California Girls. Susan Mallery

clothes and any special food you needed. You would be entitled to maternity leave when you had the baby and we’d cover an extra month at home so you could fully recover.”

      She paused and shrugged. “I want to say more, but I’m going to stop now. If you need to say no, then do it. I’ll totally understand.”

      Zennie reached across the picnic table and squeezed Bernie’s hand. “Stop. I’m not going to say no this second. I’m surprised, but I also think I’ve totally been expecting this. I mean, I never thought about it, but who else? I’m your best friend, Bernie. I love you and Hayes and I want you to be happy. I know you’d be great mom. It’s just big and I need to mull for a bit.”

      Bernie’s eyes filled with tears. “Of course. Take as much mulling time as you’d like. Take a year. You have to be sure. You have to know what you’re getting into.”

      “I will think and investigate and I won’t take a year.”

      Bernie brushed away her tears. “Thanks for even considering this.”

      “Thank you for asking. It’s an honor. Now we need to get going. You have to go home to your handsome husband and I need to do a little research.”

      They stood and hugged.

      “I’ll be in touch,” Zennie promised.

      “Thanks.”

      As she got in her car, Zennie knew she had a lot to consider and think about. While her first instinct was to immediately say of course she would be their surrogate, she understood that this was possibly the biggest decision of her life and not one to be made lightly. Still, it was Bernie and she had no idea if it would be possible for her to ever say no.

       Chapter Six

      Finola had a little trouble reading the digital clock on the nightstand. The numbers were big enough and even projected onto the ceiling. The problem wasn’t the size of the display or the brightness—it was that they wouldn’t stop moving.

      Back and forth, they jumped like numerical fleas doing a dance that made her head spin. Dang numbers, she thought, wondering if the concept was funny enough to make her smile because nothing else had.

      She was pretty sure she was still drunk. She’d been chugging vodka steadily since, oh, sometime Friday night, and now it was Sunday. She still hurt all over and she constantly felt sick and inside her chest, where her heart was supposed to be, was just a hole.

      She looked back at the clock and saw it was maybe nine forty. At night, she told herself, looking out the window just to be sure.

      Yup, it was dark, so nighttime. Nine forty on Sunday night. A day she’d spent entirely alone because, despite his promise, Nigel had never stopped by.

      She’d known he wouldn’t, she admitted, but only to herself. There was no way he would want to talk to her after what he’d done. Nigel loved pointing out her flaws but didn’t like hearing about his own. There was no way to put this on her, no matter how he tried, so of course he was avoiding her. It was just a character flaw.

      She’d been telling herself that for hours and hoping that, at some point, she would believe it. Only now, lying on their bed, in their bedroom, in their house, knowing he was probably fucking Treasure right this second, she was finding it harder and harder to believe that was all it was. Her spinning head and muddled mind weren’t enough to distract her from a horrific truth. That Nigel hadn’t failed to come by because he was ashamed or because he was busy having sex. He hadn’t come by because he wasn’t here anymore.

      In LA, she clarified for herself. She wasn’t thinking he was dead.

      She reached for her tablet, put it down, then swore under her breath. After sitting up, she drank more vodka, grimacing when she realized the ice had melted, diluting her drink. Stupid laws of physics or whatever it was that controlled melting ice cubes. She didn’t want watery vodka, she wanted cold vodka.

      She opened the tablet and went directly to the TMZ home page. She didn’t have to look hard to see the headline: Does Treasure Have a New Man?

      Her vision blurred more as she started crying again. Finola angrily brushed away the ridiculous, useless tears and clicked on the link that took her to the page. There were more pictures than text, which was fine with her. The last thing she wanted to do was to give herself a headache from reading impossibly small and moving print.

      Instead, she studied the photos, trying not to care about how young Treasure was and how incredible she looked in a very tiny bikini.

      “Look at her ass!”

      Finola thought about the hours she spent working out and how every year it was just a little bit harder to keep things high and tight and firm.

      Life was many things, but fair wasn’t one of them, she told herself.

      There were more pictures, all of them of Treasure. Once Finola had accepted the other woman’s incredible body, she started paying more attention to where the pictures had been taken. One word jumped out at her. “Bahamas.” Her already shaky stomach sank.

      “He’s not there,” she whispered, even though she knew he had to be. She scanned the pictures again, looking more closely at the people in the background. No Nigel, no Nigel, no...

      She turned back to one of the pictures she’d already studied, peering at it more closely. There, in the background. The image was blurry, but she recognized the man. He was with her. Nigel had gone to the Bahamas with Treasure.

      “Bastard!”

      She reached for her drink, only to remember the watery contents, then bounded out of bed. That last thing was a mistake as the room spun and her stomach lurched. She hung on to the nightstand to steady herself. When she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to fall over, she headed for the landing and, clinging to the railing, made her way downstairs to the kitchen.

      There were two empty bottles of vodka on the counter. A third still had most of its contents. She dumped the tepid liquid from her glass into the sink, added ice, then poured in more vodka. After two big gulps, she set the glass on the counter and closed her eyes.

      Nigel had gone away with his twenty-three-year-old mistress. Right now they were together, having sex or mocking her or something awful and hideous. He’d left her, just like that, with no warning. He’d left her on the weekend she’d wanted to tell him she was ready to get pregnant.

      Sadness overwhelmed her. Sadness for what had been lost. For all her hope of him being sorry and them getting over this, she honest to God didn’t know if that was possible. Even before she decided if she was willing to forgive him or not, Nigel had to come home and that sure wasn’t happening now.

      Tears returned, along with frustration and anger and hurt. She hated Nigel, hated him. She didn’t want him dead, she wanted him punished and humiliated. She wanted him naked and in public with lines of people pointing and laughing at his dick. She wanted him tied up and left in a public square until he was forced to pee and shit on himself. She wanted his fingers broken so badly, they would never heal right and he would have to stop doing surgery. But mostly she wanted it to be last Thursday so she didn’t know about the affair and she didn’t have to hurt this much.

      She went back to their bedroom and walked into his closet. Finola grabbed an armful of the clothes he hadn’t taken. She carted them over to the French doors, then stepped out onto the balcony. She didn’t hesitate at all—she simply flung the clothes off the balcony, onto the patio below. A few shirts fluttered into the pool.

      She went back inside and repeated her actions until all his clothes were in the backyard. The last to go was his winter coat—a beautiful camel-colored cashmere that he wore when they went back East. She tossed it, hurling it as hard as she could so it would fall into the chlorinated water. When she was done, she went inside. She sank onto the bathroom floor