Chapter 156
Really? Those were the first words she had to say to him? He knew he deserved it, and since he could not blame her, he said, “How do you suppose we go about doing that?”
“I think we should agree to avoid each other whenever humanly possible. I’ll stay out of your way and you stay out of mine. After this wedding, we never have to see each other again.”
The never seeing each other again part sounded like a knife to his gut, and it made no sense because he'd said similar words to her about two weeks ago.
A corner of his mouth twitched, then he gave her a solemn nod. “Sounds like a good idea.”
________
Lexi sat outside on the private balcony of her bedroom, at the cute little wrought-iron patio set, reading the novel she’d started two days ago. The sun felt warm on her skin, and a damp, salty ocean breeze flipped the ends of her ponytail.
What better place to relax and get her mind out of the fears she'd been having lately? To kick back and put her feet up? Yet she was so tense she’d read the same paragraph half a dozen times and still had no idea what it said.
She marked her page and set the book down, rubbing at the beginnings of a headache in her temples. This was supposed to be some sort of vacation. It was supposed to be fun. She heard her bedroom door open, and her friend called to her. “Are you in here?”
Lexi looked at her watch. It had taken Lily a full hour to work up the courage to face her again.
“I’m out here,” she said.
Several seconds passed, then she heard Lily behind her. “Are you mad at me?”
Mad?
Mad didn’t scratch the surface of what she was feeling. She felt hurt and betrayed and humiliated. They were supposed to be friends. The sister neither had ever had. A team. How could Lily pull a stunt like this? How could she lie by omission? She turned to her friend. Lily stood in the bedroom doorway wringing the color from her hands, looking like the poster girl for guilt and remorse.
Lexi concentrated on keeping her voice calm and rational. “How could you do this to me?”
“I’m so sorry. But I knew if I told you, you wouldn’t have come. Without you as my maid of honor, it would ruin everything.”
Lily was one of those women who had begun planning her wedding the instant she left the womb. She’d accumulated a ceiling-high stockpile of bridal magazines and catalogs by the fifth grade. After a few miserably failed false starts, she had finally snagged Mr. Right. Lexi got the feeling Lily saw this as her last chance and that, if everything didn’t go exactly as planned, she was destined to spend the rest of her life alone and childless and die a bitter spinster.
“I'm sorry, Lexi, but he's my friend too and I wanted him to be here. Look, I know you probably won’t believe this,” Lily continued, “but Tyler is really sorry for how things went down between you two and he's willing to make amends,”
“You’re right. I don’t believe it.”
“It's true. Maybe it’s time you…” Lily paused, her lip clamped between her teeth again.
“It’s time I what?”
She shrugged. “Maybe…get past it.”
“Get past what?”
“What I mean is, Maybe it’s time you…forgive him.”
Forgive him? Was Lily joking? Had the wedding jitters short-circuited her brain? Did a woman ever get past having her heart stomped on and filleted into a million pieces? Only if she knew her fears right now…
“He hurt me and you know it.”
Lily lowered herself into the chair beside Lexi's, a look of genuine concern on her face. “I just hate to see you so unhappy.”
Her words nearly knocked Lexi out of her chair. “What are you talking about? I'm not unhappy,”
“Well, something is definitely wrong with you. Since you got back you've been pretty down even though you deny it, and don't think I haven't noticed how sick you've been a few times and lost in thought sometimes. I just want you two to fix this fight, whatever the hell it was about and go back to being friends.”
Lexi swallowed hard and said nothing. Had she been that obvious? If she told Lily right now that it wasn't just about restoring their friendship. If she opened about her pregnancy scare, Lily would flip the fuck out. She was scared out of her mind herself even though she didn't know for real. Too scared to even take a test to find out for real, and honestly, this week was supposed to be about Lily's wedding. She didn't want to do anything to take up all the attention.
“You know,” Lily was saying, “You don't even have to be friends anymore. You could be—More —Together—I mean, lovers again. You're a single woman now so there's nothing to feel guilty about. We all know friendship might be difficult when a certain line has been crossed,”
“I don’t need a man to be happy or to complete me.”
“Maybe not, but they sure can be fun to have around.”
Lexi had had enough of this conversation. “Setting me up like this has put me in a terrible position. Considering all the people who will be at the wedding. Victor is here. I know he might not have been in love with me but he was still my fiancé, and I stepped out on him with my best friend, now my ex, who will now be at this wedding. My father will be present too, and he still hasn't gotten over it. We only just started to put this behind us. Why would you invite such drama to your wedding?”
“I guess I never thought about it like that.” Lily's lower lip began to quiver and tears hovered just inside her eyelids. “I was only trying to help. If you want to leave, I understand.”
Lexi sighed. As mad as she was at her friend, deep down she knew her intentions were pure. If she said she was trying to help, it was the truth, and it was executed out of love and concern. Oh, hell.
She reached over and squeezed Lily's fisted hands. “I’m not going anywhere. This is the most important week of your life, and I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”