“Guys,” Steph says, holding her arms straight out for the audio guy like she’s being patted down by a TSA officer, “I’ll sleep on the couch. I’m just grateful you’re willing to let me stay.” Stephanie addresses me directly, “How is Kweller doing, Brett?”
“Um,” I say, not really sure how to respond. I am unaccustomed to dealing with such a deferential version of Stephanie. “She’s good. She was released from the hospital last week.”
“I’m so relieved to hear that,” Stephanie says, sincerely. The audio guy clips the mic to the collar of her blouse and fans her hair over it, telling her she’s good to go. Steph comes and takes a seat next to me on the couch. “I’d like to reimburse you for the cost of her care.”
“That’s really not necessary,” I tell her.
“Please let me do this, Brett.”
“Really, it wasn’t even that—” I turn my head at the sound of footsteps, padding down the hall.
“Kelly,” Jen says, “look who’s here.”
Kelly stops when she sees Stephanie sitting next to me. She’s wearing a long chunky cardigan over her romper. “Wow. Hi.”
“Hey,” Stephanie says, shyly. “I was just telling Brett that I want to cover the cost of Kweller’s hospital stay.”
“We don’t need you to do that,” Kelly says, in a clipped tone. She starts toward the far couch. Before she takes a seat, she chucks my phone into my lap, a little harder than she meant to, I’m sure. “All charged up.”
“You were in my room?”
“I accidentally grabbed your weekend bag and you grabbed mine.” She slaps the arm of the couch and says, without laughing, “Isn’t that funny?”
I press the home button of my phone with my thumb. The screen comes to life, Arch’s response to my last message beneath an alert from Huffington Post that Houston is bracing itself for new rain-bands from Hurricane Harvey.
What is Kelly supposed to do if you fire her? Arch had texted me after my phone died. The only job she’s ever had has been working with SPOKE. She’s your partner!
I look up at Kelly, who is smiling at me, foully. My blood runs cold. She’s read Arch’s text.
“Let’s start the game!” Kelly cries, spiritedly. She leans forward and collects the printed-out quiz from the coffee table. She raises her eyebrows as she reads the questions to herself. “Oh, this is going to be fun.”
“First question,” Kelly starts. She demanded to be the one to cross-examine me. She’s pissed and she’s going to make me squirm, so I just have to suffer through ten minutes of this juvenile game and her tortuous innuendo. That’s it. She’s not going to blurt out the real reason she doesn’t think I should be marrying Arch, which has nothing to do with us “moving too fast” and everything to do with the woman sitting uncomfortably close to me on the couch. She wouldn’t do that to me.
Would she?
“What’s the one thing—apart from you, dear precious sister—Arch would save in a fire?” Kelly looks at me, expectantly.
“The one thing . . .” I do my best to picture our apartment, but the question—would she do that to me?—is flying around the projected image of the room like a trapped bird, banging beak-first into windows, wings knocking over lamps. “Her French press,” I manage to pull out. “She packs that thing on business trips and vacations.”
Lauren hits play. Arch is pensive for a moment. “Hmmm.” She ponders. “I guess I would say the oil portrait of my grandmother from when she was my age.”
Lauren pauses the video. “Arch has a fucking soul, Brett. You thought she’d save a coffee maker?” Her laugh carries her tangy breath my way. The butcher with a blowout has something on me, and she’s four glasses of “water” deep already. Oh God, Oh God, this is going to end in disaster.
“Now you go,” Kelly bosses me. “You say what you would save.”
There is a skylight above us, the rain pounding so hard it’s revving my anxiety. I have the irrational urge to scream at it—Shut up! I can’t hear myself think! “Other than Arch?” I struggle to come up with something. I will say anything to bring this game to a close. “My cell phone.”
Lauren hits play. On screen, Arch rolls her eyes. “Her cell phone. She’d probably save that before she saved me.”
“Ha!” Lauren cries, pointing a black fingernail at me.
“She knows you pretty well,” Stephanie remarks. I turn to her, but there is no trace of snark in her expression. If anything, I only recognize sadness. “It’s special,” she says when she finds me looking at her, askance. “You should hold on to that.”
“Next question!” Kelly barks. “What is your betrothed’s favorite sex position?”
Jen snuffs her disapproval of the question.
“Now we’re talking,” Lauren says, rubbing her palms together lustily. “I bet you’re a sixty-niner, you little equal opportunist, you.”
Next to me, Stephanie shifts, like she’s uncomfortable for me. I start to sweat in this freezing-cold room.
“Let’s consult the tape,” Lauren says.
“Favorite sex position?” Arch makes a face like she’s absolutely stumped, then answers, cuttingly, “Asleep.”
“Brett!” Lauren scolds. “No bueno, girlfriend. You’ve got to keep a woman like that, you know . . . satisfied.”
“She gets home after midnight and she’s up at five!”
“So do it and go back to bed!” Lauren says, unmoved.
I practically beg Kelly, “Next question, please.”
Kelly scans the question first, to herself. A slow, depraved smile spreads across her face. “What were the exact words she—she being you, Brett—used when she proposed?”
“Oh, come on,” Steph says, surprising me by coming to my defense. “That’s private. Don’t make her share that.”
“I thought you said nothing was private,” Kelly says, tossing my own arrogant words back in my face. “I thought you prided yourself on being open and transparent.”
“You must have said something amazing to get her to say yes to you.” Lauren sticks her tongue out at me.
“I don’t remember,” I say, quietly.
“Yes you do!” Lauren laughs.
I chew the inside of my mouth for a few moments. I have to say something to get them off my back. “I guess, I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Something to that effect.”
Lauren hits play. Arch furrows her lovely brows. “She told me that I was the only woman who had ever made her consider marriage, and that together she thought we could run the world.”
Lauren whistles. “I am woman hear me roar. Why wouldn’t you want us to know that? It’s good. Assertive.” She shivers. “Assertive is sexy. Damn. I’d marry you, Brett.”
“I wouldn’t want anyone knowing that,” Kelly says, ironing out her posture so that the superiority of her next statement really lands. “A proposal like that sounds more like a business proposition.”
“I’m attracted to Arch for her ambition,” I say, my heart booming both with indignation and the risk I’m taking in challenging Kelly in her current state. “And vice versa. It’s not something I’d expect someone like you to understand.”
Kelly tenses, wild with restraint. “Because I have no ambition, right?”
Don’t say it. Don’t escalate it. But I can never help myself. “You have regrets.”
Kelly launches herself off the chair, her hands clawed in the practiced shape of my neck. Lauren gasps and skitters onto the hearth, moving out of her way. But Kelly only stands there, dragon-breathing, the quiz stuck to the lap of her romper. Chocolate or cheese? is the next question. “You are out of line, Brett. Keep pushing me. I fucking dare you. Because I am not going quietly.”
For a few moments, I am almost resigned. Just say it, Kel. The fallout will be painful, but covering my tracks is exhausting work.
She might have said it. I’ll never know, because Jen suddenly shrieks Lauren’s name. I smell the very distinct smell first, and I know without having to look at Lauren that she got too close to the fire, and it took a lick at her hair.
“It’s me? It’s me?!” Lauren leaps to her feet, beating the back of her head, and the unmistakable stench fills the room. We jump up to help, looking and wincing, assuring her it’s not that bad when she demands to know how bad it is. She pushes us away and flees up the stairs to see for herself. Who could blame her? None of us deserve to be believed.
CHAPTER 18
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