Wedding Night Confession: Husband Said I Slept With Your Best Friend novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Usual

Tierney arrives with croissants, already knowing Declan confessed, and asks Miriam for her monthly money. In the elevator Miriam names the tire iron and Tierney drops the sweetness: the box is paid through next year.

I opened the door in my wedding dress, with my hair still pinned from the day before.

Tierney came in with a paper bag in one hand and two coffees in the other, and she hugged me with her elbows tucked in so nothing spilled.

"Look at you," she said into my shoulder. "My married girl."

I held still and let her.

She smelled like vanilla, the same candle she had burned in our dorm room in Madison.

Over her shoulder I saw Declan stand up from the sofa.

His face was perfectly empty, and I was grateful.

"There's my groom," Tierney said, and she crossed the room and set a coffee in his hand.

She reached up and straightened his collar.

Her left hand did it, with the silver cuff she never took off sliding down her wrist.

"You look terrible," she said warmly. "Did she make you sleep on the sofa?"

"I snore," Declan said.

"He does not snore," I said.

Tierney laughed, and then she saw the headboard.

The amber stain had dried in a long streak down the white padding, and glass glittered in the carpet.

"Whoa. First night and you're already throwing things?"

"Whiskey," I said. "It slipped."

She looked at me for one beat longer than she needed to.

"I'm so glad you two worked it out," she said.

Nobody had said we had.

I felt Declan go still beside me.

I did not look at him. I took the paper bag and set it on the table, and I said, "Sit. Tell me about the toast, I barely remember it."

"You cried," Tierney said. "Your whole table cried. Declan's mother asked for my number."

"I'm sure she did."

"Oh, Miri." She squeezed my hand. "Speaking of the number. Can you send the usual this week? The rent's on the first and my commission fell through."

She said it the way she always said it, smiling, as if it were nothing.

For ten years I had sent the usual.

Forty thousand dollars a year, in pieces, whenever she asked.

I had called it taking care of my family.

I had never once asked what she did with it.

"Of course," I said.

Declan looked at me sharply, and I put my hand on his arm without looking at him.

"Of course," I said again. "You know I always do."

Tierney let out a soft breath, and the line of her shoulders dropped.

It was a tiny movement, and I almost missed it.

She had been worried.

Not about me, but about whether I would say no.

"I'll walk you down," I said.

"You don't have to."

"I want to. I'm not ready to let you go yet."

We rode the elevator together, forty floors, with a mirror on each wall.

In the mirror Tierney had her hair tucked behind her ear, and her eyes were soft and wet.

"I know this is a lot," she said. "Whatever he told you, Miri, I need you to know I never meant it to happen."

"What did he tell me?"

"Whatever it was. I can tell he did."

"He said it happened once."

"It did." Her voice caught. "I was drunk and I was worried about you, and he was angry, and I'm so sorry. You can hate me. I deserve it."

I could not tell if she was acting.

That was the part that frightened me.

Ten years of loving her, and I could not tell.

"I don't hate you," I said.

Tierney closed her eyes, and her whole face loosened.

"I'm not going to say anything about Madison," I said. "Ever. It never happened. Okay?"

"Okay," she whispered.

"And I'm not going to ask where it is."

Her eyes opened.

"Where what is?"

"The thing you kept," I said. "The tire iron."

The elevator dinged at the lobby, and nobody got on.

The sweetness went out of her face and stayed out for the length of one breath.

She reached out, took my chin gently between her thumb and finger, and turned my face toward her.

"Miri," she said, very kindly, "the box is paid through next year."

"Tierney."

"Be a good wife. Keep your husband on a short leash. And send the usual by Friday."

She let go.

She stepped out of the elevator into the lobby with her coffee and her bright, ordinary smile, and waved at the doorman.

The doors slid shut, and I rode all the way back up to the honeymoon suite alone.

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