* * *
I wake up in his bed, alone. The clock on the nightstand says 3:38, and I roll over to see the bathroom door open, the room dark. Light filters in under the door from the living room.
I slide out of bed, find my underwear and tank top on the floor, and pull them on. I push open the door and peek out.
Ben sits on the ground next to the sliding glass door, wearing a T-shirt and boxer briefs. It’s cracked open, and he’s smoking a joint, blowing the smoke out the door. A half-finished drink is on the floor next to him.
He turns when I step outside the bedroom. “Hey.”
“Can’t sleep?”
He shakes his head and then holds the joint out, offering it to me.
“No, thanks.” I walk across the room and sit down across from him.
“Matt texted you.” He points to my phone, which is on the coffee table.
I reach over and grab it. “You’re not even going to pretend that you didn’t look at my phone?”
“Nope.” One side of his mouth lifts. “In my defense, it flashed on the screen like half an hour ago and I just happened to see his name.”
I unlock my phone and read the message. Sent at three in the morning. He must be drunk.
I’m sorry. Can we talk?
“He wants to talk.” I put the phone back on the table.
“Are you going to?”
“No. He’s just drunk.”
He takes a hit off the joint and peers at me. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“My drunk ex-husband?”
“Everything … involving your drunk ex-husband.”
“No.”
“Is there a reason you never want to talk about him?”
“I talk about— Wait, off the record?”
“Yes. We’re in our underwear.”
“Being in just your underwear means you’re off the record?”
“I mean, I think it should.”
I stretch my legs out, crossing one ankle over the other. Ben puts a hand on my calf. “I talk about him. But I’m not interested in recounting my sad marriage story for your podcast listeners.”
“Your sad marriage story is probably relevant.”
He has no idea how relevant. I shrug.
Ben slowly blows out smoke. “Was he that big of a dick when you married him?”
I give him an amused look. “No. Or, yes. I don’t know. He was a more lovable dick. Or I was more tolerant of assholes then. Probably a combination of the two.”
“I don’t really recognize the version of you that people talk about.” Ben finishes the joint and reaches up to drop it in an empty glass on the end table. “The twenty-two-year-old Lucy who married him sounds like a completely different person, the way they talk about you.”
“I was, in a way. I was Plumpton Lucy. Same girl I was in high school.” I reach for his drink and take a sip. It’s straight whiskey, and it burns as it goes down. “I always admired that about Savvy. She was so different than she was in high school. She wasn’t afraid to…”
“I thought it would be more upsetting, being covered in blood,” she whispers in my ear.
Ben looks at me expectantly.
“… change,” I finish.
“It doesn’t sound like you were so bad in high school,” he says. “You were the type of girl who went around punching assholes. I think we would have gotten along.”
“Or I would have punched you.”
He laughs. His eyes are slightly bloodshot, and he’s loose, high. “I was a huge nerd in high school.”
“I want to see you as a teenage nerd. Show me a picture.”
“No,” he says, with little to no conviction.
“Come on. You spend your days obsessing over every detail of my past. You’ve probably seen every picture taken of me in my early twenties.”
He squints. “That’s a really good point, actually.” He sighs as he reaches for his phone. “Fine.”
He swipes for a minute before turning the phone so I can see the screen. I take it from him.
It’s a prom photo. He stands next to a pretty brunette girl in a green dress. His tie matches. His hair is too short and he has a giant pimple on his forehead. It looks like he hit his growth spurt later, because he’s about the same height as his date, who’s wearing flats. Or maybe she was just six feet tall.
“You liar.” I pass the phone back to him.
He looks startled. “What?”
“You absolutely had girls lining up for you. You were cute and you know it.”
“I was a nerd! A bumbling, awkward nerd. I talked about Iron Man a lot.”
“Oh yes, talking about the billion-dollar Marvel franchise that everyone loves must have made you extremely uncool.”
“Hey. It was slightly less cool back then.”
“God, you’re so smug. You had hot prom dates and won fancy student journalism prizes. You solve crimes on your own and you get murder suspects to have sex with you.”
“Paige would be extremely annoyed to hear anyone thinks I solve crimes on my own. And how did you know I won fancy journalism prizes? You researched me?”
“You hired a PI to investigate me, so I don’t think you have room to judge my light googling.”
“I wasn’t judging, I was flattered.”
“Don’t be.”
He laughs, his fingers moving against my calf. I scoot forward a little, and his hand slides up to my thigh.
“What was your most likely thing?” I ask. “You know, in the yearbook? Like how I was ‘Most Likely to Kill Her Best Friend.’”
“You were ‘Most Likely to be a CEO by Thirty.’”
“Thanks, stalker.”
“We didn’t do those. I thought they were just a movie thing, actually. A movie thing and a small-town thing, apparently.”
“What would you have been? Most likely to win a Pulitzer?”
He laughs. “I doubt it. Most likely to obsess over unsolved murders? I was known for it back then too.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“It’s in one of the Reddit threads about your podcast. Some people you went to high school with have weighed in there.”
“Jesus, you should not be looking at any Reddit threads about me or you.”
“Why? Because they call me a crazy murderer but say they’d still fuck me?”
“Yes! That’s exactly why.”
“This isn’t news to me.” I move even closer to him, parting my legs so I can wrap them around him and sit in his lap. His arms circle my waist.
I lean down to kiss him. “As one of the men who would definitely still fuck a crazy murderer, I don’t think you have the right to look so scandalized.”
His lips brush mine as he speaks. “I prefer not to use the word crazy. Not in that context, anyway.”
“It’s so interesting that it’s the word crazy that bothers you and not murderer.”
“I didn’t say that word didn’t bother me too.”
I kiss him, looping my arms around his neck and shifting until I can feel that he’s currently only bothered in the good way.
“Let’s go back to the bedroom.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
LUCY
I wake a second time to a door opening. It’s morning now, light streaming in through the blinds. Ben is on his stomach beside me, still asleep.
“Ben!” It’s a familiar voice from the living room. Paige. “Are you in there? You know I worry that someone murdered you when you don’t answer my texts.”
He stirs, groaning as he rubs a hand across his face. The clock says it’s after ten. We were up late.
He rolls out of bed and pulls his boxers on. As he walks to the door, he holds his hand out. I think that means he wants me to stay put. He opens the door a crack.
“Hey.”
“Hey— Dude, no. I do not want to see you in your underwear.”
“Then don’t barge into my hotel room at the crack of dawn.”
“First of all, it’s practically lunch. Second of all, you gave me a key, so I’m not sure what else you expected me to do with it.”
“I need to shower. I’ll meet you in your room in like an hour.”
“It’s going to take you an hour to shower?”
“I have stuff to do. Websites to browse. Political news to obsess over. Just give me a little while.”
There’s a long pause. “Please tell me you did not.”
“Just give me—”
“I know that purse, you stupid motherfucker.”
Ben stumbles backward as Paige barges into the room. I sit up, holding the sheet against my chest. Paige doesn’t look surprised so much as defeated.