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Bex has chosen a very fancy restaurant for happy hour—the sort where you’re provided a new napkin within seconds of anything slightly out-of-the-ordinary happening to the original one, and if you’re splitting a bottle of wine the waiter swoops in frequently yet discreetly, like a ball boy at Wimbledon, to ensure you’ve always got plenty in your glass.
Rebecca and Bex are definitely splitting a bottle of wine. And oysters with a classic mignonette.
Rebecca loves fine dining, but restaurants this stuffy take service to an extreme that actually makes her uncomfortable. Not that she shows it. It’s possible her standards have plummeted—this year, she’s spent more time drinking in Ted’s favorite dive bar in Kansas City than anywhere else—but she’s pretty sure her standards are doing just fine. She loves that dingy little bar. She presumes Bex has chosen this spot because she assumes it’s what Rebecca would prefer. Then again, Bex has never seemed particularly concerned with what others think about her and her choices. Maybe she likes the service here.
She gets her answer nearly as soon as she has the thought.
“Barbara can’t stand this sort of place,” Bex says with a smile. “They make her nervous. And I was paranoid that if I chose a place she likes she’d end up coming in here while we talk about you-know-what.”
Even this oblique reference to the proposal makes Bex blush. For such a typically nonchalant person, ever since they got to the restaurant Bex has been acting very…paranoid, yes. Her word exactly. But paranoid in a joyful sort of way.
Rebecca likes the story of how Bex and Barbara got together. For about ten seconds last summer, Bex was a client of KBPR’s. Following the publication of her cookbook, she’d wanted some help launching a wellness brand. At her second meeting with the firm, she met Barbara, they hit it off, and Barbara’s strident moral code kicked in posthaste. In gaining a girlfriend, Bex immediately and unceremoniously lost her public relations representation. It all worked out well in the end—the brand went nowhere, but Bex seems happy.
“I have to ask,” Rebecca says, swallowing a healthy swig of her pinot grigio, “why you want me of all people to vet your plans. Keeley knows Barbara far better than I do, and I’ve never proposed to anyone in my life.”
“Keeley will tell me any plans I’ve got are brilliant and that I should just go with whatever I feel.”
“True.”
A shadow darkens Bex’s expression very briefly before she neutralizes again. “But you and I have both—we’ve made similar choices in the past, haven’t we?”
“Yes. We have.”
“I’m over him, obviously.”
“Well, yeah, fuck him.”
“I hope no one ever fucks him again.”
Rebecca laughs. “Fair.”
“But he…he does know how to make a person second-guess themselves, doesn’t he.”
“He does.”
“I’m not sure I was ever in love with him,” Bex says. Rebecca wishes she could say the same. “But he had me convinced I loved his stupid mushy proposal, and that I loved being trotted about on his arm, that every time he treated me or took me out, I was coming into my power, or, like…thriving, somehow, and he was the only person who could get me what I wanted.”
Rebecca waits for Bex to continue.
“And now that I know I want to marry Barbara, I suppose I’m terrified of doing the same thing to her. Convincing her she wants something she doesn’t actually want.”
Rebecca has always felt that Barbara was rather self-possessed and insusceptible to outside influences, but she understands where Bex is coming from. “Why don’t you tell me what you’ve got planned. Do you have a ring?”
“Yeah, a cruelty-free diamond on a thin gold band. We were in a jewelry shop the other week and she mentioned she really likes delicate, traditional rings, especially for something she’ll be wearing every day forever. And for the proposal, I was planning to just pop the question in our flat? Tonight, after Diane’s asleep? I just want it to be us, quiet and cozy in the place we feel most like ourselves.”
There’s no point in suppressing the grin. “So she’s told you the sort of engagement ring she’d like so you could be sure to get something to her tastes, and you’re planning a quiet proposal with no one around to make her feel gawked at or embarrassed? No gimmicky photo ops with a hidden photographer?”
“Right.”
“And you already know you want to marry each other?”
“Well, basically, yeah. We’ve discussed it.”
“Bex. What are you on about? You have nothing to be concerned over here. God, when you said you wanted to meet to talk over the proposal I was afraid you were planning to go for it in the stands at a West Ham match, or, or hire some sort of flash mob, or—”
“Oh, God. Gross.”
“Well, yes, but of course you’ve got better taste than that. It’s going to be absolutely perfect.” Rebecca pauses. There’s one more thing. “She’s good with Diane?”
Bex beams. “The best. She tells her really grim little bedtime stories, which of course Diane absolutely loves, and takes her to rugby, and half the time she has a nightmare Barbara’s the one she yells for. They’re two peas in a pod. She’s already the ideal stepmum.”
“So by this time tomorrow, you’ll be engaged.”
“I hope so.”
“Bex, listen—what you have with her isn’t too good to be true. You can trust your happiness this time. I promise. She’s going to say yes.”
Just then, the waiter slides in to refill their wine. “Cheers,” Bex says as Rebecca nods her thanks. They both take a sip when he’s gone. “Is that what you had to learn how to do with Ted? Trust your happiness?”
“I suppose I did.”
“Are you two going to get married, do you think?” Bex asks.
“No,” Rebecca says right away. “Not unless he runs into some kind of visa issue in a few years, when his contract is up and he moves back. We’d consider it then. But aside from something really practical like that, something marriage would make possible that being unmarried wouldn’t, I can’t see us bothering.”
Bex seems slightly surprised.
“It’s not,” Rebecca rushes to add, “that I mean to disparage the institution. And Ted would marry me in a heartbeat, if that’s what I wanted. It just—isn’t. My marriage to Rupert ended up in hell, and I’d just as soon try something new.”
Bex nods slowly. “I get that. But it’s funny—I think part of why I want to marry Barbara so badly is because I didn’t exactly expect to be married and divorced, with a child, before I was thirty-five. Much less married a second time. But I don’t want my last marriage to have been with him, not when I’ve got something so much better now.”
“I’m glad,” Rebecca says. She doesn’t owe Bex the information, but suddenly it’s important to her that Bex know her aversion to marriage isn’t only about Rupert, that she isn’t stuck recovering from the past at the expense of having the life she wants. She’s proud of her life, but she cringes a little as she says “I might as well tell you that the other reason we don’t want to get married is because we can’t stop hooking up with Keeley and Roy.” It’s so much more than a hookup. But she wants to catch Bex’s reaction before revealing too much.
“Really,” Bex says, a little shocked, a little delighted by the clear surprise. “For how long?”
“Months and months. Almost right away after they got back together, which wasn’t that long after Ted and I—wait. Barbara hasn’t told you? I’m pretty certain she and Keeley talk about everything.”
“Barbara knows how to keep a secret. If Keeley was at all circumspect, she’d have had to explicitly tell Barbara it was okay to talk to me about it. Otherwise she’d have taken it to her grave.”
Rebecca nods. “Well, now you both know. We’ve been subtle about it, so far, but it’s not a massive secret.”
“I’m impressed.”
“You needn’t be, really.”
“Oh my God, this is why Keeley’s watching football in Mexico, isn’t it?”
“Yes, the Current are there for some friendlies with the C.D. Guadalajara women. Sporting are there too, that’s the men’s team, it’s some sort of sister cities thing.”
Keeley’s become a bit of a small-time—very small-time—photojournalist while she’s been abroad, sending her and Roy encrypted texts full of photos of cathedrals, monuments, football matches, Ted on the sideline looking insane, Ted on the sideline looking competent, photos of Ted in his KC Current jacket eating a barbacoa taco, photos from bed, tastefully lit and soft and glowing, and some grainy ones taken in the dark that are the most intimate of all even if it’s nearly impossible to figure out what they are. It’s been a bit much, if she’s honest, in the best possible way—this morning she and Roy were nearly late to the club because they got distracted looking at the photos from the night before and had to stop for kitchen sex that necessitated a second shower. Who gets distracted pouring cereal and turning on the kettle for tea? She does, apparently, with a body pressing her against the counter, a thigh nudging her legs apart, a chest flush with her back, her neck peppered with kisses, soft lips, the contrasting scrape of a beard—
“You’re literally blushing.”
“Am I?”
Bex smirks. “Uh, yeah. God, I can’t wait to give Barbara hell for keeping this a secret from me. Spousal privilege means nothing to that woman.”
“Well, don’t forget to propose to her. Maybe before you get too far into the critique.”
“Right.”
The wine is nearly gone, and the oysters are history. It’s getting late. Bex almost certainly needs to leave to pick up Diane, unless Barbara is fetching her, and Rebecca’s meeting Roy around the corner for dinner soon. “Will you tell me how it goes?”
“Of course.”
“Lunch next week, when Keeley’s home? We could go somewhere Barbara likes.”
Just hearing the name Barbara in someone else’s mouth makes Bex smile. “Perfect,” she says. “I’ll book a reservation—I know just the place.”