Love Is Blind, I'm Not novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Toast
Spencer proposes to Lacey and thanks her for three years of care that were Margot's. Margot walks out and tells Lacey she is collecting her $38,400.
Spencer Eisenhart proposed to my best friend in front of sixty people, and I was the one holding the ring.
Lacey had asked me to carry the box up to the hotel rooftop in my purse.
"You're the only one who won't lose it," she'd said.
I had loved Spencer for five years.
I had never told him, and I had told myself that was a kind of loyalty.
He knelt on the terrace with the city lit up behind him and said Lacey's name.
She covered her mouth and said yes before he finished the question.
I clapped with everyone else.
Somebody filmed it.
Somebody always does.
Afterward the whole roof drifted toward the bar, and his mother steered me to a table by the heaters.
"You'll stay for dinner," Diane said. "Family will be seated together."
I thought she meant me.
At the head table a man from the lumber board stood up with his glass.
"Spencer, I have to ask," he said. "You were blind for three years. Everyone knows the woman who got you through it. Was it her care that made you fall for her?"
Sixty people went quiet and turned toward the couple.
I looked at Spencer.
I waited for him to look at me.
He had a hand on Lacey's back and he was smiling.
"She never missed a day," he said. "Not one. I don't know who I'd be without her."
Lacey leaned into his shoulder.
"I'd do it all again," she said.
The room made a soft, happy noise.
Three years ago a warehouse fire burned both of Spencer's corneas.
His insurance ran out in the fourth month.
I paid the night aide until I couldn't, and after that I was the night aide.
I changed his dressings at two in the morning and read him the quarterly numbers for the lumber yard.
I slept in a chair beside his bed with a blanket from my own apartment.
I put $38,400 of my savings into his care, and Diane had promised me, in her own kitchen, that the family would pay me back.
"After things settle," she'd said.
Lacey came on Sundays.
She brought pastries and sat on the edge of his bed and talked for an hour, and he laughed at everything she said.
I stayed in the kitchen and counted out his pills.
It had never occurred to me to mind.
I minded now.
My hands were freezing around my champagne glass.
They were always cold.
When the bandages were on, Spencer used to call me Cold Hands.
He hadn't called me anything since they came off.
Spencer crossed the roof to me while the band started up again.
He was glowing.
"There you are," he said. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"You didn't mention me," I said.
"Mention you?" He laughed, gently. "Margot, it was a toast. It's not like you wanted to be thanked in front of everyone."
He took my hand in both of his and winced.
"Frozen," he said. "Listen, nothing changes between us. You'll still be around, right? Lacey says you'll do the maid of honor speech. You're so good at those."
He squeezed my fingers.
Then he went back to the bar.
I stood there and looked at the ring box in my purse, which Lacey had forgotten to take back.
It was empty.
The ring was on her finger, and my name was nowhere in the night.
So I set my glass down on a stranger's table, took the elevator to the lobby, and walked out.
Spencer caught up with me at the curb.
He had followed me down the stairs, and he wasn't glowing anymore.
"Don't be dramatic," he said. "Lacey needs you at the dress fitting Saturday. You always come."
"I'm not coming."
"You'll come," he said, and he sounded sure. "You always do."
I got in a cab and didn't answer.
My phone buzzed before we reached the first light.
It was Lacey.
"Spencer says you'll go quiet and be fine by Friday. He says you always do. Please don't make this weird for me."
I read it twice.
Then I typed: Saturday I'm collecting my $38,400.
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