Beautiful Forever Read online

  “Because I work here, Duchess. I was overseeing the security updates.” He pauses to give me a chance to connect the dots but my brain has gone haywire. “I sent you a text.”

  “My phone’s acting strangely.” Apparently, the dishonesty is going to give the paranoia a run for its money.

  “I have a few minutes. Why don’t I give you the private tour of the business offices?”

  I sidestep him when he reaches for me. Hurt flashes over his features, but he smiles tightly. “I’m sorry. Josie’s sick and I have to run and if we get started…”

  He allows me to bow out, gracelessly I might add, without further comment, but before the revolving door seals behind me, he calls out one final question, “Why were you here?”

  I step out on the other side, and we stare at each other through the glass. I could go back inside and explain, but facing him is painful enough. Maybe this was always our destiny: to see each other but never touch.

  Chapter 2

  Standing outside Josie’s cracker box house, I can’t help but see it for the tiny two-bedroom block that it is. I’d been by earlier today in an attempt to make amends, and it hadn’t struck me then, but with my world topsy-turvy, I guess I’m seeing everything in a new light. I’ve spent the last few months bouncing between billionaires like a bad episode of MTV’s Cribs, but being here, now, all that matters is that it feels like I’m finally home. If I’m an impostor in my own life, then it’s time to take a step back and return to the people who know and love me.

  Even with this new-found resolve, I knock tentatively at the door. Marion, Josie’s mother, opens it with a surprised look on her face.

  “Since when did you knock?” she asks. And there it is: I am home. This is where I belong, and who I belong with. She’s fresh faced with her hair pulled back in a tight knot. It takes a minute for me to remember that it’s Friday night. “Sorry honey, but I’m on my way out. I have to get to the dressing rooms in 30 minutes.”

  Such is the life of a Las Vegas showgirl on the weekend. She’ll spend the next couple of days fending off the advances of overly confident businessmen, and the scummy men in town for bachelor parties. They’ll pop in and out of Vegas, leaving nothing but a forgettable trail of debt following their two-night stint.

  “I actually came to see Josie,” I tell her.

  Her eyebrows quirk together. “She’s sick, and you know how she is when she’s sick.”

  “I do know how my best friend acts when she’s sick.”

  Hospitals were invented for people like Josie Deckard who could turn every cough into consumption. Since I’ve known her, she’s had a habit of quarantining herself at the first sign of a sniffle. Back then, I was allowed to leave offerings of Disney Channel movies at her door, but never permitted to enter. Even Marion had to talk her way inside. But today is a different story, and her hypochondria will have to take a backseat to me pulling the best friend card.

  I hesitate. If I tell Marion my sad story, she’ll offer me the couch, which is already mine. But this isn’t a decision I can leave up to her. Not with things so weird between Josie and I.

  “I’ll risk it,” I decide out loud. No matter how good it feels to be here, I’ll need Josie’s blessing if I’m going to reclaim my second home.

  Marion kisses me on the cheek and the familiar token of affection eases some of my anxiety. Her skin brushes mine. It’s soft and warm, like a mother’s cheek is supposed to be. I’ve based that belief entirely on the maternal surrogacy she’s shown me over the years. My own mother favors more of a European air kiss with both strangers and her progeny. The stark contrast between Josie’s mom and mine has never felt more evident than at this moment. “Lock the door behind me.”

  I nod as a lump forms in my throat. This is where I should have been this summer, watching Netflix between shifts at Pawnography, my Dad’s shop, planning out every second of my upcoming senior year at Bell-Mère Prep, and keeping Josie and her love life in check. Instead, I’d found myself cast without warning into the role of bad girl socialite. It’s time to shed that costume and come back to reality.

  Turning the bolt on the front door, I take a deep breath and march down the short hallway to Josie’s room. I don’t bother to be timid with my knock. Dead silence greets me and after an eternity, a muffled, “Go away.”

  This is going about as well as I expected.

  Trying the knob, I’m not surprised that it’s locked, but since this house was built in the 70s, like so much of Vegas, all that stands between me and my reckoning with my best friend is a bobby pin. Slipping one out of my hair, I poke at the tiny hole next to the knob until I hit pay dirt. Home builders must have thought they were doing parents a favor. Give kids the illusion of autonomy by providing a lock on the door that a one cent piece of metal can open.

  “Ready or not,” I mutter to myself and throw open the door. Josie’s buried under her covers, a pillow over her head. Instantly, she sits bolt upright, her cotton fortress crumbling around her as she stares at me.

  “I’m not feeling good,” she snaps.

  I shrug.

  “The world is in a state of economic crisis, a reality star is running for president, and we’re stuck in a town that still believes second hand smoke is harmless. Nobody’s feeling good,” I retort. My hands find my hips and I plant them there, ready for whatever she throws at me first, but my defensive posture does nothing to help me when she throws herself backward on the bed.

  It takes a second for me to gauge the actual situation in the room. Not much has changed. Neat piles of discarded clothes litter the perimeter. Stacks of notebooks and magazines wait on the desk. She hasn’t redecorated or remodeled or turned it into a craft room. Everything is as it should be, but by the time I take my second look around I see a few things that are off. The clothing piles are bigger than they should be. The magazines on her desk are untouched, having been left unread for an entire summer meant to be spent poolside. And most disconcerting, the television isn’t on. Everyone from infancy to the infirm knows that the only modern perk of illness is Netflix.

  “You aren’t sick,” I accuse her. “You’re hiding. We might as well get straight to the point. Did you run off when I showed up today?”

  It’s not like Josie to turn tail and hide from a situation.

  “Someone has a pretty high opinion of herself. I guess that’s naturally what happens when you’re dating a West.” She makes the name sound like a curse word, and I’d be lying if I said my hackles didn’t rise at the provocation. I circle her bed looking for clues.

  “Yep, they initiated me into the secret society of the Housers,” I say, imbuing my words with the proper amount of disgust. Neither of us have ever been Housers. That accolade is reserved for Belle Mère’s elite, the children of Las Vegas’s upper, upper crust. They run the show while the rest of us hope for a spot in the audience. “My shit no longer stinks and I know their special handshake.”

  She only glares so I continue my analysis.

  “Oh my God, would you stop,” she finally says. “You’re right. I’m not dying, vulture, so if you’re waiting to consume my dead body, you can fly off somewhere else.”

  “Cute, but that’s not why I’m here. I have a favor to ask you.”

  “This is how you ask for a favor?”

  Okay, so she might have a point. One of the few pieces of good advice my mother ever gave me was that you catch more flies with honey. I’ve never been very good at utilizing that strategy, probably since my mother never bothered to model the behavior herself. Plus, Josie and I are past the candy-coated platitudes of false friendship. She’s right though. We need to fix this before I can come home again. So naturally, I start by attacking her. “What’s going on with you Josie? You’ve been acting strangely for weeks. Now you’re hiding in bed pretending to be sick? Not just from me, but from your mom as well.”

  There’s a silence that stretches the length of the bible, and then she slowly sits up. Now that she’s not g
laring at me, I can see that her eyes are red-rimmed and bloodshot. Her lip trembles a little. Josie Deckard has been crying. The idea of teenage girl sobbing into her pillow might not seem like an anomaly, but my best friend doesn’t fit that description. She never has.

  “Where have you been?” she asks me quietly.

  It’s not as simple a question as it appears to be, and it doesn’t deserve a curt response or a cutesy answer. Instead, I lay it all on the line for her. “Under investigation for murder, falling in love, wrecking my entire family, doing incredibly stupid shit and realizing it’s been for nothing.”

  But that’s only the beginning, and we both know it. Sitting down on the edge of her bed, I fill her in on all of the details. I know I’m leaving things out, probably important things, but the gist is there. When I’m finished, a huge burden lifts off my shoulders. I’ve forgotten how hard it is to keep secrets. Even having one person to trust them with lifts the load off my back.

  “What about you,” I ask her. “I’m not the only one who’s been unavailable this summer.”

  Josie and I were often separated over the last few years during school break. I’d be shipped off to Palm Springs to visit with my mother or be stuck working at my dad’s pawn shop. Josie would be stuck at home or taking whatever job she could find to supplement her non-existent allowance. But we called. And later we texted and Facetimed. We made time for sleep-overs and lunch dates and the occasional petty shoplifting. This summer, we have barely sent an emoji to each other.

  Josie doesn’t respond to my question. Instead, she gets out of bed. It takes a long time, as if she’s ordering her limbs to move and willing her body to take each step. Opening her desk drawer, she rifles around for a few minutes until she pulls the false bottom up. We’d concocted that little secret spot to stash contraband over the years. Contraband being a pack of cigarettes when we were going through our we’re older than we look phase. A bit of booze. Maybe some condoms. The kind of stuff every parent knows their kid is hiding, but we still bother to hide anyway.

  Nothing prepares me for what she pulls out of that drawer though. Having little to no experience with the topic, I stare at the black and white photo for far too long. The paper is flimsy. The image is warped, but I can read.

  I can read her name in the corner. I can decipher that the numbers mean weeks and days. Try as I might, the white noise photo in the center doesn’t make sense.

  “Is this…” I trail away, swallowing the words. If I don’t say them, they won’t be true.

  “An ultrasound,” she says. Her voice detaches from her body as she continues on in an all business tone. “The clinic I went to makes you have one before you can make any decisions, even if you already made your decision. Probably some politician’s idea of punishment.”

  She continues on, as if she can replace the tension in the air with her tirades.

  “Oh my God,” I breath, basically ignoring her. “Did you ... Are you ...”

  “I am,” she admits.

  “Why?” The question bursts out of me. Everything is starting to make sense: her distance and irritability. But there’s no relief in this revelation. Rather it feels like I’m waking from a nightmare to discover I wasn’t asleep.

  She snatches the picture away and shoves it back in the drawer, as if hiding it is in any way dealing with the situation. “All that debate about it and no one tells you how expensive it is to get it done. I’ve been saving all summer. It’s still not enough and ...” she doesn’t finish the sentence, but she doesn’t have to. The thought of actually going through with it is scary and I’m not even the one who has to do it.

  “I can help.” It’s not an offer because she’s taking my help, whether she wants it or not. “I would’ve helped. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “Does the father know?”

  “He’s not in the picture,” she says, her nostrils flaring in defiance.

  I decide not to press the issue. When she’s ready to share more, she will.

  “All those years of her being so paranoid,” she says absently, “and I’ve gone and done the one thing that will break my mom’s heart.”

  “You don’t have to tell her,” I whisper.

  She blinks as if remembering that I’m there and then stares at me. “Em, I can’t do this alone.”

  “You won’t have to,” I promise.

  Chapter 3

  We spend the next few days ignoring our situations in favor of binge-watching as much bad TV as we can stomach. Now that we’ve spilled our guts it’s easier to just sit and digest in each other’s presence than to continue strategizing our next moves. I need a break. A break from the investigating, from the suspicion, from watching over my shoulder. I can’t even imagine how badly Josie needs a break. I do my best not to stare at her when reality invades my conscious mind over the on-screen action trying to drown it out.

  She looks the same. That may be because she hasn’t changed her pajama pants in like three days, but really, looking at her you wouldn’t even know. Shouldn’t there be some type of clue? Is this how getting knocked up works? If so, couldn’t we all be knocked up all the time and not know it?

  “Stop staring at me,” she finally mutters one afternoon. “It’s not going to burst out of my abdomen and do a song and dance.”

  “Sorry,” I say sheepishly. “It’s just so weird.”

  She groans, shaking her head as she flips through the Recently Addeds.

  “You know what’s weird? The fact that you have a security detail parked across the street from my house.”

  Okay, I can grant her that.

  “Let’s go back to being 12,” I suggest, “when our biggest problem was hoping we could finally get our periods.”

  As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I wish I could take it back, but she just gives a hollow laugh.

  “Yeah. I actually kind of feel like I’m hoping to get my period all the time at the moment.”

  “And the award for shitty friend of the year goes to”— I clutch my chest dramatically—“me. I’d like to thank my mother, who taught me everything I know, my father, who also contributed, and generally just being surrounded by the worst possible role models a girl can have.”

  Josie’s false laughter turns into bemused giggles. “What award do I win? Most likely to become her mother?”

  I wince, then nearly jump out of my skin when Josie’s mother actually opens the door. If there was an award for appearing innocent, neither of us would be winning it at the moment.

  “Em, your mom called me.” She stares me down.

  I kind of expected that. “I might have blocked her phone number.”

  Marion pinches the bridge of her nose, sighing heavily and forming the perfect image of the maternal archetype at the same time. “You can’t block your mother.”

  “Funny, my iPhone says I can.” I tack on a smile as if to indicate I’m joking, even though we both know I’m not.

  “She says that she really needs to talk to you.” Marion bypasses the passive-aggressiveness and goes straight for the kill. “I can’t have you staying here if your mother doesn’t think it’s okay.”

  “My mother wouldn’t care if I was living under a bridge,” I grumble, but I take out my phone and pull up her number. “I’ll call her.”

  Marion disappears with a look of triumph and Josie bumps her shoulder against mine.

  “You want a minute?”

  “Nah.” I’d already told her everything that had happened. What I’d discovered about Becca, how Hans had tried to corner me. She’d gotten the blow by blow. Whatever mitigating factors my mother wants to add to the drama I won’t be keeping from her either.

  Mom answers on the first ring.

  “Emma,” she says breathlessly, as if she’s been pacing while waiting for my call.

  “Vivian,” I respond coolly. She doesn’t bother to correct me, even though she hates that I call her by her first name. More than ever, I
need that detachment and whatever small sense of self-confidence it grants me.

  “We need to talk.”

  We’ve needed to talk for the last eight years, but I’m glad she’s finally getting the memo.

  “I’m not coming to Palm Springs,” I say.

  Mom isn’t the type to have serious conversations over the phone. She believes in tearing someone down to their face, the good old-fashioned way.

  “You don’t have to,” she assures me. “I’m here in Las Vegas.”

  “What restaurant?” I ask.

  “I think it’s better if I come to you.”

  It’s taken a lot of years for me to build up enough scar tissue where my mom is concerned that her barbs and dismissals don’t hurt me anymore, but apparently, she can still catch me off guard.

  “I’m staying at Josie’s,” I tell her in broken fragments while I try to piece together what could be so terrible that she would deign to leave her five-star life and slum it in the burbs.

  “I’ll come over this evening,” my mom says. “Should I bring McDonald’s?”

  “Yeah mom, get me a Happy Meal,” I say flatly. We hang up and I wonder if she’s experiencing some type of medical incident that’s caused a temporary bought of amnesia. Maybe she hit her head and thinks I’m nine years-old and that I’ve been at Josie’s for an extended sleepover.

  “What was that about?” Josie asks as soon as I’m off the phone.

  I give her a look that says way more than what comes out of my mouth next. “Guess who’s coming to dinner?”

  Chapter 4

  That night my mother actually brings me a Happy Meal.

  “I can’t remember if you still hate ketchup,” she says as she hands the box to me at the door.

  “I’ve made peace with tomatoes,” I reassure her as I try to concentrate on the carefully proportioned glut of calories that she’s brought me. Who decided apple slices were fast food? But I can’t distract myself from the fact that for the first time, in a very long time, it’s my mother standing at the door. Not Vivian von Essen.