Botox? WTF? They couldn’t possibly be serious…and I was sure my disbelief was all over my face, because Audra, who sat right beside me, patted my knee. “You don’t have to start that young. You have perfect skin, but there’s a lot to be said for preventative measures. You have to plan ahead, because otherwise, you’ll be thirty-something and his eye will stray.” Nods all around, except Julia, who sipped demurely from her cup. “Because it’s everywhere. All the time. In their faces. It’s really hard for them, you know. They constantly have to say no to what is openly offered to them, you know what I mean?”
Just nod, Mia. Nod. But no…I frowned, completely baffled as to what she was talking about. “No.”
“Sex, Mia. Women,” Trish supplied. “Women are all around, circling like vultures who can smell the death of a marriage from miles away. And sometimes—many times—they don’t wait till the demise of the marriage to close in.” Everyone avoided glancing at Audra during this speech.
“He’ll get attention, that’s for sure.” Sonya nodded with a smile hovering on her lips.
“He already does,” Trish cut in before cheerfully turning to me. “Your future hubby is very easy on the eyes.” I gulped, suddenly feeling nauseated. “You know it’s already happening, don’t you? When he’s gone on trips or whatever, he’s getting sex offered to him on a silver platter every day.”
At my stricken expression, she smiled. “You have nothing to worry about now. He’s desperately in love. Make sure to keep it that way. Average guys cheat all the time. It happens even when they aren’t constantly offered the golden opportunities that ours are.”
Julia chimed in. “But sometimes giving a pass to a brief indiscretion is the easiest way to handle it when it does happen. Instead of blowing it all out of proportion.”
Now I could barely swallow. Adam and I weren’t even married yet, and already they had him cheating on me and me forgiving him for it. I was this close to barfing up my dinner.
“Unless you’ve got a cheating clause in the prenup, of course,” added Audra, laughing. “Then you can take him to the cleaners.” The women erupted into laughter, and that caught the attention of the men, who wandered over to join us. Naturally, the conversation shifted to a safer subject. Thank the Maker.
But I was left to stew on their words…on things I hadn’t really thought of before. Like Adam being offered sex at every turn by dozens, scores of beautiful women with model-shaped bodies and perfectly maintained hair and skin. None of them would come home to him in baggy hospital greens and fall asleep exhausted before he could even strike up a conversation.
Adam had already had a semi-crazy stalker from work. Cari, an intern, had gone from crushing on him to harboring a whacko obsession. It had grown to a point where Adam had had to fire her for doing some horrible, cruel things. Things that had been motivated by her jealousy of me.
But to think that there were dozens or more where Cari had come from…and some not so crazy. And probably a lot smarter. Most of them wouldn’t give a shit about his workaholic tendencies. They would like what they saw beyond even his monstrous net worth. It didn’t help that Adam had movie-star good looks.
He really was the perfect package, and up until this moment, I’d had no problems gloating to myself that he was all mine.
Doubts, insidious with their quiet whispers, began to raise their voices. He was determined to get us married now. Why? I was completely on board with that plan. But what if, someday, I wasn’t enough for him? What if, in a moment of weakness, he gave in to just one of those many, many temptations? No man was perfect, after all…
Thankfully, not long after that, Katya’s phone call interrupted my mental stewing and allowed me to make quick excuses to my hostess. I told them I had to go home to check on Adam. One of the husbands joked that I should wear a naughty nurse’s costume to cheer him up as I tended to him. None of them knew that Adam was at risk of a spleen rupture, so I laughed it off instead of sharing that personal tidbit about our imposed sex blackout.
I trudged back to our house, lost in thought. Pressing my thumb to the biometric lock, I entered, quietly shut the door behind me, and climbed the stairs. In our room, Adam was lying in bed, still playing on his laptop.
I was so agitated that I stalked straight into the bathroom to collect myself. As I removed my earrings and other jewelry, I stopped before wiping off my makeup. Frozen, I stared at the troubled brown eyes in the mirror.
Should I let him see me with the makeup on before I took it off? It still looked good. He mostly saw me barefaced around the house. What if he thought I was plain and shabby because of how I dressed?
A lump formed in my throat, hard to swallow, difficult to breathe through. My mouth went dry. I’d been unwanted before…knew what it felt like. My own father hadn’t wanted me, and all that emotion had been dragged up fresh via my correspondence with Glen.
My stomach twisted, roiling with nausea.
Would Adam eventually reject me? I remembered the feeling again, from a time when he had rejected me. Weeks after I’d recovered from cancer, he’d sent me away to my mom’s. We’d lived apart for months without communicating. It had helped us heal, but I’d been despondent. If he left me after we were married, it would feel like that multiplied times a thousand. Oh God.
And what would happen when he wanted a child? What if I couldn’t give him one? Would he find a woman who could? I hadn’t had a real period since the chemo had ended. Sometimes, I had a light flow or spotting, but nothing that indicated my fertility might return. There was a good chance it was gone forever.
In ten years, when he was pushing forty, he’d want a baby. And he could find some beautiful young thing who’d give him one.
And I’d be on the sidelines, standing by, watching him with his new family. Would I be the mature ex-wife, refusing to write a tell-all book about him or do interviews with the press? Would I be stoic while the world was watching, speculating on my humiliation as I suffered in silence?
Oh, God. I doubled over the sink, yanking on the faucet, feeling every single failure acutely, real and imagined, historical or present. In spite of earlier fears, I splashed cold water on my face. But it did nothing but make my mascara run. How could I face—
“Did you have a good time?” Adam interrupted when he poked his head into the bathroom. I stood there gaping at myself like a fool in the mirror, the water still running. Blinking, I switched off the faucet.