“Celeste? Celeste, what?—”
He sees the announcement in my hand. The photograph. The name.
“Oh, dear God.” His voice changes. Softens. His tone becomes something I almost recognize from a long time ago. “Oh, Celeste. Honey, no. I’m so sorry.”
He pulls me into his arms, and I let him. I hate that I let him. I hate that he’s here, that he’s the one holding me, that after everything he’s done and everything he is, he’s still the person standing in my office when my world collapses.
The sob that tears out of me doesn’t sound human. It’s raw and ugly and animal, the kind of sound you make when something fundamental breaks inside you. I’m crying into the shoulder of a man I despise, clutching his terrible rumpled suit, shaking so hard I can feel my teeth rattling.
Whitney is dead.
Whitney is dead, and I never called.
Whitney is dead, and the last thing I said to her wasI’ll never forgive you.
Whitney is dead, and I will never get to tell her that she was right about everything. About Greg. About me. About the slow, invisible way I lost myself and became everything I never wanted to be.
Greg holds me tighter. His hand rubs circles on my back, and it’s such a familiar gesture, so ingrained from over a decade of marriage, that my body responds without my permission. I lean in, seeking comfort from the last person on Earth I should need.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into my hair. “I’m so sorry, Celeste.”
He means it. I can tell. Despite everything—the affairs, the cruelty, the way he’s spent the last year trying to push me out of my own life—he knows what Whitney meant to me. He was there for all of it. The late-night phone calls. The girls’ trips. The twenty years of friendship that survived distance and careers and life changes and everything…except him.
She was trying to save me.
And I chose him instead.
“I need—” My voice breaks. I try again. “I need you to go.”
“Celeste—”
“Please.” I pull back, just far enough to see his face. My mascara is probably running. My eyes are probably swollen. I probably look like exactly what I am: an almost thirty-nine-year-old woman who just discovered that regret is a painful, physical thing. A weight on your chest that smashes and reshapes your heart like Play-Doh. “Please, Greg. I need to be alone right now.”
Or more accurately, out of respect for this woman who I loved with my whole heart, I need to not be with Greg right now.
He hesitates. For a moment, I see something in his expression—concern, maybe. Or guilt. Or just the awkwardness of a man who doesn’t know what to say at a moment he’s expected to be nothing short of eloquent.
“Okay,” he says finally. “But if you need anything?—”
“I know where to find you.”
He nods and squeezes my shoulder once.
The door closes behind him with a soft click, and I’m alone.
Just me and Patrice and the Giacometti and the funeral announcement still clutched in my shaking hand. The photograph of Whitney smiling up at me, head slightly cocked, like she’s waiting for me to speak.
I slide down the side of my desk until I’m sitting on the floor, legs splayed in front of me like a child’s, designer dress be damned. The tears won’t stop. I’m not sure I want them to. Iwant to drain every last drop so I don’t have to hold the acid of remorse in my body.
Tears of guttural guilt and regret.
Twenty years.
Twenty years of friendship.
Twenty years of laughter and secrets and holding each other through awful parents, breakups, and job losses, and the kind of ordinary disasters that define a life. Gone. Because I was too proud to admit she was right. Because I was too scared to leave. Because I kept telling myselflater, later, I’ll fix it later.
There is no later.
