Page 4 of My Ex-Best Friend's Wedding

I’m not hungry, but I reach for the tea sandwiches anyway. Tears threaten but I refuse to shed them. Not here in The Plaza. And not in front of this woman who has helped make me what I am.

“Don’t worry. Yourcorefan base is incredibly devoted. True diehards. They’d read the phone book if your name was on the spine.”

Is it just me or does this imply that my books don’t have to be that good because my readers—or at least those who haven’t gotten lost—will read them anyway? I want to put my face in my hands and cry. Actually I’d like to put my head down on the table andclosemy eyes. But only if I could wake up tomorrow younger, firmer, and with sales numbers that don’t make it so hard to swallow.

“So what are you doing for your fortieth?” she asks brightly.

“I’m sleeping in tomorrow and I don’t plan to write a single word.” Though under the circumstances maybe I should. “Spencer is taking me out to dinner.”

“Oh, where?”

“I don’t know,” I say, matching her smile even though my brain is running around in circles shrieking in distress. “He said it was a surprise.”

“He’s a keeper, that one,” she says with another smile.

There’ve been quite a few men over the last two decades. I mean, I’m not exactly a femme fatale, but I’m not chopped liver yet, either. Though I guess I might be after tomorrow. Happily, Spencer Harrison is smart and funny and he understands the rigors of succeeding in a creative field. Relationship-wise we’re in the perfect place—monogamous and committed without any of the angst that comes from wanting to take things to another level. I mean, it’s not as if either of us is looking to get married. I’ve pretty much stopped thinking about my biological clock and have accepted that I may never be a mother.

Chris raises her glass. “To you, Lauren. To your fortieth. And to your talent and to future success. I know this next book will be your best yet!”

We clink and drink then decimate most of the desserts even though every bite is difficult to swallow and sits in my churning stomach like a lead weight. We talk about the weather and plays and movies we’ve seen. We don’t speak any further about my sagging sales. But then we don’t need to.

Bree

D-day

Manteo

Someone is in the room. I realize this at the same time I notice that my cheek is pressed against a hard surface and my neck is stiff, as if I’ve been in this position too long.

A hand grasps my shoulder, shakes gently.

“Wha?” My mouth is dry and cottony. My eyes are caked shut.

“Happy birthday.” The voice belongs to my husband, Clay. I can feel him leaning over me.

I yawn and blink my eyes open. I discover that the hard surface underneath my cheek is my desk. I apparently fell asleep with my arms spread across it in supplication. The fingers of my right hand are locked around my computer mouse. The pages I printed out yesterday are damp with drool. I manage to raise my head, swipe at the corner of my mouth, and focus on Clay’s face.

He’s six-two, almost six-three, and I have to crane my aching neck to meet his eyes, which are a bright, changeable blue. His blond hair has darkened. He’s still broad and solid, but not the football star heartthrob he once was. He’s holding a chocolate cupcake with one lit candle in it. Our sixteen-year-old daughter, Lily, stands next to him bearing a mug of coffee. She sings “Happy Birthday to You” quickly, on key, and with a minimum of emotion.

“Did you finish?” she asks, and I remember that I told them both I was going to typeThe Endbefore this morning or die in the attempt. That I refused to turn forty until I’d finally finished what I started all those years ago. I know from experience that it’s not a good sign about the material when you fall asleepwhileyou’re writing it. In my heart I know that if I’d finishedHeart of GoldI wouldn’t have still been up here. I would have been downstairs celebrating. Or at least asleep in my own bed. Still, I unclench my hand and rouse the screen and make myself look. “Nope.”

“Here.” She sets the mug on the desk. “You’re close. And it’s not like you have a real deadline or anything.” It’s hard to tell if this is the dig it feels like. If I had a real deadline, as in a contract with a publisher like my former best friend does, it would have been done a decade ago.

Clay sets the cupcake in front of me. It’s a tradition my grandmother started when my parents first left me with her—birthday cake for breakfast—that used to make the day feel extra special. Now it’s just something that he knows I expect and remembers to do. They both look at me expectantly, so I lean over and blow out the candle. “We’re going to have your birthday dinner at Kendra’s, right?” Lily says.

“Yes.” This is another tradition, the joint celebration of Lauren’s and my birthday, that Kendra started when she took me in and made me the third member of their family. I can still remember how she’d cook all day to make Lauren’s and my favorite dishes, the homemade birthday cake with both our names written across the top in interlocking letters, how we’d make our wishes then blow out the candles together.

“Six thirty.” My voice wobbles with memory.

“Okay.” She hugs me then returns downstairs.

“I’m going to head out, too.” Clay doesn’t quite meet my eyes. “Are you all right with, um, celebrating later?”

“Sure. No problem.” I smile and try to mean it then watch him turn and leave.

I eye the cupcake but can’t quite bring myself to eat it. In the first few years we were married, birthday cake was a prelude to spending the morning in bed. And even then I would sometimes wonder if he wished I were Lauren. Because they’d gone steady for so long. It was only after I stayed home instead of going to New York with her that our friendship turned into something more. By the time we got married I’d convinced myself that we were better suited than he and Lauren ever would have been; that we wanted the same things. In my experience you can talk yourself into almost anything, and even believe it for a time.

Now we rarely do anything in bed together but sleep. When we do I worry that he wishes I were someone else. While I wish he were more like Heath, the hero in my novel. Loving and physically affectionate. And completely faithful.

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