The Invitation
: Chapter 31

“I don’t understand. Why would Lexi sell her diary on eBay, and how the hell did you wind up with it?”

Stella shook her head. “I didn’t buy that diary on eBay. Evelyn gave it to me for my birthday.”

“Evelyn? Evelyn Whitley?”

“Yes.”

“How did Evelyn get it?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“When did she give it to you?”

“For my birthday last year—so about eighteen months ago.”

I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on, but I knew Evelyn and Lexi didn’t speak anymore. I remembered a day a couple of years ago when I’d gone to pick up Charlie, and my ex-wife had been in a particularly bitchy mood. She’d asked me if I kept in touch with Evelyn. Of course, I didn’t. Evelyn was my sister’s friend, and not one I was too fond of to begin with.

“I just read the first page. It starts on the day we met.”

Stella looked pale. “I know.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling something between bamboozled and angry, but I tried to stay calm. “You just happened to receive my ex-wife’s diary? From the woman you were pretending to be the night we met?”

“It sounds far-fetched. I realize that. But, yes, that’s what happened. I had no idea it belonged to your ex-wife until the other night.”

“The other night? At my house when you said you had a headache and bolted?”

She nodded. “That’s when it all clicked together.”

I’d gone over that evening in my head a dozen times, trying to figure out what the hell had happened. One minute we were fine and laughing, and the next she was out the door. I shook my head. “I don’t understand, Stella.”

She sighed. “Do you think we can sit down to talk about this?”

I dragged a hand through my hair. “You sit. I need to stand.”

Hesitantly, she walked over to the chair and sat down. I started to pace in the living room. “What happened the other night at my house?”

Stella looked down and spoke to her hands. “Charlie said her full name, and I remembered it from a diary I’d read a while ago. Do you recall I told you I’d read the diary of a woman who got married at the library? That I used to go sit on the stairs and look for the people I’d read about?”

I was so confused. “You were looking for me and Lexi?”

Stella nodded. “I didn’t know it at the time, but yeah…I guess I was.”

It seemed incredulous that my ex-wife’s diary could fall into my new girlfriend’s hands by coincidence. But even if that’s exactly what had happened, I still didn’t get why Stella got so freaked out the other day.

I held up the diary. “So this is why you’ve been avoiding me? Because you realized you’d read my ex-wife’s diary?”

She continued to avoid my eyes. “Yes.”

I paced a few times, trying to see the full puzzle, but I was missing a few pieces. “Why? If this was all some big coincidence, why not just tell me?”

Stella was quiet for a long time. That was freaking me out.

“Answer me, Stella.”

She looked up for the first time. Her eyes were filled with tears, and she looked completely distraught. I felt torn between wanting to hold her and wanting to scream at her for whatever the fuck craziness she had going on.

Unfortunately, the latter won out, and I barked, “Goddammit, Stella. Answer me!”

She jumped in her seat and tears streamed down her cheeks. “Because…there are things…in the diary entries.”

“What things?”

Lexi and I didn’t have a great relationship, especially at the end. But I wasn’t ever cruel to her. I hadn’t given her anything to write about that would freak Stella out.

Stella started to cry harder. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

I couldn’t take seeing her upset, so I walked over and kneeled in front of her. Pushing strands of wet hair from her face, I spoke quietly. “Relax. Stop crying. Nothing Lexi could have written in some diary is going to hurt me. This hurts me, seeing you so upset. What’s going on, sweetheart?”

Trying to calm her only seemed to trouble her more. She sobbed, her shoulders heaving. So I pulled her in for a hug and held her until she calmed down a little. Once she did, I tilted her chin up so our eyes met. “Talk to me. What has you this upset?”

Her eyes jumped back and forth between mine, and it felt like I was watching her damn heart break.

“Lexi…” She sniffled. “She talks about having an affair.”

I blinked a few times. “Alright… Well, I didn’t know she had an affair. But I guess I can’t say I’m shocked. I caught her in lies about meaningless things over the years, and at one point I had suspected she might be seeing someone, although she always denied it. Lexi’s pretty selfish and did some shady shit, including hiding money and disappearing until late at night. Is that what’s been eating at you? You thought I’d be upset to replace that out? It’s not pleasant to hear, but that part of my life is over.”

Stella closed her eyes and shook her head. “There’s more.”

“Okay…what? What is it?”

“The man she was sleeping with, she wrote that he was your best friend.”

My face wrinkled. “Jack?”

“She never says his name, but she refers to him with the letter J… And…” Stella swallowed once more and took a deep breath. “Lexi doesn’t know who the father is.”

I had to be in some serious denial, because I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. “Father of who? What do you mean?”

Stella’s lip trembled. “Charlie. She doesn’t know who Charlie’s father is. She was sleeping with both of you at the time she was conceived.”

Until a week ago, I’d felt like I had the world by the balls. I remember watching my little girl cook me dinner with the woman I was crazy about—the two of them laughing and smiling—and thinking how right everything finally felt after so long. And now…it felt like the world had me by the balls.

At first, I didn’t believe it. Not that Lexi wasn’t capable of doing that type of shit, but I couldn’t believe my best friend was. At a very minimum, that part had to be wrong. J could stand for a thousand names; there was no way Jack would do that to me.

But when I was on my third scotch, sitting at a bar where I’d met my buddy countless times, I remembered a particular Valentine’s Day years ago. I’d been up in Boston on business for a few days. My flight home had been scheduled for the evening. I’d told Lexi I’d take her out to dinner when I got home, but I’d finished up early and decided to take a midday flight and surprise her. When I walked in, Jack had been in our apartment. I remember having a fleeting uneasy feeling, but then Jack had said he’d asked Lexi to go shopping with him to buy his new girlfriend—now his wife—a gift for Valentine’s Day. He’d said she loved emeralds and remembered Lexi had a necklace with one, so he’d figured she would be able to help him pick out a quality stone for a ring. I’d honestly thought nothing more about it—this was my wife and my best friend, for fuck’s sake.

A few years later, I’d sat across from Lexi in my attorney’s office. She had her hands folded on the conference room table, and I noticed an enormous emerald sparkling on her finger. Our negotiations had gotten contentious by that point, so I’d made a comment about her ridiculous spending and motioned to the ring. She’d flashed a wicked smile and said she’d had it for years—a gift from a man who actually appreciated her. I’d never seen the ring before, but Lexi had a shitload of jewelry, so again, I chalked it up to nothing and my ex just trying to get under my skin.

Rattling the ice cubes that had barely had a chance to melt in my glass, I decided to make a call. I didn’t give a fuck if it was 2:30 in the morning.

A groggy woman’s voice answered on the third ring. “Hello?”

“Do you have an emerald ring?”

“Hudson? Is that you?”

I heard a man’s voice grumble in the background, but couldn’t make out what he’d said.

“Yeah, it’s Hudson, Alana.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“Can you just tell me if you have an emerald ring?”

“I don’t understand…”

My voice boomed. “Just fucking answer the question. Do you or do you not have an emerald ring from your husband?”

“No, I don’t. But what’s going on, Hudson? Is everything okay?”

Alana must’ve covered the phone, because I heard muffled voices, and then a few seconds later, my supposed best friend came on the line. “Hudson? What the hell is going on?”

“Your wife doesn’t have a fucking emerald ring.”

“Are you drunk?”

I ignored him. Whether I was drunk or not didn’t change the facts. “You know who does have a fucking emerald ring?”

“What are you talking about?”

“My ex-wife. That’s who has the fucking emerald ring. The one you told me you went shopping to get for your new girlfriend when I came home from Boston early.”

The line went quiet for a moment. Eventually, Jack cleared his throat. “Where are you?”

“The bar down the block from your house. Get your scrawny ass down here, or I’ll be at your apartment in ten minutes.” Without waiting for a response, I hung up and tossed my phone on the bar. Then I held up my empty glass to the bartender. “I’ll take another.”

Jack said nothing as he settled himself on the stool next to me.

I couldn’t even look at him. My voice was eerily calm as I stared down into my glass. “How could you?”

He didn’t immediately respond. For a moment, I thought he was going to try to play dumb, or worse, deny it—but at least he gave me that much respect.

“I wish I had an answer to that question,” he said, “other than I’m a fucking piece of shit.”

I scoffed and brought my drink to my lips. “Probably the first honest thing I’ve heard out of your mouth in years.”

Jack raised his hand for the bartender and ordered a double scotch. We waited until his glass was filled to continue.

“How long?” I asked.

He sucked back half of his glass and set it down on the bar. “About a year.”

“Were you in love with her, at least?”

Jack shook his head. “No. It was just sex.”

“Great,” I sneered. “Twenty-five years of friendship for just sex. Lexi didn’t even give a good blowjob. She was all fucking teeth.”

Through my peripheral vision, I saw Jack hang his head. He shook it for a long time. “I think I wanted to win at something,” he said. “You were always smarter, stronger, taller, more popular, and got all the girls you could handle. After we were dating for a few weeks, Alana admitted that the night we met her in that bar, she and her friend had walked over to talk to us after she’d called dibs on you. Even my wife would’ve picked you over me if she’d had the choice.” He shook his head again. “We were drunk the first time it happened, if it’s any consolation.”

“It’s not.”

We sat side by side for a solid ten minutes without either of us saying another word. I finished off my fourth scotch while my loyal friend sucked back his double. I wasn’t a big drinker, so the alcohol had really hit me. My vision was blurry, and I felt the room starting to spin.

Taking a deep breath, I turned to face Jack for the first time. He did the same, meeting my eyes as he blew out a jagged exhale.

“Is she yours?” Just asking the question caused a physical ache in my chest, and my voice cracked when I spoke again. “Is my daughter yours?”

Jack swallowed. “Lexi was never sure. As far as I know, she still isn’t.”

I pulled out my billfold. Tossing two hundreds on the bar, I raised my hand to call the bartender. “Hundred for the drinks. The other hundred is to not help him up.”

The bartender looked confused, so as I stood and steadied myself, I pointed to the piece-of-shit man I’d called my best friend for more than two decades. “He was fucking my wife while I was married to her.”

The bartender’s brows shot up, and he looked between us.

“Turn around,” I muttered at my oldest friend.

Jack turned in his seat to face me. I had to close one of my eyes to only see one of him, but he never raised his hands as I hauled back and landed a punch square in the center of his face. It was the least he could’ve done—taken it like a man.

“You don’t tell my piece-of-shit ex-wife that I know,” I warned before turning toward the door. I never bothered to look back to see if the bartender helped him off the floor.