What a Girl Needs (10 page)

All of Arin’s missionary work, all of her contact with the church, it was all on a shallow level. No one ever really got to know her, but that’s who she is. ‘That’s what you chose, Seth. Take some responsibility and ownership, for crying out loud.”

His far-off gaze returns to me. “Ashley.” He steps toward me.

Why does every conversation I have with Seth make me want to bang my head against the wall? And why did it take me years and 2,500 miles to see this relatively simple thing?

“Just talk to her, won’t you? Tell her how happy you are at home. How much you love being there when Kevin gets home at night.”

I just stare at him, blinking. Seriously? I had a crush on this guy! Like, for a long time, too long to pawn it off as a delusional phase.

“How hard is it to tell her that?” he pushes.

“As your ex or as a casual observer?” I’ve flustered him. Admittedly, not hard to do, but it stops him in his tracks long enough for me to make my escape toward Toby. Never one to take a hint, Seth follows.

“This book I read said all women want to be treated like princesses.”

“Which is great if your wife wants to be treated like a princess, but what if she doesn’t? Arin has traveled all over the world by herself. She’s quite capable and she doesn’t need rescuing.”

“But the book said—”

Engineers!
“The book is an inanimate object. Seth do you remember that old joke about men having an on and off switch and women being a bevy of buttons and knobs?”

“Yeah—”

I raise my brows. “Yeah. That.”

“You’re not going to talk to her? Is that what you’re saying? I’m not pushing the right buttons?”

“Argh!”

“Ash, now you sound just like Arin.”

“Why don’t you just ask Arin what she wants? She’s not some random chick who will adhere to what some book is telling you. She’s Arin; world traveler, missionary, Stanford student and adventurer.”

Man, when I say it like that, she sounds a lot better than me. No wonder he married her
.

“I’m done. She doesn’t listen.”

At this point all the rage I once felt for Seth and his lack of forward motion comes bubbling to the surface. “Well, it’s a little late for that. You’ve got another baby on the way. Man-up and quit your whining. Sometimes, life gets hard and you have to deal with it!”

What I say doesn’t affect him in the least. “Arin knew I wanted out, that’s why she got pregnant.”

I can’t
un-hear
this. Is it just me, or do men really believe women are capable of getting pregnant by themselves? Same ol’ Seth—nothing is his fault. He’s just a victim to his circumstances.

“Seth, you’re angry at her. You don’t mean any of this. This is your way of getting back at her.”

“Maybe,” he admits. “But I wanted you to know, I get it. Love isn’t a flash-in-the-pan infatuation. I didn’t know what love was and I suppose I always saw us together. I thought you’d be around and we’d survive the Kevin and Arin effect. Tell me that you don’t wonder if we were meant to be together all along.”

“I don’t,” I say flatly. “Here, all this time, I thought I was the drama queen. Are we done here?”

I look to his son and wonder how he can say such things in front of the little boy. Whether Toby understands or not, it isn’t right. I clamber to get back into the house to get away from Seth and his momentary delusions. I’m trapped by Seth’s words. I can’t tell Kevin. He’d want to come out and throttle Seth. I can’t tell Kay because it will force her to lie to Arin. I feel like he’s saddled me with information that wasn’t mine to know and now it weighs on me heavily. Once again, it’s so he doesn’t have to deal with the consequences of his own actions. So very convenient. Secretly, I wonder if it’s ever crossed Kevin’s mind that he married the wrong woman.

I head into the house, and I can’t even look at Arin. I feel as if I’ve betrayed her, when I’ve done no such thing. Her husband has. Sam is still sitting with his feet up on the table, making no effort to participate in any part of the dinner party, other than the eating portion. I sigh aloud.

“Ashley, are you all right?” Kay asks as I enter the kitchen. “You look pale.”

I shake my head. “It’s just the hair color. It does nothing for my skin tone.”

Kay looks straight at me as if she knows I’m hiding something, but I won’t give it up. Looking at Arin, and the ways she’s been betrayed, makes me want to be sick on her behalf. Then, I notice that Kay’s eyes are moist with tears of her own.

“Kay?”

She shakes her head.

“Tell me what’s happened.”

“No one’s coming. Pastor Max and his wife canceled. Everyone’s here already, and Arin and Seth are fighting. It’s a complete disaster. Why do I do this to myself?”

I used to wonder the same thing after one of Kay’s dinner parties. My hands ball up into fists. No one has ever appreciated all that Kay has done for them, and I’ve never seen a touch of emotion from her, but seeing her now, willing herself not to cry, I want to throttle Pastor Max and “sweet” Kelly—this isn’t the first time they’ve done this, and they have no clue as to how much time or money Kay spends to make this all happen.

“I’m sorry, Kay. They don’t deserve you, they really don’t, but you know they mean no harm. They just have no idea how much it takes to do this.” I march out into the living room, and with one sweeping move, throw Sam’s feet off the sofa. “This isn’t your mama’s house! Show some respect!”

“What did I do?” Sam puts his soda down and looks at me as if I’m starring in a movie from the Lifetime network.

“We should throw a party for Kay.” I look directly at Sam. “Don’t you think, Sam? Wouldn’t that be nice? I mean, she buys fresh ingredients, she throws these great dinner parties—”

“She likes to do that,” Sam says.

“I thought we could show her our appreciation for all she does.”

“I do appreciate Kay,” Sam cries. “I think she’s the most generous person I’ve ever known.” He looks at his watch. “But I have a deadline at work. I should go.”

As long as I’ve known Sam, he has never had a regular job. He was always pitching some new gadget to change the world and waiting for his commission check to clear. He slinks out without saying goodbye, and Kay glares at me like I’m the bad guy, because my helpful suggestion only managed to have one less mouth at her failed dinner party.

“What?” I shrug.

Toby saves me. He’s in his mother’s arms wailing as if he’s just lost a limb. His face is beet red.

Arin pipes up, “He’s just desperately in need of a good sleep. It’s been a long day. Kay, please forgive us, but I think we should go too.”

“Dinner is ready,” Kay says, panicked. “Let me put it on the table and I’ll have you out of here in twenty minutes. You have to eat anyway, and Toby’s probably hungry, that’s why he’s overreacting.”

Arin swishes her blonde hair back and forth. “No, really. You’re too kind. We don’t deserve a friend like you, and I’m afraid if we stay, we’ll lose another friend to parenthood.” The melancholy in Arin’s voice strikes me particularly hard. I want to tell her how much Seth loves her and give him a good slap upside the head – but that wouldn’t be Christian.

“Let me put together a plate for you to take home then,” Kay begs.

“Sure,” Seth agrees.

“No,” Arin barks and her answer leaves no room for discussion. “She’s already gone through enough work, Seth. I’m sorry, Kay. It hasn’t been a good day.” Arin glares at me as if to remind me the reason for her very bad day, and honestly, I just want to hug her.

The small family disappears out the front door, and Kay’s full wrath turns toward me. If looks could kill, I’d be six feet under.

“Really? You cleared out an entire dinner party before anyone actually ate? Not even random people, but our church group? People who haven’t visited a grocery store in probably a good month because their schedules don’t allow for it, and they all just suddenly lost their appetites?”

I twist my hands together. “Look at the bright side, we can have an all-you-can-eat shrimp night right here. It will be like old times. Just the two of us.”

Kay grunts at me and marches back to the kitchen like a drill sergeant.

Could it possibly be?
The “Reasons” actually seem less functional without me. Kay doesn’t want to throw dinner parties. Seth doesn’t want to be married. Arin doesn’t appreciate Seth’s love (like this is news) and I am dyed orange like a clown. I definitely over-romanticized my life in California. I was just as dysfunctional here as I am in Philly. Somehow, I feel like the repercussions from this dinner party may be worse than others I’ve ruined in the past.

I tap my heels together and chant.
There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.

‡

K
ay is visibly
upset by the evening, and of course, what she views as my part in the fiasco. I’m not saying I was completely innocent, but…no wait, I was completely innocent. At least this one time. Maybe I wasn’t particularly nice to Sam, but he’s Sam, so it will have no effect on him whatsoever.

“Don’t be angry with me,” I say after our silent dinner. “Why don’t you go to bed, Kay? I’ll clean up.”

“I don’t like the way you clean up,” she snaps.

“You’ll survive. Go sit down. Watch some English Premier League or whatever cheers you up these days.”

“I can’t. Not until this mess is cleaned up. You’ll use the garbage disposal. I don’t use the disposal—all of that food goes into composting.” She starts to scrape a plate of its leftover food into a large, plastic bowl. “Disposals don’t last forever, you know. You have to treat them gently.”

“Yours will last forever, doesn’t that cheer you up? You never use it. It’s like a win-win. The environment…your garbage disposal.”

“I can’t sit down until this mess is cleaned up.”

“No one even ate off all of these plates,” I say over the dinner table.

“They were exposed. They’ve been contaminated.”

I can’t even respond to that. And I know Kay won’t sit down even after she’s done cleaning. In order to “allow” herself to watch television, she has to climb onto her elliptical trainer like a hamster on its wheel, as if she’s powering the electricity herself. I’m surprised that she doesn’t have it rigged that way. I lift the cookie sheet with the chicken dinosaurs on it, and Kay plucks it out of my hand and takes to scrubbing it like she’s at war.

“I shouldn’t have come, all right? I get it.”

She scowls at me and lays the cookie sheet in the sink. She’s leaned up against the counter, and it’s then, for the first time, I notice how much younger she looks than when I left. She’s dressed in normal jeans, and by normal, I mean, not mom jeans that rise up to her chest and compete with her bra for space. She’s got a light blue cotton blouse on—where she would normally wear some kind of flannel, plaid number, and she just seems lighter in nature.

“Come on, how long are you going to be mad at me?”

“At least as long as it takes for you to be a brunette again.”

“I didn’t even notice your new look, Kay. I suppose that makes me a terrible friend, but you look really nice. You bought new clothes. Without me.”

“Some of us don’t make big changes like Ronald McDonald hair to get attention. You have to look closer to notice.”

Kinda rude.

Kay pulls in a breath and shakes her head. “I thought I wanted your help, but now I’m not so sure.”

Her words hurt. “I should just go back to Philly. My mom’s busy with houseguests. I’ve upset your dinner party, and Brea’s too busy for me. At least at home, Rhett needs me.”

“If you must know, I wanted you here to help me with my wedding.”

My stomach plummets. “Wedding?” I look around the empty house. “Whose wedding?”

“My wedding.”

Oh God, don’t let it be Matt.
“To who?”

“This is why I didn’t want to tell you about Matt. I knew what you’d say about him, that you’d judge him by his one mistake rather than the whole of his life.”

“Matt?” It takes every atom of self-control I have to not spurt that there are sleazy orange
chones
under my bed. I want to believe her version of Matt, but he gives me the heebie-jeebies. How does one help that?

“You’re too judgmental, Ashley. I take joy in nurturing others through hospitality. It’s my gift and I don’t think people have to be perfect to have dinner here. You have impossible standards.”

“It is your gift,” I agree. “It gives me hives, but I wish you’d at least hear my side of things. You’re mad at me because you think I judge Matt, is that it?”

“You do judge Matt. He wants to get married,” she blurts. “I’m not the girly type. I have no idea how to arrange a wedding and I want your help, but I don’t want—”

“My opinion. Are we talking about Matt Callaway?” Oh heavens.
Now I’ve got to tell her.
I find a chair and lower myself into it. “I thought he was just doing work for you around the house. That you were good friends, as you put it.”

“I lied,” Kay says.

“You lied? Kay, when have you ever lied?”

“You’re wrong about him, Ashley, and I didn’t want your lecture. Yes, he’s not a believer. We’ll be unequally yoked, but it’s my life. Seth and Arin are both Christians. Look how well that is working out for them. Then, you’ve got Brea and John, two fantastic Christians who try to do the right thing, and look what happens to them. They lose their house.”