Elin Hilderbrand - Beautiful Day

She said, as casually as possible, “So what’s up with Rosalie, anyway?”

Edge lightened his grip on Margot’s arm, and his face changed. It became… well, the word that popped into Margot’s mind was kind. In all the months of their dating, Margot had never known Edge to look kind or nice or tender or gentle. He was an attorney who specialized in land mines, trapdoors, and setting his opponents up to fail. That was why his nickname was “Edge,” or so he claimed. He always conveyed mental toughness; he prized courage over compassion.

This unfamiliar facial expression, she knew, was bad news.

“I texted you on Thursday,” Edge said. “I asked you to call me so I could explain.”

“Explain what?” Margot said, hoping what he needed to explain was that he was bringing Rosalie as his “date,” to mask his passionate and burgeoning love for Margot.

“This isn’t something I want to talk about here and now,” he said. “Why didn’t you call me?”

“I sank my phone,” Margot said. “I killed it.”

Edge’s hand instinctively flew to the breast pocket of his suit jacket, which was where he kept his BlackBerry. The mere idea of sinking his phone would be worse to him than losing his heart.

“Listen, Margot…”

“So you’re an actual couple, then?” Margot said. “You and Rosalie?”

Edge peered over Margot’s shoulder, presumably watching for Rosalie.

Margot said, “She’s having a cigarette. By my estimation, we have three minutes left. Tell me the truth, Edge. Are you and Rosalie together?”

“I told you you wouldn’t be able to handle it,” he said.

“How can I handle or not handle something when I don’t even know about it!” Margot said. “When you refuse to tell me the truth! Are you and Rosalie a couple?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

He sighed. “Since January.”

“Since January?” Margot said. Her mind flipped back through imaginary calendar pages. It was March when Edge took her to Picholine and then home to his apartment. And even then he had been screwing Rosalie? It was too hideous to contemplate.

“It started at the firm’s New Year’s Eve party,” he said.

Oh, God. Famously, the firm of Garrett, Parker, and Spence eschewed Christmas for New Year’s at the holidays. Margot had desperately wanted to attend the party. Every year it was held at Cipriani. There were oysters and caviar and good champagne.

“The New Year’s Eve party!” Margot said.

“And then it’s gained momentum since we started working on the Cranbrook case,” Edge said.

“I don’t understand,” Margot said.

“I don’t expect you to,” Edge said.

“Why didn’t you tell me in January?” Margot said. If Edge had told her in January, she would be six months past the news by now. But he had continued to see Margot, and to sleep with her. He had continued to torture her by texting her and not texting her.

“You’re a beautiful girl, Margot,” Edge said.

That’s a beautiful girl you’ve got there, partner. Edge had been thirty-two years old when he’d made that comment, far younger than Margot was now. He claimed not to recall saying it, and yet here he was pulling out nearly the same phrase to placate her.

“Don’t patronize me,” Margot said.

“It was never going anywhere,” Edge said. “You knew it and I knew it.”

“You may have known it,” Margot said. “But I thought maybe…”

“Maybe what?” Edge said. “That you’d become the fourth Mrs. John Edgar Desvesnes? You’re too good for that, Margot.”

“What about Rosalie?” Margot asked. “Is she too good for it?”

“Rosalie is a better match for me,” Edge said.

“She’s half your age,” Margot said. “Maybe not even.” Rosalie would want children, and maybe Edge would oblige her, maybe he would be a new father at sixty or sixty-two-then eighty years old by the time that child graduated from high school. Rosalie would have left him for the town’s fire chief or the children’s orthodontist by then.

“She’s mature for her age,” Edge said. “And very bright.”

Margot breathed out her nose like a charging bull. She wasn’t going to stand here while Edge enumerated Rosalie’s attributes.

“You asked me for that favor in March,” Margot said. “I colored outside the lines for you, Edge.”

“And I appreciated it,” Edge said. “Even though it didn’t end up working out.”

It didn’t end up working out because it had been ill conceived from the get-go. “You never would have done the same for me,” Margot said. She had compromised her standards for Edge because she had so desperately craved his approval, his good graces, his love. Margot had given these things to Edge too readily, she saw now. She’d left him nothing to work for, nothing to figure out. There was no mystery with Margot. From the start, she had felt like the same awkward adolescent yearning to be thought beautiful.

“You’re a jerk,” she said.

“That I am,” Edge said.

She couldn’t stand the way he was agreeing with her. It was a courtroom trick.

“Well, thank you for ruining my sister’s wedding for me,” she said. “I hope you’re happy.”

Edge said, “It was never going to work, Margot. The fact is that you’re Doug Carmichael’s daughter, and you know how I love and respect your father.”

“Yeah,” Margot said. “Just think how disappointed he’s going to be when he finds out.”

“He’s not going to find out,” Edge said. “We agreed.”

“Ha!” Margot said. “What did we agree?”

“We agreed not to tell him we were together.”

“So now we’re no longer together,” Margot said. “So now I can tell him whatever I damn well please.”

Another unfamiliar expression crossed Edge’s face: fear. His eyes flickered beyond Margot at the same moment that the smoky, sexy voice floated over her shoulder.

“Edge?”

And then the tent burst out in thunderous applause.

Jethro (boyfriend of the best man): There are two other black men in the tent. One is a server, Jamaican, I think. He is very black and very, very big-I heard one of the female servers call him “Jungle Gym,” which sounded like a sexual nickname rather than a racist one.

The other black man is the bandleader. He has light skin and Adam Duritz dreadlocks, and he wears funky glasses with black rectangular frames. When I saw him at the outside bar I asked his name and he said, Ernie Sands. Then he said he was from Brooklyn and I said I was from Chicago, and he asked what part of Chicago and I said that now I live in Lincoln Park but that I grew up in Red Houses of Cabrini-Green. He squinted at me and said, “What you doing at this party, man?” And I said, “My boyfriend is the best man, the groom’s brother.” And he held his hands up like I’d pulled a gun on him and said, “Cool, man, that’s cool.” Then there was an awkward moment of silence.

I said, “Did you know Frederick Douglass came here in 1841 and spoke out against slavery on the front steps of the public library?”

He looked at me like I was crazy, and the bonding ended there.

Ann (mother of the groom): I ordered the rib eye, as did the Lewises and the Cohens, but the Shelbys got the swordfish and they say they wished they’d ordered the fried chicken, even though fried chicken wasn’t a choice. I said, “Wait until tomorrow, you will taste the best fried chicken ever, served with honey pecan butter.” Devon Shelby said, “Amen to that,” and went to get himself another bourbon.

Out of a sense of duty, I spent a few minutes talking to Maisy, Jim’s sister, who insisted on wearing one of her prairie dresses, which turned her into someone whom everyone else at the wedding wanted to avoid at all costs. I could practically hear the Carmichael side wondering, Who invited Laura Ingalls Wilder? Did she arrive in her Conestoga wagon? Maisy had approached me, something she doesn’t like to do, and said, “Where’s Helen?” And I said, “Helen had a dinner date.” And Maisy said, “Who with?” And I said, “With one of her old flings from Roanoke.” Maisy made a sour-pickle pucker face of disapproval-whether at me for using the term fling or at the thought of Helen having such relationships with men (there were many, we all knew it), I wasn’t sure. Maisy said, “Well, why didn’t she tell me?” And I said, not unkindly, “Oh, Maisy, who knows, it’s Helen.” And Maisy nodded along, as if she understood perfectly.

Ryan (best man): Perhaps you missed my toast. Your loss! I was funny and charming and appropriate and hugely complimentary of Stuart and Jenna’s union, and I took out my veiled joke about She Who Shall Not Be Named because that boat had been rocked-and righted-already. I could have posed thorny questions about why Stuart and Jenna, but not me and Jethro? Really: why a man and a woman, but not a man and a man, or a woman and a woman? I could have referenced Chick-fil-A, a place I will never eat again, despite the fact that I love their coleslaw. The main reason I kept myself in check is because I didn’t want to embarrass or upset my mother. That woman has been through enough this weekend, thanks to the horrible drama queen Helen Oppenheimer. The last thing my mother needed was for me to make GAY a political issue. All weekend, she has been introducing Jethro as my “boyfriend,” and she makes it sound wholesome and normal, like Jethro is the person I take to the drive-in and then later out for milk shakes. So the GAY issue has been sensitively treated. I had wanted the punch line of the toast to be me saying how happy I was that Stuart was marrying Jenna because I had waited a long time for there to be another girl in the family.

But Jethro vetoed it. He can be prudish that way.

The band played “The First Man You Remember,” from Aspects of Love, and Doug took Jenna into his arms and danced with her alone in the spotlight while everyone else looked on. I want to be the first man you remember, I want to be the last one you forget, I want to be the one you always turn to, I want to be the one you won’t regret. Doug recalled sitting in the third row orchestra of the darkened Broadhurst Theatre on Broadway watching Aspects with Beth and Jenna. Doug had held Jenna’s ten-year-old hand during the song, and Beth had whispered over the top of Jenna’s blond head, “You’ll have to dance with her to this song at her wedding.”