The Friends We Keep(40)
And now, he was marrying Maggie. Evvie was, naturally, in the wedding party, and she had no idea how she was supposed to act when she saw this man again. She thought she had prepared herself by armoring up. Protecting herself from the pain of this weekend’s wedding by cloaking herself in exquisite clothes, and jewelry that he could never have afforded to buy, in a bid to prove she was invincible, incapable of feeling remorse; in a bid to show him, perhaps, that she was so far out of his league, he could never hurt her.
Evvie made sure she looked her best. She had had a nose job years before, her nose now perfectly streamlined and petite, and thanks to ever-changing hair extensions, she had a mane of thick, glossy caramel hair, down to her waist. She was no longer Evvie Hamilton, merely Evvie, and the world knew her by that name. There was Naomi, Christy, Linda, Tatjana, Cindy, and Evvie. And no one could compete.
When Evvie went out around her neighborhood, it was easy to be invisible. With no makeup, in sweats and a baseball cap, no one gave her a second glance. But she didn’t want to be invisible at Maggie’s wedding; she wanted Ben to see all that he didn’t have. After that amazing week they had had together, she never believed he would really stay away. She thought they had had something special, that he would have flown out to see her. And if not immediately, she had thought, maybe a bit later. She had harbored a fantasy of him coming out perhaps a year later, when they were both a bit more settled, a bit more mature.
The abortion put an end to that, even though for the longest time afterward she couldn’t believe that he never got in touch. Not to see how she was, not to say hello. Nothing. It was as if Ben had disappeared. As if she were dead to him.
Soon, she stopped thinking about him, and when fame and fortune came knocking on her door, she could have had, and indeed did have, any man she wanted. That most of them were alcoholic, addicted to drugs, or abusive was not her fault. Her picking mechanism was broken, she joked to friends; she was better off on her own. Sometimes, late at night when she was lying in bed alone, she would wonder about Ben, wonder whether he might have been her soul mate, whether the timing had been all wrong, whether things might have turned out differently.
She also soon learned fame and fortune were not what they were cracked up to be. Evvie had thought the money would give her freedom. She thought fame would make her feel loved. Neither had lived up to her expectations. Every time she wanted to do something for herself, work would get in the way. A job that paid too much money to turn down; an appearance at a gala that she had to make, even though she was exhausted and had planned to take her mother to Jamaica for a luxury vacation at Round Hill. She could never say no to a job, knowing her years at the top of this business were finite, terrified that there was always someone younger, more beautiful, waiting to take her place.
There was an old saying that when you’re famous, your trajectory went something like this: Who’s Evvie? Get me Evvie! Get me Evvie but cheaper! Who’s Evvie? Evvie was at the height of her “Get me Evvie!” phase, but she thought it would be different for her. She thought that it was only the beginning, that it was going to go on and on, that the sky was the limit. The most successful supermodels were being offered parts in music videos, in movies. Given that she had already acted as a child, movie roles seemed a sure bet in the foreseeable future.
Evvie was used to putting on a million clothes, a million faces, but the one face she had no idea how to pull off was the one of the girl whose best friend was marrying the man that Evvie still wondered about.
She knew she’d had no choice about the abortion—she would have had no career, no future, no independence, and she was twenty-one years old, too young to be able to handle the kind of responsibility that came with being a single mother. Except over the years she had thought about what Ben had said, that she wouldn’t necessarily be a single mother, that they could do it together, that it was something he didn’t just want, but that he was excited about. She still remembered the eagerness in his voice.
Here she was, in the car on the way from the airport, feeling sick about seeing everyone again. She’d spoken to Maggie before the wedding, had seen Topher from time to time in New York, but had not spoken to Ben since he told her he would never forgive her.
She got out a compact mirror and checked her makeup, newly applied on the plane as they were preparing to land. She was getting ready for the paparazzi who would undoubtedly be waiting, she told the stewardess, rolling her eyes with a smile. But it wasn’t for the paparazzi; it was for Ben.
She would use her beauty and her clothes as armor, rise above it and refuse to let anyone see how much she hurt.
Evvie was determined to show nothing, to give nothing away. She would be friendly and slightly cool at the wedding. Her allegiance was to Maggie, after all. Her allegiance should always have been to Maggie. If it had been, she wouldn’t have gone through all the heartbreak and be in this mess now.
The car pulled up in front of the hotel, and Evvie looked around at the idyllic countryside, suddenly aware of how inappropriately she was dressed. This was a country village in Somerset, and she was decked out in fur, jewelry, heels, and inch-thick makeup, as if she were about to hit a club in New York. She was doubting herself again, realizing it had been years since she felt this insecure. She sat in the car a few minutes longer, taking deep breaths, eventually pulling her hair back in a ponytail and trying to wipe the eye shadow off. It didn’t do much, other than perhaps tone down the glamour a tiny bit. She sat there just wishing Ben hadn’t taken up quite so much space in her head again, after all these years.