“Andy? Are you home?” Max called, the front door slamming behind him. Stanley went into a barking frenzy.
“Thank you, Mr. Kevin. I will handle it,” she lied for what felt like the thousandth time that day. Not a brand-new pregnancy. What did that even mean?
“Hey,” Max whispered, coming up behind her and kissing her neck. “Who are you on with?”
She clamped her hand over the microphone. “No one.”
“Andrea? Is there anything else I can help you with?” asked the disembodied voice through her cell phone.
“Is that why I’m sick?” she asked.
Mr. Kevin cleared his throat. “That would certainly explain the nausea and the fatigue. Dr. Palmer thinks your other symptoms—the sore throat, the fever, the muscle aches—are unrelated. A virus, stress, perhaps just being run down. You should feel better shortly.”
“Yes, I’m sure I’ll feel great shortly. Thanks for calling.” She pressed the “end” button, took a deep breath, and tried to calm her runaway pulse.
“Everything okay?” Max asked. He opened the refrigerator, took out a green Gatorade, and swallowed half of it in three seconds.
Andy didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure her voice still worked.
Max wiped his mouth and offered Andy an apologetic look. “Sorry I’m late. I know we need to talk tonight. What’s going on? Did you hear from the doctor? Come here. Sit with me.”
Andy allowed him to lead her to the couch, where she mentally calculated the distance from the living room to the hallway powder room in case she vomited. Max began to stroke her hair, and Andy didn’t have the energy to make him stop.
“Talk to me, sweetheart. I know this has been a really long week for you, what with the wedding and being sick and . . . the whole Katherine thing. Which I need to tell you again, because I don’t think I was clear enough this morning. Nothing happened. Nothing. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I want you to know that I’ll do anything—anything on earth—to work through this with you and make you feel better.”
Andy tried to speak but couldn’t. A baby. Her and Max’s child. A Harrison. She wondered if Barbara would disapprove of her grandchild, too.
“What’s happening in that head of yours? What did the doctor say? Are you on antibiotics? Should I go pick up a prescription? Tell me what’s going on.”
She didn’t know where she mustered the energy, but before she could think anything through, Andy forced herself to smile. Pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant. The word kept reverberating through her mind, and it was all she could do not to scream it. How badly she wanted to tell Max! But no, she needed some time to think.
She reached over to pat Max’s hand and said, “Let’s talk about everything another time, okay? I still don’t feel great. I think I’m going to lie down for a while, okay?”
And before he could say another word, she was gone.
chapter 8
no david’s bridal, no baby’s breath, no dyeable shoes of any kind
In the week since Mr. Kevin had called with the news that had changed her life, Andy hadn’t told a soul. Not Emily, not Lily, not her mother or sister, and certainly not Max. She needed time to think, not a lot of unsolicited advice and opinions, and certainly not the excited congratulations and happiness that would surely follow. On one hand, it was thrilling. A baby! She’d never been one of those little girls who could spout off every detail of her dream wedding starting at her tenth birthday, from the material of the gown to the shade of the bridal bouquet, but she most definitely had always envisioned her future as a mother. Back then it had been two kids by thirty, a boy and a girl (the boy first, of course). As she got a little older and began to understand that two kids by thirty—hell, any kids by thirty—felt way different than she’d thought, Andy altered the equation. In her mid to late twenties, she’d spent quite a bit of time thinking about it, and she had come to the conclusion that two, maybe three kids, at some point between thirty and forty would be perfect. The first two, an older boy and a younger girl, would be two years apart, guaranteeing their closeness and friendship later in life despite their different genders. The third, a girl, would come three years later, long enough to give Andy a bit of a breather but not so long that Andy would be too old or the new baby wouldn’t be the best of friends with her big sister and the apple of her big brother’s eye.
What she’d failed to envision, of course, was the piece of this puzzle that kept it from being 100 percent fantastic news (never mind the nagging little detail that she’d been pregnant at her own wedding, and anyone with a kindergarten education could do the calculations): namely, she wasn’t sure she could trust the father of her child, her baby’s grandmother hated her, and she had been thirty seconds away from suggesting a break when she found out she was pregnant. Talk about a game-changer. All the perfectly logical rationalizations that had convinced her she should leave if he’d cheated with Katherine—they weren’t bound to each other by anything more than a legal document, they didn’t have any children whose lives they would be wrecking—had gone up in smoke with a plastic cup of pee and a lone phone call from a male nurse.
The lights dimmed and Andy’s mother emerged from the kitchen carrying a cake, its entire surface alight with candles. They all began to sing.
“Had to make sure you had all forty-two on there, didn’t you, Mom?” Jill asked.
“Forty-three. One for good luck,” Mrs. Sachs said.
The boys and Kyle finished their screeching rendition of happy birthday and then insisted Jill make a wish.
“I wish my husband would get a vasectomy,” Jill murmured under her breath as she leaned over her cake.
Andy almost choked on her coffee. The sisters dissolved in laughter.
“What did you say, Mommy?”
“I wish for health and happiness for my children, my husband, my sister, and my mother,” Jill said, and blew out the candles.
“Hey, you okay?” Kyle asked, nudging Andy’s arm with his elbow. Her brother-in-law offered her a slice of cake on a paper plate, but Jonah grabbed it out of his hand before Andy could reach for it.
“Jonah! Give that back to your aunt right now. You know the rules—ladies first!”
Jonah glanced up, fork poised over the icing, a desperate look on his face. Andy laughed. “Leave him be, I’ll get the next one.”
Jonah’s fork immediately plunged into the icing. He shoveled a large bite into his mouth and gave Andy a chocolatey thank-you grin.
Kyle handed her another piece, one that didn’t get intercepted, and looked right into her eyes. “Seriously, Andy, is everything okay? You look a little . . . tired.”
“Tired.” The great euphemism for You look like shit and I don’t know why. Yes, she supposed she was tired. For about a thousand different reasons.
She forced herself to smile. “Just a tough time at work, what with the wedding and everything. Not really up for a work trip right now. At least it’s Anguilla.”
Kyle looked at her questioningly.
“Harper Hallow and Mack? They’re getting married at the Viceroy in Anguilla this weekend and I’m covering it. Apparently he wanted to have the whole thing on some converted soundstage in Fresno—I think they met on tour there or something?—but she overruled him. Thankfully.”
He said, “Quite the job perk. What, literally the entire universe wants to see that wedding, and you’re going to it?”
“It’s incredible, isn’t it? She has the best job on earth,” Jill said, dabbing at something chunky and gross on her shoulder.
Although Andy still got instinctively anxious when anyone talked about her having “the best job on earth,” even she had to agree it was pretty spectacular. She loved the feeling of creating something from scratch, of getting to shepherd new ideas from pitches to polished layouts to finished issues. It was tremendously satisfying to brainstorm one day and write the next, and then perhaps spend a few days editing followed by a week of issue planning. The variety kept things
exciting and there were always new challenges. But most of all, she loved being her own boss.
When Emily had pitched Andy the idea of starting their own print wedding magazine together, Andy flatly refused. The girls were on their second annual spa weekend away together, a tradition Andy had proposed when she realized she’d scrimped and saved all year to afford a vacation but had no one to go with. Despite Emily’s recent and (Andy thought) impulsive marriage to Miles, a reality TV producer five years older who’d just had a huge, surprise hit, Emily agreed to leave her new husband for four days of spa treatments, sun, and sand with Andy. They were sitting together in the warmest of three indoor hot tubs at the Mandarin Oriental’s spa on the Mayan Riviera. Naked. They’d just completed a hot-stone massage in the romantic couples’ room that overlooked the ocean and retired to the women’s relaxation area, where Emily had tossed her towel on a chaise lounge and did a little happy dance before sipping her ginger tea, taking a nibble of a dried apricot, and then slowly—ever so slowly—lowering herself into the steaming hot water. It was all Andy could do not to stare enviously at Emily’s textbook waist-to-hip ratio, her perfect breasts and toned legs and rounded bum without a teaspoon of cellulite. Andy herself was thin, granted, but her body didn’t have any of the ripeness of Emily’s—she was all straight lines and angles. She wondered why on earth she was so self-conscious in front of her best friend, but she couldn’t help dropping her towel right at the edge of the tub and submerging herself in three seconds flat. As Emily chatted animatedly, Andy focused on keeping her shoulders below the swirling eddies of water, feeling exposed despite being entirely covered.
“What do you mean ‘no’? You haven’t even heard my idea yet,” Emily whined in the charmingly petulant way that Andy knew meant she wasn’t really upset.
“I don’t have to hear your idea. I’m done with print. So is the rest of the world. Believe it or not, I actually like my job.” At the time Andy had a sane boss, was writing four days a week for Happily Ever After, and had the germ of an idea for a novel percolating. With her clips and flexible hours, she was sure she could start writing enough weekly to get an agent. She was on her way . . . possibly to a hand-to-mouth existence salary-wise, but still.
“Yes, but it’s just a job! What I’m talking about is a career. It’s entrepreneurship. We’ll launch it together and it will be our baby. You can’t tell me you’re not ready for something more than topten updo lists! Happily Ever After is a lovely little website with some occasional cute content and a whole lot of trite filler shit. You know it and I know it.”
“Thanks.”
Emily hit the water with her hand. “Oh, don’t be so sensitive, Andy. You’re being underutilized there. You’re so much more talented than that. I want you to write full-length cover stories, work with brilliant photographers who will execute your vision, assign your ideas to other writers and edit them, mentor them, oversee them. You’ll travel to far-flung destinations and interview celebrities, and of course we’ll accept swag and free trips and every imaginable discount because we won’t claim to be even remotely impartial. How fun does that sound?”
Andy jutted out her lower lip. “Not terrible.”
“You can say that again. Very not terrible. I’ll be the public face of the magazine and do all the stuff you would hate. I’ll throw the parties and court the advertisers and do all the hiring and firing. I’ll find the office space and buy all the equipment and supplies. We’ll find really terrific people who can oversee a lot of these things so we can focus on making it the premier wedding magazine in the country. Did I mention health insurance? And enough of a salary to actually eat out on your own dime? Can you even imagine it?”
Andy felt herself relax into the hot tub, her shoulders finally beginning to unknot. She had to admit she could imagine it. It sounded pretty freaking amazing, actually. But she couldn’t help wondering what qualified either of them to launch and run a real live magazine. A few combined years of low-level assistant and associate editor work together with an additional few years writing for a website? How would their wedding magazine be any different from the dozens of other frothy confections that wrote breathlessly of filmy veils and form-fitting dresses? And how, exactly, were they going to pay for all this? Office space in Manhattan? Andy’s studio barely fit the console table that doubled as her desk, and although the brownstone duplex Emily shared with Miles was larger and way more posh, there was hardly room for a light box, much less an art department. It sounded fantastic, but could it actually work?
Emily threw her head back in delight, drenching her piled-on, glamorous bun. “Andy, you’re much too logical for your own good. No effing fun, I tell you. Leave everything to me—I’ve got it all covered.”
“Oh, well that makes for terrific business plan. When we’re applying for bank loans and they ask what we need the money for, I can just tell them that Emily’s got it all covered.”
“I do! Miles has a dozen friends, maybe more, all New York bankers or Hollywood types, who are always looking to invest in this kind of thing. They just love throwing extra cash at creative start-ups, especially when it’s something media or publishing related. They can’t help it—they automatically think sex, models, and glamour. And we will feel very free to encourage that type of thinking. Because the way I see it, our magazine is going to be different from every other wedding rag out there.”
Andy was still trying to process the information about their dozen potential investors and how much money they were willing to throw around, but this part about how their magazine would distinguish itself sounded like even more of a fantasy. “Really? Because I’ve become pretty familiar with the whole wedding universe, and trust me, it’s not easy to come up with fresh material all the time. Not a whole lot changes from year to year.”
“Irrelevant!” Emily scoffed. The bubbles began to slow. Emily bounded out of the tub, her perfect skin slicked with water. Settling back on her bench opposite Andy, she sipped her tea and said, “Ours is going to be überstylish. Upscale. The luxe version of weddings. The phrase ‘sample sale’ will never appear in our pages. Nor will ‘affordable honeymoons,’ ‘smart ways to save money,’ or ‘beautiful bouquets for less.’ There will be no articles on where to find good deals . . . on anything. No David’s Bridal, no baby’s breath, no dyeable shoes of any kind.”
“You do realize we’re in the midst of a worldwide recession, don’t you?”
“Which is exactly why our readers will want something aspirational! You think ninety-nine percent of the people who read Runway can afford so much as a single pair of stockings featured in the issue? Of course not,” Emily said.
Despite her pragmatic streak, Andy could feel herself getting excited. “That’s true,” she said. “Runway isn’t their catalog—it’s their inspiration. It gives smart, style-savvy women who don’t necessarily have the funds to dress in couture anything a muse when designing their own style, when it comes time to choose things they can afford. It would make sense that all those women who are inspired by the out-of-reach looks in Runway would be just as inspired by the out-of-reach weddings we’d feature in The Plunge.”
Emily beamed. “The Plunge?”
“Don’t you love it? ‘Take the plunge,’ ‘plunging necklines’ . . . it’s simple, dramatic, effortless. It’s perfect.”
“I do. I freaking love it. The Plunge. You’re brilliant, that’s exactly what we’re calling it!” At this point Emily stood up and actually did a little naked jig. “I knew you’d get it. Why don’t you start thinking of where you want to go for our inaugural issue. Maybe Sydney? Or Maui? Provence? Buenos Aires? Trust me, this is going to be fabulous.”
Emily, impulsive, crazy Emily, had been right. Of course there had been roadblocks and obstacles along the way (the raw loft space that wasn’t ready until six months after the promised date; more difficulty securing a printer than either of them had anticipated; sifting through the no fewer than twenty-five hundred résumés they’d receiv
ed after posting eight separate positions), but for the most part, the path from brainstorming to execution had been relatively smooth, thanks almost exclusively to Emily’s blind faith and ambition and Miles’s well-connected and well-financed friends—Max being the biggest contributor of the whole lot, with an 181/3 percent stake in the company. A group of five other investors shared 15 percent, which left Andy and Emily with a third each. They were the clear owners with 661/3 percent between them; they could outvote anyone else and ensure that they had the ultimate say over all major decisions concerning the magazine.
The Plunge was edited with a nod to high fashion and refinement: one-of-a-kind designer dresses; diamond jewelry worthy of being passed down through the generations; guides on how to select the most elegant silver servers, rent a private island for your honeymoon, curate unique and finely crafted registry lists. It started out small, a quarterly with only forty pages or so an issue, but within two years Andy and Emily were publishing seven times a year (every other month with a June special issue) and had more subscribers and newsstand buyers than they’d projected at the outset.
As Emily had predicted, very few of their readers could afford the lifestyle proposed by The Plunge, but they were all savvy and stylish and luxury-aware enough to use the gorgeous photos and detailed articles as inspirations for their own weddings. The first few months of the magazine’s existence hadn’t been quite as splashy. They covered any weddings with the least hint of glamour or sexiness that they had access to: one of Emily’s colleagues at Bazaar who married a hedge fund guy at a yacht club; a friend of Emily’s from college whose fiancé had directed a dozen famous action flicks; Emily’s celebrity dermatologist, who agreed to have her wedding to a well-known on-air news personality covered so long as The Plunge also mentioned her new Restylane-like filler by name. The brides and grooms may not have been household names, but the weddings were always lavish and the resulting photographs lent the magazine a hint of prestige it couldn’t have attained through registry suggestion lists and ring guides alone.