on the kitchen table, and he’d very thoughtfully brought home some Indian food. He even dished it out, spooning the fragrant sauce over the rice, just as I liked it. And then came the awful words.
“Grace…there’s something we need to talk about,” he said, staring at the onion kulcha. His voice was shaking. “You know I care about you very much.”
I froze, not looking up from the exams, the words as ominous as Sherman’s in Georgia. The moment I’d successfully avoided thinking about was upon me. Knowing I would never look at Andrew the same way, I couldn’t take a normal breath. My heart thundered sickly.
He cared about me. I don’t know about you, girls, but when a guy says I care about you very much, it seems to me that the shit is about to rain down. “Grace,” he whispered, and I managed to look at him. As our untouched garlic naan cooled, he told me that he didn’t quite know how to say this, but he couldn’t marry me.
“I see,” I said distantly. “I see.”
“I’m so sorry, Grace,” he whispered, and to his credit, his eyes filled with tears.
“Is it Natalie?” I asked, my voice quiet and unrecognizable.
His gaze dropped to the floor, his face burned red, and his hand shook as he ran it through his soft hair. “Of course not,” he lied.
And that was that.
We’d just bought the house on Maple Street, though we weren’t living there yet. As part of our divorce settlement or whatever you want to call it—blood money, guilt, emotional damages—he let me keep his portion of the down payment. Dad reworked my finances to tap into a few mutual funds that my grandfather had left me, reduced the size of my mortgage so I could swing it alone, and I moved in. Alone.
Natalie was wrecked when she found out. Obviously, I didn’t tell her the reason for our breakup. She listened to me lie as I detailed the reasons for our breakup… just wasn’t right…not really ready…figured we should be sure.
She asked only one quiet little question when I was done. “Did he say anything else?”
Because she must have known