“Can I just say that I’m in love with your boyfriend?” Erica said, rinsing the tomatoes in my kitchen sink.
She and Noah came over to celebrate Reece moving in. There wasn’t much that was actually moved in considering Reece owned very little, but Noah did help load my storage shed with Reece’s tools, and Erica helped me organize his clothes in my closet. Our closet.
“I know,” I replied. “He’s pretty great.”
“He turned me into a professional. I really feel like a businesswoman now,” she said.
“He’s good like that.”
Erica’s business, Coastal Color Custom Airbrush Tanning, was in its fourth month of operation. She started slowly by tanning her friends and then using them as referrals to pick up more clients. Once she felt comfortable turning her “little home business” into something more professional, she asked Reece to create an ad campaign for her. She needed a slogan. She needed some advertising posters and banners. She needed a social media presence to spread the word. He helped her with it all, telling her his only payment was that she had to take his side in any future arguments he had with me. She agreed. The bitch.
“What happens when you get too many clients?” I asked.
“I hire help,” Erica replied. “Like you.”
“No way. With my perfectionism, it’d take me five hours to tan someone,” I said.
Erica chuckled. “You’re right. You’d be awful at it.”
“I’m just glad you got better,” I said. “I was worried there for a second. How much did you pay for that tanning system, anyway?”
“You don’t wanna know,” Erica replied.
We grabbed the salad bowl and potatoes and headed outside. Reece and Noah were at the grill, drinking beer and cooking ribs.
“About done,” Reece said, tossing his empty bottle in a recycling bin near the back door.
“Good, ‘cause I’m starved,” Erica replied.
We sat down to a Southern feast: grilled barbeque ribs, potato salad, fried okra, and a spinach salad on Erica’s insistence.
“Only healthy thing at this table,” she pointed out.
We dug into the food while Reece decided it was the perfect time to dig into my past.
“You three are close, right?” he asked, stabbing a potato with his fork.
“Sure,” Noah replied. “I’m fucking this one—” He nudged his wife. “—and that one’s practically my sister.” He jabbed a thumb in my direction.
“So we can talk openly?” Reece asked.
“What do you mean by ‘openly’?” I replied, feeling a little wary.
Reece paused and shoved more potato salad in his mouth, holding up his fork while he chewed. The rest of us waited, intrigued.
He swallowed and continued. “Thirty-one.”
Noah, Erica, and I all looked at one another.
“Huh?”
“The number thirty-one,” he said, looking at me. “You never told me why you dislike it so much.”
My eyes went wide. “Can we talk about this another time?”
“Why? Noah and Erica know you better than anyone else, am I right?” Reece asked.
“That’s true,” Erica said.
“So I’m sure they already know. But you never told me. And you never gave me details about your fiancé,” Reece said.
“Bailey!” Erica admonished. “You’ve been dating the man for months!”
I scowled. “Why are you bringing this up right now?” I bore my eyes into Reece’s face. Completely ineffectual. He just kept right on talking.
“I thought I’m owed these details about you. Like Erica said, we’re living together now. Every time I try to bring it up, you evade the topic.”
“Gee, Reece, maybe that’s because I don’t wanna talk about it!” I spat.
“But I’m owed the details,” he persisted.
What the fuck with this guy?
“You’re not owed anything!” I cried.
“Okay,” Erica said. “Enough. We didn’t help you move in today and get a much-needed babysitter so that we could hang out tonight and listen to this bullshit.”
I dropped my fork and folded my arms over my chest, leaning back into my chair.
Reece shrugged.
“How many beers have you had, Reece?” Erica asked.
“Two.”
“Okay, so then we can’t blame alcohol for your douchebag behavior right now,” she went on.
He opened his mouth to speak.
“Shutty,” Erica said. “This is private shit that you oughta ask Bailey when the two of you are alone. Doesn’t matter that Noah and I already know. But since we already know, and since she’s trying to keep stuff from you she shouldn’t—” I made some sort of squeaky noise in protest. “—we’ll fill you in. Honey, go ahead.”
“Bailey isn’t a fan of the number thirty-one for a few reasons,” Noah offered.
“Noah!” I yelled.
Erica swatted my thigh.
“It’s her bad luck number. She discovered it on her thirty-first birthday,” Noah said.
“Well, what’s so bad about it?” Reece asked. He directed the question to me, who sat with lips sealed in a thin, tight line.
“She collected thirty-one rocks when she was six years old,” Erica explained. “She organized them all on the kitchen steps, and her mother discovered them.”
Reece crinkled his brow. “I don’t get it.”
I huffed.
“That’s when her mother discovered that she’d inherited OCD from her father,” Erica said.
“Ohhhh,” Reece replied.
“Because of the way she categorized them and lined them up,” Erica went on. “Her mother just knew. And I guess you could say she was devastated.”
Erica glanced at me. I averted my eyes and glued them to my beer bottle.
“Bailey, why don’t you explain the rest?” Erica offered.
“Why?” I asked. “You and Noah are doing such an outstanding job.”
“Because I’d rather hear it from you,” Reece said gently. “And these people are your best friends. You’ve got nothing to hide from them. Why are you so mad?”
“Because it’s a buzzkill,” I said. “And I don’t like being put on the spot. Time and place, Reece. You know what I’m sayin’? There’s a time and a place.”
“Bailey,” he replied, “you didn’t give me a choice. You never wanna talk about it. I know this was kind of a bullshit thing to do—”
“I’ve gone through thirty-one boyfriends, okay?!” I blurted.
“Okay,” he replied.