The Stillwater Girls(29)

“Maybe I can come up there?” Cate asks. “Just for a week or two. Or three. If I’m feeling masochistic.”

She snickers.

“You hate it up here,” I say.

“Yeah, but I love hanging out with my best friend, so those two things basically cancel each other out.”

“Fine,” I say, a tease in my tone. “I’ll allow it.”

“I want the big guest room, though,” she says. “The one with the soaker tub.”

“I’ll have to make sure that one’s available, but we should be able to accommodate you.”

She laughs. “Glad to see you haven’t completely lost your sense of humor.”

“Why would I?”

Cate hesitates for a moment. “I don’t know . . . you just seem . . . down lately. Off. I don’t know how to describe it. When I talk to you on the phone, you just seem more distant. Like you’re not you. And Brant notices it, too. Thought maybe you’re slipping into—”

“Cate.” I say her name with a groan. We’ve taken ten steps backward here. “Please stop worrying about me, book your damn flight, and get your fine self out here so I can see what you look like without that everlasting tan of yours.”

I manage to get a slight chuckle out of her. “I don’t even think I know what my actual skin color is anymore.”

“So come find out.”

“Fine,” she says, a smile in her tone. “I’ll look at tickets as soon as we hang up.”

“Thank you,” I say with the teasing arrogance of someone who just won an argument.

She’s quiet for a moment. So am I.

“Nic?” she asks.

“Yes?”

“You’d tell me if something was going on with you, right?” she asks, clearly in the mood to beat a dead horse.

“Just . . . we can talk more when you get here.” I shut my eyes tight.

“I knew it,” she says. “Oh, God. Something’s wrong. What is it?”

“I don’t know, Cate . . . I don’t know.”

She sucks in a quick breath, releasing it into the receiver. “You’re scaring me.”

“I’m looking into some things,” I confess, though I won’t elaborate until she’s here, until I can tell her these things in person. “Until I know more, I don’t want to say anything. But that’s why I’m staying here.”

Cate’s silent, which is unusual, and I can almost picture her pacing her terra-cotta tile floors, nibbling on her hot-pink manicure.

“Nic . . .” Cate’s voice falls. “At least tell me if it’s Brant. If you two can’t make it, there’s no hope for the rest of us.”

“Can we talk about this another time?” I ask. “Like when you’re here?”

“Yeah, of course,” she says, speaking slowly as if she’s still trying to process this information. “I’m booking that flight tonight. I promise. I’ll text you the details.”

“Perfect.”

Cate is quiet once again, then she exhales into her receiver.

“What?” I ask.

“This is really going to bother me.” Her tone is teasing yet not. “And I’m going to be up all night worrying now.”

“Please don’t,” I say. At this point, I’m doing enough worrying for the both of us. “Just book that flight, and we’ll chat more when you get here.”

I use the word “chat” over “talk” in hopes it’ll quell her worries. Chats are fun and casual. You only have a “talk” when things are about to get real.

I hang up with my best friend and reach for the glass of Pinot Noir to my right, the one sitting beside the half-finished bottle. To my left lies our wedding album. Something about finding my marriage potentially on shaky ground makes me want to comb through the entirety of our relationship, examining all the bits and pieces and corners and crevices, scrutinizing every memory to ensure we were truly happy from the very beginning and that it wasn’t all in my head.

In perfect clarity, I can still recall the moment he walked into the Berkshire Gallery. Approaching the front desk, he stated his name and that he had an appointment with Mr. Berkshire. There was nothing out of the ordinary about our little exchange except for the way he looked at me—pure captivation. I remember losing my breath but being physically unable to look away from those piercing eyes, bright like a green variation of turquoise but soft like sea glass. And his hair, sandy blond, with tendrils that hung over his forehead.

That man was a work of art himself, more wondrous than any of the art adorning the stark white walls of our galleria. And within a matter of seconds, I managed to convince myself that he probably looked at all women that way. Men like him—the ones with the breathtakingly unfair good looks—were as prevalent as the giant rats that inhabited the subway system and the five-foot-eleven Eastern European beauties who came to the city in hopes of signing with Wilhelmina or IMG. They were just a part of the landscape, a part of the culture here. You only really noticed them if you were looking for them, and Lord knows I wasn’t looking for this one.

Mr. Berkshire came out a second later, our moment suspended, and as soon as they disappeared upstairs, Marin told me Brant Gideon was the next hot thing—and she would’ve known. She had her ear to the ground in the New York art scene, and I was nothing but a naive twenty-two-year-old with a shiny new art history degree, the ink barely dry on my diploma.