Truly (New York Trilogy #1) (40 page)

“Just be.” Allie repeated the words back to her, and May saw that her sister’s cheeks were blotchy, her eyes red-rimmed. She must have cried a bunch more during the conversation with Matt.

“Yeah. Turn off every single filter that says,
No, that’s not you
, and
No, you can’t wear that
, and
No, that’s not what you’re supposed to be doing
, and just be.”

“How’s that working out for you?”

The question was flippant, but Allie’s eyes weren’t. She wanted to know.

“So far, it’s got its pluses and minuses.”

Allie smiled. Then she dropped her head and wrapped one arm around her middle.

“Al?”

She lifted her eyes. Tears streaked down her cheeks, but she was smiling. “That is
such
a May thing to say.”

May closed her eyes, smiling back even as her throat pinched shut. “Why aren’t we drinking yet?”

“I don’t know. It’s a problem. Hang on.”

Allie came back a minute later with two glasses, a corkscrew, and a bottle of red wine that had been at the back of May’s cabinet for ages. May hopped down to open it, threw the cork into the sink, and poured generously.

“Should we toast?” Allie asked.

May’s nose wrinkled. “No. Ben toasts. We get schnockered without ceremony.”

“Okay.” Allie lifted the glass, closed her eyes, and drank half its contents in one go. She licked her lip. “Where did this come from?”

“I think some random woman gave it to Dan after a game.”

“It tastes expensive.”

“Good. Let’s drink it really fast.”

“You’re such a tactical genius.”

May knocked back a slug of wine, enjoying the way its cool, dark taste sent fingers of warmth into her chest and down toward her stomach.

“Where did you get those pants? Your butt looks
so good
in those pants.”

“My thighs look like anacondas.”

Allie stepped back and assessed. “Yeah, but in a completely awesome way.”

“That’s what I thought, too. Dare I ask how the talk went with Matt?”

Allie tipped back her glass and drained it. “You may dare.”

May raised an eyebrow.

“He thanked me.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“Oh, May, he was so mature and great,” Allie moaned. “He thanked me, and he said he’d known I was having some doubts, and he was glad I’d told him because he didn’t want to trap me into a marriage that was wrong for me. And that he wishes me well and he’ll always love me as a friend, and
that
—” Allie set her glass on the countertop. May refilled it. “
That
is when I started crying. Then I cried for twenty minutes and he gave me tissues and patted my back.”

Allie drank a lot more wine, very quickly, and then wiped her hand over her mouth. “He actually meant all of it, too. I am the worst person in the entire universe.”

“No, you’re not. Ben is the worst person in the entire universe. You’re second.”

Allie smiled, shaking her head. “I hope Matt is bitching to somebody right now, and not just being all wonderful and calm and, like, supporting Mom through this difficult time.”

Matt wouldn’t be bitching. Even if he wanted to, who would he bitch to? May, Allie, and Dan were his closest friends. None of them were available.

Allie must have had the same thought. “I hope he’s at least with the dogs. Throwing sticks or something.”

“He’ll be okay.”

“You think?”

“I know. He’s the most emotionally resilient person I’ve ever met.”

“He’s coming to the party.”

“What? No. How can he? Nobody is
that
resilient.”

“He cried.”

“That must have been awful.”

“It was. It still is. But afterward, we were both kind of sitting on the couch, all snotty, and Matt was like, ‘So how do you see what happens next?’ and I was like, ‘I don’t know, I can barely think. May told everybody we’re still going to have the party.’ And he didn’t say anything for like a whole minute, and then he said, yeah, we
should
have the party, because all these family and friends had come to celebrate with us, and he didn’t want to spend what was supposed to have been the best night of his life sitting around feeling sorry for himself. So I said maybe it was
healthy
to feel sorry for himself, and he said he didn’t give a shit what was healthy, if getting drunk and dancing and not thinking about anything too hard was an option.”

“I can respect that position.”

“Yeah, I think we’re pretty firmly in the same camp. So it’s going to be the weirdest, most awkward not-wedding reception there ever was. We’ll probably go way over budget on the open bar. But it’s not like we’re going to be short on time to mope later. I mean, fuck, I’m going to have to move. We’ll have to figure out dog custody, and—” Her voice broke. May reached for her sister and pulled her into an awkward, sloppy hug.

“The point is,” Allie continued after she’d recovered, “we can be miserable tomorrow. Tonight, Matt’s bringing his party playlists. And he’s going to wear his shirt.”

“The yellow polyester?”

“With his tight blue disco pants.”

May smiled. Matt loved KC and the Sunshine Band. He was hella fun at a party.

“What are you going to wear?” May asked.

Allie eyed the dress hanging on the shower curtain. “I had this crazy idea.”

“What?” she asked cautiously. Because Allie had that doom sparkle in her eye.

“Wait here a sec.”

Allie bounced out of the room and returned moments later with a plastic bag from the grocery store swinging from her hand. “You remember Gwen Stefani’s wedding dress? With the pink?”

“No.”

“Sure you do. It was dip-dyed pink at the hem, and then it faded all the way up the skirt to white at the top.”

“That sounds … interesting.”

Allie shook her head. “Not interesting. Gorgeous. We can do it in the bathtub.” She pulled a hot-pink box of Rit Dye from the bag.

“You can’t be serious.”

“I’m totally serious.”

“We have never had a single successful experiment with Rit,” she reminded her sister. “You have to know this. Every time you buy Rit, we end up with some horrible, unwearable—”

“May, it’s my
wedding dress
. It’s not like I’m going to need it again.”

“You can’t take it back?”

Allie shook her head. “I wouldn’t anyway. It’s a great dress. And now we’re going to make it pink, and I’m going to wear it and get fabulously drunk.”

“We don’t even have time to dry it.”

“If it won’t dry on that shelf thingy in the dryer, we can use towels and the hair dryer. It’ll be fine.”

“It’ll be damp and chemical-smelling.”

“So what? I’m the bride. No one will be able to say a thing.”

“I don’t know.”

Allie gripped her shoulders and leaned in to lock eyes with May. “Please. Big sister. I’m having a personal crisis here. Help me dye my cry for help.”

Allie grinned, and May had to grin back.

“Okay.” She pushed the shower curtain aside, flipped the drain closed, and started running water into the tub.

“Get the hair guard out, or it’ll turn pink.” Allie leaned past her to grab it, then straightened and went round-eyed staring at May’s chest. “Where did you get that shirt?”

“I had it at the back of my closet.”

“For how long?”

May sucked in her cheeks as she considered the question. The wine she’d swallowed was already humming its way into her bloodstream, making the very act of sucking in her cheeks more interesting than it ought to have been.

Had she eaten lunch? Possibly not.

She should correct that mistake.

“We need to order a pizza,” she said.

“You order it. I’m going to dump Rit in your tub.”

“This is such a bad idea.”

May finished her wine before she left the room. She ordered her and Allie’s favorite pizza on the kitchen phone and came back just as Allie was dumping the dye granules directly into the water.

“Five years ago,” she said.

“Five years ago what?”

“I bought this top five years ago.”

“I’ve never seen you wear it.”

“That’s because I’ve never worn it. You know you’re supposed to dissolve those in a measuring cup first?”

Allie shrugged away this concern and started swirling dye powder with her fingers. “It looks good on you.”

May didn’t glance at the mirror this time. “I know.”

In five years, she’d tried it on three or four times, but every time, she’d talked herself out of wearing it. Too skimpy. Too trashy. Too brazen for a girl like her.

She knew better now. She’d had her heart trounced, but her confidence remained, stubbornly refusing to be crushed. It was a relief to find she could keep on bending under the weight of so much difficulty, so much pain, and still not break.

A relief, but not a surprise.

The part that surprised her was that she wasn’t more devastated about Ben. As the afternoon flew by, her anger had faded, but sorrow hadn’t taken its place. She’d been right when she told Allie she wasn’t done with him yet.

It was the opposite of how she’d felt about Dan. She’d broken up with him badly—ineptly, shamefully—and it hadn’t felt good. But it
had
felt correct, because it had been the right thing to do.

Nothing about Ben’s leaving felt correct, so May simply refused to accept that it was over. “I’m going back to New York,” she said.

Allie turned off the faucet, and the sudden silence echoed in the tiny bathroom.

After a few beats, Allie said, “Give me the dress.”

May removed it from the hanger. She ran one finger over the plain strapless bodice, its horizontal pleats the only decoration that the elegant, heavy satin required.

She placed the dress on Allie’s lap. Allie flipped it over, took a deep breath, and plunged the hem into the tub with her eyes squeezed shut.

“What if he won’t see you?” she asked.

“That’s not why.”

“Please.”

“That’s not
all
of it. I need to find out … who I can be there, I guess. Who I am, when I’m not trying so hard to be who everybody expects me to be.”

Allie swished the dress around in the water. “You think it’s been in here long enough?”

“No. Are you kidding? You just put it in.”

“I think it’s long enough.” Allie lifted the dress out. It wasn’t pink. It was sort of … liver-colored. “Whugh,” she said. “That is not good.”

“I told you.”

“You always tell me. How am I going to avoid turning into a human disaster if you leave me here alone? No Matt, no May. I’ll be a train wreck.”

“So come with me.”

“Do you think this will turn more pink if I put it back in?”

“No.”

Allie plunged the dress back into the tub, deeper this time. “Maybe I should.”

May put a hand on her shoulder and peered into the tub. There were still unmixed granules of dye on the bottom, and Allie was making no apparent effort to immerse the dress in stages for a dip-dyed effect. This was almost certainly the worst idea she’d ever had.

“Maybe you should. But you can’t do it for me. You can only do it for you.”

“Can we go tomorrow?”

May searched the countertop for her wineglass. Both glasses sat side by side, empty. She refilled them and passed one to her sister.

“I think it’s pretty likely that tomorrow we’ll be too busy wishing we were dead to drive to New York.”

“In an ideal world, we’d have a convertible for the drive. We could wear silk scarves on our heads and big, fabulous sunglasses with rhinestones.”

“And eat aspirin straight out of the bottle.”

“Yeah, we’ll crunch it up like candy because we’re just that hardcore.”

“Remember when Mom used to smash aspirin and mix it with sugar on a spoon?”

Allie smiled. “She got the idea from Mary Poppins.”

“It didn’t work.”

“At all.”

They drank their wine. Allie set her glass down on the floor and swished the dress back and forth in the tub. “I’m so going to regret this tomorrow.”

“Yeah.”

“And the wine. And the party. And probably everything about every decision I’ve made in the past … oh, three years.”

“I’m a week ahead of you there.”

Allie tilted her head. “How’s life looking from the future?”

May drained her glass and smiled down at the dregs. “The sex is great. I can’t recommend much else about it.”

Allie opened the drain and lifted her sodden, hideous, purple-brown half-dyed wedding dress out of the water. “Because I’m only two glasses of wine down, and I’m clearly taking your place as the tactful sister, I’m going to refrain from saying anything about my sex life right now.”

May inclined her glass appreciatively in Allie’s direction.

“But I will say this.” She raised the dress high in the air. Pinkish water dripped over the lip of the tub and onto May’s white bath rug. “I am certainly not going to get any action while wearing this dress.”

“No, I don’t think there’s any risk of that. But there probably wasn’t anyway. It’s not tactful to score with a bride who’s just jilted her fiancé. Not when he’s at the party.”

“Yeah, I hear you there. And it’s important to be tactful above all things.”

“We don’t want to get a reputation. Those Fredericks girls.”

“They might be man-eaters, but they have excellent manners.”

May snorted, and that set Allie giggling. She slumped off the lip of the tub and dropped to the floor, still straight-armed, holding her bridal gown in the air. The longer she looked at it, the harder she laughed, and the sight made May laugh, too, until her face hurt and her knees went
weak. She slid down the wall, eyes streaming, and pressed her cheek against Allie’s back.

They stayed like that. Collapsed in a heap, dizzy and tipsy and light-headed with laughter and life.

It was only a four-mile drive to the farm. He parked on the shoulder of the road and walked the quarter mile of gravel, holding his breath as he rounded the corner and the house came into view.

It was only a house. Two stories of dingy white clapboard with green shutters.

A cedar-shake planter full of chrysanthemums stood beside the back steps, dark red and bright orange. His father’s boots occupied the right side of the landing, same as they always had.