On the Rocks Read Online Free Page B

will never believe what happened! I’m engaged!”
    “I’m sorry. What?” I fully believed that I didn’t hear her correctly. I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that when I opened them my head would be clearer.
    “Yes! Can you believe it? We’re engaged at the same time! We can do all our planning and everything together, isn’t that fantastic? And before you say anything, don’t worry, I’m going to wait until next summer to get married, so I’m not going to steal your thunder, but isn’t this great?”
    I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I wondered for a second if the painkillers were messing with my head and making me hallucinate conversations. I waved my hand in front of my face to see if there was a rainbow trail following it, searching for some indication that I wasn’t hearing Katie correctly.
    “Abby? Say something?” she pleaded, surprised that she didn’t get the reaction she was expecting. In fact, she didn’t get much of a reaction at all.
    “Ben broke up with me,” I said, the words sounding so strange saying them out loud for the first time. “The wedding’s off.”
    “What? What do you mean you broke up? I’m sure it’s just nerves. You guys didn’t really end things. There’s no way.”
    “It’s over. He’s moving. It’s on Facebook.”
    “But I don’t understand . . .” I could hear the guilt in her voice. She didn’t mean to kick me when I was down, but she had, and I couldn’t muster the energy to even pretend to be happy for her. And that made me hate myself even more.
    “Katie, please don’t make me get into it right now.”
    “Oh my God. Abby, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I never would have called you like this. Does Mom know?”
    “I have no idea, but I’d guess no, since I can’t hear her screaming from across town.”
    “Don’t worry about anything. I’ll tell her. She’s my next phone call. I don’t know how I’m going to tell her that I’m engaged and you’re not. How do I explain this?”
    “All she’ll care about is that there’s still a wedding to plan. She won’t care which one of us it’s for.”
    “Abby, what can I do? I’d come over, but I’m supposed to meet my friends for celebratory drinks. I can’t cancel. They’re already waiting for me, and well, I did just get engaged, soooo . . .”
    “Don’t cancel. Go.” I wasn’t trying to be the bigger person. I was just telling her what she wanted to hear, and what we both knew she was going to do. I didn’t want to ruin her moment. One of us deserved to be happy.
    “I’ll come over first thing in the morning. I promise. I don’t know what to say. I thought this was going to be one of the happiest days of my life, and it’s the worst of yours. I wanted us to do this together! I’m so bummed!”
    “You’re bummed?” I was pretty sure my sister had managed to make my rejection ruin her plans for some kind of co-bridal shower she had probably been envisioning where we would wear matching dresses and receive duplicate Cuisinarts. “I want to say I’m happy for you, Katie. I just . . . I can’t right now. Please don’t hate me.” I rolled over and looked at Grace, who had been able to discern what happened from listening to my side of the conversation. She went into the kitchen and returned with a glass of wine, just a sip or two swirling around the bottom of the glass. “I have to go,” I said as I threw my phone on the bed next to me, experiencing a virulent self-pity that I didn’t know was possible until that moment.
    Grace sat on the edge of my bed. The tears that had been brimming before the phone call were now falling down her cheeks. “You don’t deserve this, Abby. I wish I could do something to make everything better. I wish I had a way to fix things for you.”
    “What the hell is happening to me?” I wailed, choking on my breath, my words, and the bile that I felt rising in my throat. “I can’t handle this. Katie’s engaged