“I have an hour before I have to reunite an incarcerated father with his newborn baby for the first time,” Arch says.
“I have fifty-five minutes before I test-drive an electronic bike that will help twelve-year-old girls outrun rapists.” This is our favorite game. Who will do more for the state of humanity today?
Arch slams a jar of Smucker’s on the countertop with stoic resolve. “Charbroiled carbs it is then. Breakfast of champions.”
We carry our plates over to the couch and settle in. Arch unfolds her disproportionately long legs—her thighs are normal, but her shin bones belong in the Museum of Natural History—and props her feet in my lap. Arch has skinny, knobby toes, like crab legs without any meat, and her nails are the same shade of red as the SPOKE logo. This was done to woo me, but it managed the opposite effect. You’re too much for me, I thought, guiltily, when she came home with the tissue still between her toes.
“Did you know Kelly and Jen Greenberg hung out?” I ask Arch.
Arch flicks a crumb off her top lip with the inside of a knuckle, unaware that she has left dark grit in the corners of her mouth. “Are you asking me or telling me?”
“Asking.” Arch and Kelly are friends, which should make me happy. That the person you love meshes well with your family is all most people hope for in life. Instead, it makes me nervous, paranoid even. What did you talk about? I ask, my tone light, my heart racing, whenever Arch comes home from an outing with Kelly. Maybe I’m afraid of these two pairing off against me, the way Layla and I sometimes do to Kelly. Maybe I’m afraid that if Arch spends enough time with Kelly, she’ll realize how little of an intellectual connection we actually have. Maybe. Maybe.
“I would have told you if I knew that,” Arch says, to my relief. Now I get to just complain.
“How fucked-up is that?” I ask.
Arch mounts her long hair on top of her head, a ponytail holder in her teeth. I notice our age difference when she puts her hair up. Nine years. It’s nothing sometimes, and then it’s everything. “She’s trying to get to know her new colleague at work,” she says, the black elastic in her mouth bobbing. “She knows you don’t like Jen, and she probably felt funny telling you about it.” Arch lifts a shoulder, failing to see the criminal activity. “Give her a break, Brett. She feels like an outlier. She just wants to fit in.”
“Well, she went and got herself invited to Lauren’s party. She’s fitting in fine.” The group events are where it all goes down—the drama, the tears, the reconciliations. You are dead in the water if you don’t attend the group events. Lisa is a monster but Lisa is right. No one wants to watch me pedal a stationary bike by myself all season long. NOT EVEN JESSE. A dizzying premonition suddenly kicks me in the head: My sister is in the opening credits for next season, but not me. I’m raising the next generation of Goal Diggers would probably be her tagline. I set my burned toast on the coffee table after just one bite.
Arch pokes my thigh with her bony toe. “Hey. You’re going out to Yvette’s to make peace with Jen today. Maybe she’ll invite you once you smooth things over.”
After we test-drive the bikes for the advisory board members, I’m headed out to Yvette’s. There, butthole vehemently clenched, I will extend an olive branch to the Green Menace. Olives are vegan, right?
Arch checks the time on the cable display box. “You want to shower first?”
“You can,” I say, removing her feet from my lap and going in search of my phone in the kitchen. It quickly becomes apparent that Arch has hidden it. I drill my fists into my hips and Arch laughs.
“I promise to tell you where it is after you shower.”
In the bathroom, I turn on the water and plunk down on the toilet while it does the slow work of warming, unsure of what to do with my hands without a screen to manhandle. I flush and step under the spray, even though it’s the temperature of forgotten tea. I wouldn’t put it past Arch to try to surprise me in here, and I am so not in the mood.
I lather my hair with conditioner—the secret to my great hair is that I hardly ever wash it—and reach for my razor. Something small and shiny pings the tile floor, and I go very still, feeling each of the showerhead’s individual strikes. With my big toe, I nudge the thing Arch sent me in here to find, as though afraid it may produce fangs and bite. Compared to my Standing Sisters ring, Arch’s choice is thicker, sturdier, something my father would have worn. I realize Arch doesn’t know what I want at all—this dyke would have welcomed a diamond. The sadness feels like a paper cut. Quick, non–life threatening, brutal.
I spin the faucet left without shaving. If I shave Arch will know I found the ring without . . . what? Shrieking? Crying? Instagramming? Maybe she thought she was going to come in here, pull her tank top over her head, and finally get some use out of this spa shower the size of a smart car . . . I shut off the water and practically staple my towel to my body.
“B?” Arch calls when she hears the door to the bathroom open.
“One second!” I call back, hurrying into the bedroom. I open my underwear drawer and rummage around inside.
Arch says something else, but I can’t make it out.
“One second!” I repeat. My knuckles bump against the velvet box.
In the living room, Arch is on her knees on the couch, looking like a meerkat surveying her surroundings for predators, right down to the dark, fearful eyes. My skin is warm from the shower and cold with sweat, thundering with nerves.
“What are you doing?” Arch asks, nervously, when she notices my arm behind my back.
I inhale through my nose and exhale through my mouth, just like we remind riders to do in class. Let it go. Whatever you’re holding on to that’s holding you back, let it go. I present my hand for Arch. “I thought you would never ask. So I was going to.”
Arch gasps when she sees the diamond eternity band, purchased last week from 1stdibs after I sent Yvette the link and she wrote back with her approval. It’s lovely. So SO happy for you, darling one.
Arch jumps off the couch and makes her way over to me. She brushes my wet hair away from my face and lowers her lips to mine. Dread coils around my ribs when I close my eyes and return her kiss, when I think about how thin Stephanie’s smile will be when she hears about this.
I am trying to focus on what our head engineer is saying, but Kelly has ripped off Lauren’s crown braid from the other day and her single white femaleness is distracting. When we first walked in, Sharon Sonhorn, who Kelly has flown in from Alabama—business class—exclaimed in that accent so honeyed and Southern it sounds completely put on, “How precious are you?!”
Our advisory board is eight members strong, five men and three women, ranging in age from thirty-five to seventy-two. They live in New York, Texas, Alabama, Boston, Los Angeles, and London. We have one black person, one Asian person, and one gay person. Two have zero experience in the wellness industry and three have none in the B-corp world. Kelly put the whole thing together based on an article she read on Forbes.com that said advisory boards should represent diversity in its truest sense. You don’t want to be paying a bunch of yes men and women for their time. You want people who challenge you, who offer a different perspective, who are constantly asking you to reexamine your vision. This is money well spent, she’s always reminding me, when I see how much it costs to fly someone into New York business class just to hear that my ideas suck.