The Unbreakables Read online

  I glance accusingly at Matt. His face is red. I’ve always suspected him of hooking up with his flirty secretary. And so has Lauren. I will strangle him with my bare hands.

  Samantha eyes Eric suspiciously, then wasting no time, with E.T.-like forceps precision, she snags the phone right out of his jacket.

  “Give it back, goddamnit!”

  “I know you, Eric. I know you.”

  Now everyone is getting nervous. I glance over at Gabe, who is not nervous. No, he’s white. No, make that albino. I put down my wineglass as my heart stops in midbeat. It’s not his stomach, not the steroid steak. I know every move of my husband’s, every damn nuance of his since he was seventeen years old. I glance at Samantha, who is now holding her husband’s phone to her chest and staring at me, her mouth drops open.

  And there it is.

  Samantha has never lied to me. Never. She told me right away when a boy I liked freshman year in high school called her first. She always tells me if I have something in my teeth, the right dress to wear, always what is best for me, not what will make her look better. She took care of my daughter, Ava, right after I’d given birth, came over twice a day when I had postpartum depression and couldn’t get out of bed. She always puts me first. I glance over at Lauren, who is staring at Samantha, her large doe eyes not blinking. It’s always been the three of us together, the no-matter-what friends, the “Jo Malone for three” friends. Always. And now . . . I turn back slowly toward Gabe, who is frozen, fearful.

  The burning rage rises rapidly like a tsunami inside me, but the numbing pain is stronger and gets there first. My eyes, the only part of me that can actually move, dart around the table like a 35-mm camera lens taking a panoramic scan. This is my world, equal parts of a whole: Lauren & Matt. Samantha & Eric. Sophie & Gabe.

  Sophie & Gabe, TLF.

  He’d actually carved that into the large oak tree in front of my house with his Swiss army knife on the night we graduated from high school. It’s still there, the jagged scar on the tree—one that I never wanted to heal. For some reason, right now, all I can think about is that tree and an axe in my hand. I have to get to that tree tonight somehow, to chop it down. Right now. I have to—

  “Sophie, Soph . . .” Samantha’s voice is soft and protective, nurturing like Bambi’s mother’s just before she gets shot.

  My gaze rests squarely on Gabe and I feel sick. This man, this incredibly loving father who smells like Tom Ford mixed with Crest mixed with Degree, who has been my rock my entire life, has betrayed me. I know it without even hearing the words aloud. That sexy move in the closet earlier was not an attempted surprise but a lie, a cover-up, birthday guilt. And now as he stares back at me—his beautifully carved rugged face, that slim scar lining his left brow, those hazel eyes that turn gold when the sun hits them, so many angles that I have once known, touched, kissed, tasted—I no longer recognize him.

  Everyone is silent, too afraid to move. I finally find my voice and it is eerily steady, clinical. “Bender . . . Black . . . Blatcher . . . Blazer . . . Bloom . . .” This stranger’s voice that has taken over mine waxes accusatory. “Gabe Bloom comes next. Isn’t that right, Eric?” My gaze remains laser-focused on my cheating husband as I speak.

  Eric looks to Samantha, not knowing how to handle this. Do something, his thick-lashed blue eyes plead desperately, blaming himself for turning a game into the real deal, and counting on her to fix it.

  Gabe, barely breathing, reaches for my arm, which has become taut like the rest of me. I’m now in full body armor, and somewhere in the back of my steel-plated brain—the part that isn’t drunk, in shock, in pain, enraged, betrayed—I hear a tender, frightened boyishly familiar “Sophie, do you hear me?” echoing, just as the chocolate lava cake drizzled with raspberry syrup bearing a lone pink candle arrives in the hands of the animated waiter. Just as my best girlfriends reach for me and shoo him away, hovering over me like a perfumed igloo, protecting me from the cold, stark inevitable truth. Except there is no protection. Ignorance is bliss and knowledge is definitely its own kind of hell.

  I push them all away. I have to see this Ashley Madison list for myself. I grab Eric’s phone and he knows better than to stop me. The hackers, I give them full credit, were well organized. The cheat sheet is in Excel format, like a business plan for fucking; a line-by-line attendance sheet. And there he is, front and center. My very own Gabe Bloom, his name listed in one column; North Grove, our home address in another; random letters and numbers that don’t make sense in another column, a credit card number that I don’t recognize, and finally in the last column is an email address that I’ve never seen before: [email protected]. Gabriel Michael Bloom. Number 18—legendary high school star quarterback, whose jersey is immortalized in the school’s glass case after winning State—the same high school our daughter had attended. The same town that we never left. GMB18. Eighteen is for chai—meaning the life that was just swiped out from under me.

  Sophie. Sophie.

  My name is now surround-sound. It’s as though I can no longer hear nor see anyone clearly. Everyone is gesturing wildly, like a sepia-tinted collage of body parts. I hear them all, feel their presence. I can even smell them. My family, my lifeline, my umbilical cord has been severed. The Unbreakables, as Eric once called us, have just shattered into a thousand tiny irreparable pieces.

  All I can register in my clogged brain is that Gabriel Michael Bloom—number 18—sole owner of my heart, the father of our only child, Ava, is listed on the hacked Ashley Madison site forty-three times. To be precise: one and a half pages full of Gabe’s transactions, along with millions of others, whose spouses are about to wake up to the secret infidelity exposed by mean-spirited hackers seeking an LOL. Ashley Madison—a name that sounds like a preppy clothing line—is an online playground in which you can stay married, stay committed while messing around because it is a quid pro quo affair: You’re married, I’m married—why not, nobody gets hurt.

  Except everybody gets hurt.

  I stare hard at Gabe, the only man I have ever slept with, the one with whom I experienced all my firsts. This being yet another, I think numbly. Dr. Bloom, hot-shot North Grove cardiologist chalked up forty-two paid-for-fucks and one for good luck.

  Happy birthday to me.

  Chapter Two

  THE UBER DRIVER MAKES NONSTOP SMALL TALK. MY MOUTH IS MOVING ON automatic, trying desperately not to be rude as I respond with rote replies, but my head, this deadweight on my neck, is spinning out of control. I stare out the car window, watching the passing vehicles on the highway, trying to digest what just happened.

  There was the drama, the drink I threw in Gabe’s face, the birthday cake smashed like an axe to a tree, and then came the crazy. I stood up from the table and ran to the elevator, which was miraculously open, and got in before anyone could stop me. I bolted out onto the street, hearing snatches of conversations along the way, with Samantha and Lauren racing after me. I was unmoored and fast. There’s no motor like rage. I was eight cylinders on stilettos, screaming wildly, “Please, just leave me alone . . . Gabe, get the fuck away from me!” as I sprinted down Oak Street, past all the designer stores without even a single window-glance, in my one-shouldered body-hugging birthday dress like a prostitute fleeing her bat-wielding pimp. I ran until I could no longer, and then hid behind large green garbage receptacles lined up in a scary alley. The rancid smell of rot was overwhelming but I didn’t move, barely breathed. In the distance, I caught glimpses of moving recognizable pants legs—Gabe, Eric, and Matt, the three stooges, running in the opposite direction. I hugged my shaking body, feeling my bones, my blood, my guts, all the moving parts within me. They lost me. I lost me.

  I called an Uber and waited for the driver to come rescue me. And he did within three minutes, just as the app had promised. Stan the Uber Guy with a wispy reddish mustache was my white knight in a dark blue Subaru.

  Safely nestled in the backseat, breathing deeply if I’m even breathing at all, I glance at
my phone. Fifteen missed calls, alternating between Gabe, Lauren, and Samantha. I check the time. Ten twenty. Without traffic, it should take thirty minutes to get home. Do I even go home? It’s my damn home, I remind myself. I’m not the cheater—he is. What if Gabe is there waiting for me? What am I going to do? Forty-three times. Christ. I drop my phone back into my purse. I can’t breathe.

  I open my window and the one on the passenger side as well. Nothing makes sense. I need to think, need to process, but the driver is still talking. I want to tell Stan that I will rate him five stars if only he would just shut up and let me think. But I simply don’t have the heart to be mean to a man who is clearly just trying to make a living; a dependable human who said he’d pick me up in three minutes and was not a second late.

  “Big night?” he asks, eyeing me curiously in the rearview mirror.

  “Big night,” I concur, staring at his bushy auburn brow.

  “You look very nice. Special occasion?”

  I find the words in me somewhere. “Thank you. My birthday.”

  “Well, happy birthday. You’re my second one today. I hope it was everything you wanted it to be.”

  It was Opposite Day. “Thank you.” My tone is crisp.

  But he keeps going, not picking up on the social cue. “So how did you celebrate?”

  I celebrated the end of my marriage. “I FaceTimed with my daughter who is studying abroad,” I say, wondering why I am even telling Stan this and thinking back to my conversation with Ava earlier this morning. She called from Paris, where she studied last semester and extended her stay into the summer to finish an independent project. The call wasn’t Ava’s usual singing or silliness on my birthday. It felt like a forced call—a because-she-had-to-call-me call. Not her at all. There was definitely something wrong in Ava’s face, in her voice.

  “There’s no way—you’re not old enough to have a daughter that old.”

  I smile despite myself at the back of Stan’s head with faint appreciation. Well, I will give him this: he is certainly earning his stars. But please, Stan. Just. Stop. Talking. And then, miraculously, as if there is a telepathic chip somewhere in the vehicle, for the next fifteen minutes or so, he does.

  As he turns off the highway and heads into North Grove, we pass by my Starbucks, my cleaners, my nail salon, my Whole Foods with its overpriced mung bean salad, my yoga studio filled with pseudo-zen moms, my shoe repair guy, my gas station and bagel place—vignettes of my to-do list, flashes of my daily life—all those things that I love and dread simultaneously.

  And then I begin to cry—not silent tears streaming daintily down a cheek, but an all-out bawl. And Stan with all his chattiness, simply doesn’t know what to do with me, so he does it all. He pulls over to the side of the road, flicks on his hazards and hands me a tissue and a Wet One, a Q-tip for my runny mascara, a mini-bottle of water, and tops it all off with a Cinnamint. Every amenity Stan has, he gives to me.

  “Sounds like it wasn’t such a good birthday,” he says with true compassion. “I’m really sorry. You seem like the kind of person who deserves better.”

  “Thank you,” I bluster. “I mean it. Kindness goes a long way. I’m just up ahead, over there.” I point. “Left at the next light. It’s okay. I’m okay. We can go now.”

  He nods, turns on the ignition, and drives, keeping a concerned eye on me through the rearview mirror. I make a mental note to contact his Uber supervisor—Uber-visor?—if there’s such a thing, tomorrow.

  We slowly pull into my circular driveway and I look up. The outside lights are on, accentuating our new landscaping, and so is the kitchen light, and the one in our bedroom upstairs. I exhale deeply. Gabe is home.

  “Stan?”

  He turns. “Uh yeah.”

  “What do you do when you don’t know what to do?” My nose is running a steady stream and he hands me another tissue.

  He shrugs. “I guess, you just do it. Do what you got to do, make it quick, and then get out. That’s what I do.”

  Not so deep but pretty spot on.

  I say goodbye and tell Stan he earned every single star and more. I slowly make my way up my driveway as though walking the plank, feeling wobbly in my heels. I stop in my tracks and stare at my big house with its salmon-colored brick, rustic French turquoise shutters, and three-car garage, picturing the once good life inside that no longer possesses bragging rights. Gabe is definitely home. I see him watching me from our bedroom window, lifting back the curtain like a leading man in a horror film. Tony Perkins waiting for Janet Leigh.

  Then he reveals himself in full. Our eyes meet and lock. Six foot one, 185, tousled black hair—the kind that will never go bald. Long, lean and muscular, perfectly packaged. [email protected]: God’s gift to forty-three women.

  Who are not me. I cringe, turning away from him, wiping my wet face with the rolled-up Kleenex as I press the outside code to open the garage door. I hold my head up high, completely unprepared for whatever comes next. Squaring my shoulders, finding my breath, I enter my home of nearly fifteen years to do what I’ve got to do and then get out.

  And then I stop in my tracks, backpedal out the door and into my garage. I can’t do this. Not yet. Leaning against my car, I reach for my phone inside my purse. I glance at it before I press the third name listed on my favorites.

  “Sophie, thank god,” Samantha answers halfway through the first ring, as though she is watching her phone intently, like one of those black restaurant buzzers that light up when your table is finally called.

  “Sam.” Her name comes out as a bated breath. I’m dying here.

  “I’m coming right now. I’ll call Lauren. Don’t move. We’ll be there in less than ten.”

  Chapter Three

  EXACTLY NINE MINUTES LATER, I HEAR PABLO, OUR EIGHT-YEAR-OLD GOLDEN retriever, barking his head off from inside my house. How I wish I could go back in and curl up with him on the couch, as usual. I heave a deep sigh of relief as Samantha pulls up in her Lexus SUV with Lauren. God knows, if ever I needed them, it’s right now.

  I start to walk down my driveway toward them and then I freeze. I note that my sprinkler system must have just turned on. This is my goddamn house; my lilacs being watered. Every inch of it I designed, planned, nurtured. Why am I the one who has to leave?

  Because staying in a house of lies is not an option.

  Samantha and Lauren face me in the car, watching through the windshield. They both jump out when they see me stalled, staring at my lilac bushes like one of Gabe’s zombies in those TV shows I hate. As they quickly approach, I notice that they both have changed and are wearing some version of Lululemon and I’m still in my birthday dress.

  Samantha, who’s been able to read my mind since the ninth grade, says, “Don’t worry, I brought you yoga pants, gym shoes, and a tank. They’re in the car.”

  Lauren wraps her arms around me, points to the passenger side of the car, and says gently, “And you can sit in the front, okay?”

  My girls. “Now there’s the silver lining . . . Gabe cheats on me and I get shotgun.” I laugh instead of cry. But not them—they both begin to cry.

  “I’m so sorry, Soph. This totally sucks,” Lauren says through her tears while hugging me tightly. She is full-figured, always trying to lose ten pounds, but she’s perfect, her curves are gorgeous, and I tell her that all the time. I feel the comforting softness of her body against mine, and it takes every bit of strength I have right now not to fall apart completely. She detaches gradually, then holds me firmly by my shoulders, stares into my eyes. “Stay at my house or Samantha’s tonight, and let us take care of you. I know this is devastating, but we’ve been through everything together, especially the worst of it. We’ll get through this too, okay.” She gestures to Samantha. “Remember when Sam’s mom . . .”

  Sophomore year in college. Cancer. Samantha had dropped out of the University of Michigan for the entire semester to be with her mother for those few precious months before she died. Lauren and I came home from
college to be with her, rotating every other weekend. It was the most painful time of our lives watching Lynda wither away. I was much closer to Samantha’s mother than to my own. So was Lauren.

  “How could I ever forget,” I whisper, and we both squeeze Samantha. “But this is different. Nobody’s dying. Just my marriage, just my life as I know it. That list . . . that fucking list. Who are those women? Do we know them? Do they shop at our Whole Foods? Are they at the club, at yoga? At Starbucks? Laughing behind my back?” I search their anguished faces. “I think I need to disappear for a while, take time to figure it all out. Gabe was my . . .” I wipe my watery eyes.

  “You don’t need to disappear,” Samantha says adamantly, as we get into the car. “We’ve never gone through anything in our lives apart. Let us help you.” She takes my hand and squeezes it. “We’re here for you, like always.”

  Sighing deeply, I gently remove my hand from hers, fasten the seat belt, and glance up at my house as we back out of the driveway. I see a faint shadow in my bedroom window—Gabe? I look away because it no longer matters. Samantha is right. We have been through everything together: cancer, suicide (Eric’s younger brother), abortion (Lauren, junior year in college), miscarriages (Samantha), postpartum depression (me), fertility issues (me), eating disorder (Caitlin, Samantha’s eldest, a senior in high school, struggles with bulimia), bullying (Samantha’s ten-year-old son, Brett, had to confront the fifth-grade bully—thank god, that’s over), middle school girl drama (Lauren’s thirteen-year-old daughter, Riley, still deals with mean girls), and the real estate market crash in 2008 (Matt and Lauren). We all pitched in to get them through that crisis, and eventually they got back on their feet. And now Gabe, the serial cheater.

  And yet for some reason, this is the worst thing that has ever happened in my life, and I just want to be alone to wrap my head around this. I want to and I don’t. I eye my best friends lovingly. I need them. I shouldn’t be alone. My suffering is reflected in their eyes, my pain is theirs. We are all so overinvested in one another’s lives if there is such a thing, that we don’t know who we are without one another. Even our kids think of themselves as brothers and sisters, which I’ve always loved especially since Ava is an only child. I bite down on my bottom lip to prevent myself from crying again. What’s going to happen to our tight-knit family now?