Lauren Weisberger - Chasing Harry Winston

“I vote Italian,” a female voice said with a laugh.

“Emmy! Are you calling from Israel? How are you?” Leigh didn’t particularly feel like talking to anyone just then, but she couldn’t just hang up on her best friend when they hadn’t spoken in over a week.

“No, I just landed. I’m in a cab on my way back from JFK. What are you up to tonight? I was hoping I could drag you to dinner. I miss my friends!”

“I’m breaking up with Russell,” Leigh said quietly, with absolutely no intonation. It took a second before she was even sure she had uttered the words, but Emmy’s gasp confirmed it.

“What did you say? AT &T is shit. I don’t think I heard-”

“Yes, you did. You heard me,” Leigh said with more calmness than she’d felt in seventy-two hours. “I said I’m breaking up with Russell.”

“Where are you?” Emmy demanded.

“Emmy, I’m fine. I appreciate your-”

“Where the fuck are you?” she screeched so loud Leigh had to move the phone away from her ear.

“I’m about to walk into his apartment. He’s not home yet, but I’m ordering dinner for us and I’m going to do it then. Emmy, I know this must seem like it’s out of nowhere, but-” Her voice cracked and a sob choked off her breath.

“I’ll be right there. Listen to me, Leigh Eisner. I am on my way over there, okay?” Leigh heard the muffled sound of Emmy redirecting the cabbie to Russell’s cross streets. “Are you still there? We’re already through the tunnel and headed south on the FDR. I’ll be there in ten, twelve minutes. Do you hear me?”

Leigh nodded.

“Leigh? Say something.”

“I hear you,” Leigh squeaked through a sob.

“Okay, don’t move. Do. Not. Move. Understand? I’ll be there momentarily.”

Leigh heard Emmy hang up, but she couldn’t bring herself to close her own phone. Why had she just said she was going to break up with Russell? It wasn’t at all what she’d been thinking for the past couple of days, during her massage, on the ride back to the city. She’d merely reached the conclusion that she must be honest with him-at all costs-about Jesse. That even if it was only to selfishly assuage her own guilt, starting off a marriage based on cheating was probably not a brilliant idea, and Russell deserved to know the whole truth from the beginning. That said, she was also reasonably sure that Russell-with the proper reassurances-could be convinced to give her a second chance. It wouldn’t have been pretty or enjoyable for either of them, but if she worked hard enough at assuring him that it was a complete fluke with Jesse (which it was) and would never happen again (not a lie), she figured they had a pretty decent chance of getting through this. What she hadn’t even considered was that she might not want to get through this…until she’d blurted out those very words just moments before.

Leigh bought a cup of coffee from a tiny corner health-food shop with no proper half-and-half or fake sweeteners-where were all those goddamn Dunkin’ Donuts when she needed one?-and retied her scarf tighter around her neck. She was about to walk into Russell’s lobby when she heard Emmy’s voice shouting behind her. She turned to see a cab screeching to a stop, a tan but panicked Emmy hanging out the back window.

Leigh stood and waited calmly in the doorway, watching as her friend threw three twenties at the driver, collected a few dollars’ change, and dragged her rolling suitcase from the trunk.

“When did it get so fucking freezing?” Emmy hissed as she tried to yank the suitcase’s handle up from its tucked position.

“About two seconds after you left,” Leigh said, aware that she should help her friend but feeling no real inclination to do so. For the moment it felt perfectly fine to stand there and watch her own breath come out in hot streams against the frigid air. She was breaking up with Russell. Breaking up with Russell. Was she really going to up and end it, just like that? Call off the engagement, give back the ring, become un-affianced? Yes. Yes, she was.

“My god, this is uncivilized! Uninhabitable! Why do we choose to live like this?” Emmy kissed Leigh on the cheek. “Russell’s not home, right? So we can go upstairs?”

Leigh held open the door and waved Emmy through. She used her key to summon the elevator that opened directly into Russell’s full-floor loft, and both girls helped pull Emmy’s suitcase on board. The panorama of stainless steel and black lacquer that greeted them when the elevator doors swept open was enough to shock Leigh back to the present; immediately upon seeing Russell’s collection of metal sculptures and his decorator-chosen black-and-white prints, she felt the familiar feel of her fingernails digging into the flesh of her palms.

“Welcome!” Leigh sang with mock cheeriness. “Something about this place just warms the heart, doesn’t it?”

Emmy left her suitcase by the door, tossed her down puffer coat over a dining room chair, and flopped awkwardly onto Russell’s impossibly chic, rock-hard sofa. “I could name three dozen women off the top of my head who would kill to spend just one night in this apartment.”

Leigh shot her a warning look.

“I’m just saying…”

“You’re right, of course. Which makes it all the more ironic that I’m not one of them.” Her voice was quiet and serious, and for a moment Leigh wondered why she wasn’t already crying.

Emmy patted a patch of couch next to her, but her hand ended up making a smacking noise. “Christ, that’s hard,” she muttered. “C’mere, sit down and tell me what’s going on. I feel like this came out of nowhere.”

Leigh walked toward Emmy but sat down on the Ligne Roset daybed opposite her. “It must seem that way, I guess. Hell, it sort of feels that way. But not if I’m going to be really honest with myself.” Leigh felt her throat constrict and almost felt relieved that she was finally experiencing something resembling a normal reaction.

“What’s going on? Have you two been fighting?”

“Fighting? No, of course not. Russell’s as sweet and supportive as he’s ever been. I don’t know, I’ve just, well, I don’t know…”

“Ohmigod!” Emmy slapped her head. “How could I not have guessed? He is a man, after all. Russell’s cheating on you, isn’t he?”

Leigh could feel her eyes open wide, but she couldn’t get any words out.

“ Oh. My. God. That shit! Mr. I’m So Fucking Perfect is cheating on you? Leigh, sweetheart, unfortunately for both of us, I know exactly how you’re feeling right now. Christ, I can’t believe that he’d actually-”

“He’s not cheating on me, Emmy. I’m cheating on him.”

That seemed to quiet everything down for a solid thirty seconds. Emmy looked as though she’d been struck, her face contorted with surprise as she struggled to process what she’d just heard.

“You’re cheating on Russell?”

“Yes. Well, no. Not currently. But I did.”

“With who? Whom. Whatever.”

Leigh sighed. “It’s not important. What matters now is that it’s over, but I have to think it happened for a reason. People who are ecstatically happy in their relationships don’t cheat.”

Emmy held up her hand as if to ask for quiet. “It’s not important ?” she asked. “Leigh, darling, you’re one of my two best friends on this planet. Not to make this entirely about me here, but come on! It’s bad enough I had no idea you were sleeping with someone else while it was happening-and I recognize now’s probably not the ideal time to be pissed at you for it-but to even suggest that you aren’t going to tell me after the fact is absolutely ludicrous! I mean, do you really-”

“It was Jesse. Jesse Chapman.”