Page 9 of You Will Never Be Me

“Oh, this is my friend Asp—” It’s only when I glance over my shoulder that I realize Aspen is no longer behind me. I cock my head and turn around, scanning the room full of people for her. Nothing but the usual starved bodies pulsating to throbbing music.

“Uh oh, did you lose your date?” Ever says. Even above the deafening music, I catch the sneer in her voice. I want to hit her.

“She must’ve gotten lost. Excuse me, I better look for her. She’s my protégé.” I leave without waiting for a reply from Ever, plunging into the knot of people. I swim through the crowd, making sure to keep the brilliant smile on my face. People say hi to me and I say hi back to them, but my eyes don’t stop scanning the crowd, trying to locate Aspen’s familiar form. I should just leave her be. I should just enjoy myself. But I’m only now realizing that it’s been almost a year since I met Aspen, and we’ve gone to almost every party together, and her absence is disturbingly noticeable. I got used to having her shadow me. To having her watch my every interaction, knowing that she’s admiring my conversational skills; knowing that each smooth interaction I have makes her wilt just a tiny bit, because she knows she can’t do what I can. (I’m not being horrible, it’s just a fact of life that people adore the knowledge of having something that others don’t. If there was no pleasure to be taken from exclusivity, then the rich wouldn’t be so into their private country clubs. There is joy from knowing you are blessed while others are not; if you deny it, you’ll only be lying.)

Only a short while passes, but already I’m incandescent with rage. I invited her to this party. Without me, she wouldn’t even have the measly number of followers she has. And she certainly wouldn’t be here, in this jaw-dropping Malibu mansion surrounded by stars. And she has the audacity to ditch me? We are going to have fuckingwords.

But she’s the one who finds me. I’ve just stepped outside onto the patio, which overlooks the crashing waves, when she spots me. “Mer!” she cries from the beach. I turn to the sound of her voice, and my rage freezes in my veins. I’ve never seen Aspen like this before. Her hair is wild, whipping in the sea breeze, and even in the dark, I can see that her face is flushed. She looks like a wood nymph stepping out of the forest.

The spell breaks, and all my anger comes surging back in a fierce wave. “Where have you been?” I hiss, as she stumbles across the sand toward me.

“I’m so sorry!” she laughs. “Oh my gosh, you wouldn’t believe what just happened. I got separated from you—the crowd just swallowed you up—god, Mer, I was terrified. I kept trying to look for you, but the crowd was too much. I got overwhelmed, so I went outside to get some fresh air, and I went down to the beach and—”

“Got swept away,” a male voice says. A man I haven’t noticed has slipped out from the folds of the darkness. He stands close to Aspen. Way too close for someone she’s just met. Unlike everyone else at this party, he isn’t beautiful, but there’s a steadiness to his gaze that makes you look twice.

Aspen giggles, and I want to smack her. “Literally, Mer! Well, my shoe did, anyway.” She lifts her right hand, from which danglesa single shoe. “God, those waves. I wasn’t expecting them to be that strong.”

“It’s a surfer’s paradise out here,” the guy says. His voice is so deep and rich that your brain instinctively tells you to pause and listen, even if he’s saying the most clichéd words ever.

“Surfer’s paradise?” What are we, in the freaking eighties? Who even says that anymore?

“I don’t even know what I was doing,” Aspen continues. “I think I was screaming and like, rushing in to grab it back.” I notice that her voice has gone up an octave and is a little bit more nasal, like a kid’s. Once more, the urge to hurt her, to pinch her or shake her out of this, nearly overwhelms me. I swallow it down.

“She was screaming,” the guy laughs, “and yeah, she was literally about to dive in after the shoe. I caught her just before the waves took her. Are your shoes made of diamonds or something?” He looks down at her, smiling and shaking his head, and I feel nauseated. The way he’s gazing down at her and her up at him, there’s so much naked attraction in their eyes that I feel as though I am intruding. And not just attraction, but somehow a history, as though they’d known each other for a long time before tonight.

He finally seems to notice me staring and offers me his hand. “I’m sorry, I’m being rude. You must be Meredith. I’m Ben.”

I take his hand and taste bile in my throat. His grasp is firm and warm, and when I look into his aquamarine eyes, it’s clear that he’s not going to be just some guy we ran into at a party one night. The look in his eyes promises that he’s going to be a permanent problem, a constant wedge between Aspen and me.I’m going to have to get rid of you somehow, I think as I look at Ben and meet his glowingsmile.

5

ASPEN

I hate Ben’s smile. That’s anawful thing to think, isn’t it? What kind of wife hates her own husband’s smile? I used to love it, hunger for it even. I don’t know when those smiles of his changed—went from adoring to fake, and now, to disgusted ones. I pretend not to notice it tonight as I place dinner on the table. As always, dinner is a feast, both for the eyes and for the stomach. Okay, if I were to be honest, it’s more a feast for the eyes.

There’s a beautifully roasted free-range chicken with crispy brown skin, perfectly caramelized brussels sprouts with turkey bacon bits, salad with veg freshly picked from the garden, and low-GI red rice. Everything is organic and both diabetes and social media friendly.

In truth, the chicken is overcooked because to get that delectable brown shade, I needed to roast it just a tad too long. The brussels sprouts, too, are slightly burned to get those charred edges, and I can already tell from the sharp smell that they’regoing to be bitter and will most likely end up in the compost bin. Nobody likes red rice; it’s dry and brittle, and the whole point of rice is the warm vanilla fragrance and chewy texture, neither of which is present when it comes to red rice. The salad is from a garden, but it sure as hell isn’tmygarden, which has languished under the unforgiving LA heat this year. Not that anyone on social media would know; I am nothing if not meticulous. Ben had watched, incredulous, as I took the carrots I’d bought from the farmer’s market and buried them in our garden, only to take a video of myself unearthing them.

“Are you serious?” he’d said, with that disgusted snort-laugh. I’d ignored him. I have long learned that the best way to deal with my husband’s derision is to pretend it all went over my head. It’s not too big a leap for him to make, to think his wife is too fucking dumb to get anything he says.

Anyway, he smiles as I arrange each deceptively appetizing dish just so at the table. The kids are already seated, the twins on one side, baby Sabine on the other, and Ben at the head of the table. I take a video for my Stories, and my mouth pinches at how fake Ben’s smile is. He’s not even trying to look convincing for the camera. Neither is Elea, of course, but she’s six, and he’s a full-grown man with an understanding of mortgage, and healthcare bills, and why I need to keep doing this.

As I’m taking a close-up of the chicken, Elea reaches out and rips off a drumstick.

“Elea, please don’t.” I admonish her as gently as I can, but still she jerks back and looks at Ben with wide, sad eyes.

“It’s for Noemie,” she says in a small voice. “I don’t want her blood sugar to drop. Mommy’s taking too long.”

It’s a fight to keep my voice calm. “You didn’t really take it forNoemie.” Elea has never shown a shred of concern about Noemie’s blood sugar level.

Ben looks at me with—there are no other words for it—contempt. Then he turns to Elea and says, “That’s really sweet of you, Elea. I think you get a star for that.”

Elea beams up at him, and my stomach is so tight and sour that I think I might throw up. When I was pregnant with the twins, Ben had kissed my belly and said, “Promise me that you and I will always be a team? We won’t undermine each other in front of the baby?” I had promised, and I’ve kept my promise. But nowadays, it feels like it’s the entire household versus me, and I don’t understand how it got to be like this when I’m the one keeping everything afloat.

I force a smile—when was the last time my smiles came naturally?—and straighten up. “It’s fine. I’m done with the video.” I’ll roll with the ruined footage, because when have I not? I already know the caption: “Somebody couldn’t wait to dig in! #HomeCooked #BestRoastChicken.”

There are grumbles as everyone starts eating. Well, I say everyone, but the complaints are mostly from Ben and Elea, who hate absolutely everything on the table. Noemie eats quietly, but I can tell from the way she chews and doesn’t meet anyone’s eye that she, too, isn’t enjoying herself. Guilt and resentment fight for dominance inside me.What are they complaining about? I do my best to put food on the table every fucking day and all they do is complain.Then the guilt—a quiet, sharp whisper that slides like a knife across a vein:Yes, but you know the food sucks. It’s purely for aesthetics, but it tastes like crap. The chicken might as well be cardboard.

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