Happy Place(47)

Wyn’s not a liar, but the way he said it feels distinctly like a dodge.

Cleo pushes back from her vegan hash, groaning as she massages her stomach. “I’m having some kind of Pavlovian response to this place. Three bites into this meal, and I feel the ghost of all my past hangovers.”

Parth says, “I feel it too.”

“Yeah, but you, Kimmy, and I also drank shots of something that was on fire last night,” Sabrina reminds him. “Don’t think blaming Bernie is appropriate here.”

I swallow my laugh, which somehow makes it louder, and Parth spins toward me and thwacks me, hard, between my shoulder blades.

“What the hell, Parth!” I cry.

“You were choking!” he says.

“I was not,” I say.

“Okay, well, I’m not the doctor here, so.”

“And is WebMD now telling people that if someone’s choking the best thing to do is punch them in the back of the head?” Wyn says.

“It wasn’t the back of her head,” Parth objects. “It was more like . . . mid-spine.”

“Ah, yes, the lesser-known cousin to the Heimlich maneuver,” I say. “The right hook.”

“I’m sorry, Harry,” Parth cries. “Instinct took over!”

“You have the instincts of a Victorian women’s hospital orderly,” Cleo says.

“Next time, stick with the leeches,” I say.

Parth frowns. “I left those at the cottage. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I say.

“Trust me,” Wyn says. “She’s quietly plotting revenge.”

“Our Harry?” Parth scoffs. “Never.”

“You think that . . .” Wyn sips from his steaming mug. “But she knows how to bring a person to their knees when she wants to.”

I angle myself abruptly back toward Sabrina. “So, what is there still to do for the wedding?”

Sabrina waves a hand. “Nothing. Like I said, it’s just the six of us and an ordained unitarian universalist minister I found online. I wasn’t even planning on having flowers until Cleo and Kimmy stepped in.”

“We don’t mind helping,” Cleo says.

“You’ll get to when we have the big wedding for family next year,” Sabrina says, squirting maple syrup into her mug. “This week, I just want to be in my favorite place with my favorite people. I want every second to count, and I don’t want to miss anything.”

At the clap of thunder and flash of lightning outside, she gestures toward the window. “I mean, what is this? We were supposed to go sailing today.”

I check my phone’s weather app. “It’ll be sunny and hot tomorrow. We could sail then?”

“Just because the house is selling,” Cleo says, “doesn’t mean this has to be the last time the six of us come here.”

I try to smile encouragingly at Sabrina, but guilt spirals through me. I want so badly for this week to be perfect, to be good enough to compensate for the fact that it will be the last. Not just in this house but as a sixsome. Truce or not, I can’t be Wyn Connor’s friend.

Sabrina’s gone quiet and sullen, and I know she’s already thinking about next week too.

I clear my throat. “I have an idea.”

“Matching tattoos,” Parth says.

“So close,” I say. “It’s this thing I used to do as a kid because I hated my birthday.”

Sabrina, a woman deeply devoted to the concept of a birthday month, audibly gasps.

“It was hard to manage my expectations,” I explain. “And it seemed like something always went wrong.”

A pipe burst and my parents had to put repairs on a credit card.

Or Eloise was failing a class and needed a tutor. Or Dad’s second job called him in for a shift the night we were supposed to go out. No matter how much I told myself I didn’t need any big celebration, I always felt disappointed when things fell through, and then guilty because I knew how hard my parents were working to keep things going.

“A couple days before I turned ten, I had this idea,” I say. “If I chose one thing I really wanted—and knew I could actually get—on my birthday, then no matter what else happened or didn’t, it’d be a good day. So I told my parents I wanted this Oreo cheesecake, and they got it for me, and my birthday was great.”

This earns me crickets from the audience.

“That,” Sabrina says, “is so incredibly sad.”

“It’s nice!” I say. “It’s practical. I had a great birthday.”

“Honey, it’s tragic,” Sabrina says, right as Parth says, “I’m emotionally scarred.”

“I think you’re missing the point here,” I say.

Sabrina sets her mug down. “Is the point that all parents invariably fuck up their children for life, and there’s no avoiding it, so we should really stop procreating rather than continuing to make one another miserable?”

Cleo rolls her eyes. “Neither the point nor accurate.”

“We can’t control how every little thing goes this week,” I say. “But it’s been amazing, and it’s going to keep being amazing. So maybe if each of us can choose one thing—one thing we must do or have or see or eat this week—then no matter what else, we’ll have that. The one thing that we really needed out of this week. And the week will be a success.”