It had actually been surprising how quickly Matt and Chess had become friends. A good kind of surprising, like it was something I hadn’t even known I could hope for. It was nice seeing two people who were so important to me take an interest in each other. It made me feel … I don’t know, special I guess. It helped that they had things in common. They both cared way too much about college football, resulting in flurries of texts on Saturdays in the fall. And they were both foodies, both admirers of slick cars.
But sometimes I thought their connection was even deeper than that. They were alike at a molecular level, too. Both ambitious, driven. Sometimes more than a little self-centered. And like Chess, Matt moved through the world like everything was going to fall into place for him—and maybe because of that, it did.
Thing is, while that’s a great trait in someone you love and who loves you, it’s pretty fucking terrifying in someone who is now pitted against you.
Chess pauses again. I can hear her manicured nail tapping against her laptop. Finally she sighs and says, “I did like him.”
Her green eyes meet mine across the table. “But I didn’t think he was right for you.”
“Maybe you should have said something,” I tell her. “Could’ve saved me some heartache, and also several thousands of dollars.”
“Would you have listened?”
I think back to when I first met Matt. It wasn’t a grand moment or an adorable meet-cute, not the kind of thing they make rom-coms about, but that had made it, and him, feel all the more real and grown-up. He worked at the same accounting firm as my dad, and when I’d occasionally go in to help with phones or filing, he was always there, smiling at me from his desk, smelling good when he passed by, remembering that if he grabbed me a coffee, I liked almond milk.
I’d been struggling at home, driftless. Matt seemed so sure of who he was and what he was doing—another way he reminded me of Chess. And even though I hated to admit it, he was the one who’d seen me reading stacks and stacks of cozy mysteries and said, “I bet you could write one of those.”
Like I said, it’s not exactly heady stuff, but it had been … lovely. Easy. Matt was steady, he smiled quicker than anybody I knew, and he had a sixth sense for when I needed something. I’d be working away, thinking that a cup of tea might be nice, and boom, there it would be at my elbow. And I liked that my parents adored him. How even my oldest brother, Brandon, who liked basically no one, still thought Matt was “a good dude.”
Maybe it’s a little pathetic that at twenty-three, I still wanted my family’s approval, but it had mattered to me. Brandon and my middle brother, Stephen, were both lawyers, my other brother, Tyler, was in med school, and I was still at home, still figuring it out. So it felt good, seeing the way their faces lit up whenever I brought Matt over.
And I liked being part of a twosome.
Matt and Emily.
Emily and Matt.
“I wouldn’t have,” I admit, and Chess gives a firm nod.
“Anyways, you’re both better off now,” Chess says, returning to her work, eyes drifting back to the screen, and I give an angry bark of laughter.
“Okay, but we don’t actually give a fuck if Matt is ‘better off’ or not, right? We hope Matt loses his hair and becomes the first person to contract a fatal case of chlamydia.”
Chess stops typing and looks up at me, a mix of pity and disappointment on her face.
“If you want to receive the good things the universe has for you, Em, you can’t have ugly thoughts blocking the path. We have to let go of pain and resentment if we want the gifts we deserve.”
I stare at her, waiting for her to break character, for her serious expression to melt into a typically sly Chess Chandler smile that lets me know all this is bullshit, that she knows it’s bullshit, just the stuff she sells to the public. Not to me, not to her best friend.
But there’s no break.
She watches me with this oddly benevolent expression, like she’s waiting for me to tear up or have some kind of epiphany.
“Well, thank you for that advice,” I say slowly. “Anything else? Although I should warn you if the next thing you ask me to do involves the words ‘helter-skelter,’ I am out of here.”
Chess’s mouth thins, and if the skin of her forehead could wrinkle, it would. “I’m serious, Em. You have to let go of this shit.”
She turns back to her computer, typing even faster now. “And for the record,” she continues, “I’m actually pretty good at giving advice. I actually kind of know what I’m talking about. Or maybe you think ten million people are wrong, I don’t know!”
“I know you’re good at this kind of thing,” I say, stung and honestly a little surprised at how pissed she is. “I just didn’t realize it was…”
“What?” she asks. The typing stops.
“Real.”
Now it’s her turn to stare at me. We hold each other’s gaze for about three heartbeats, and then she just shakes her head a little. “Okay,” is all she says, and I sigh, putting both palms on the table and pushing myself up from my chair.
“I think I need a break,” I say, and Chess may be irritated with me, but at least she doesn’t use the opening I just gave her to point out that I haven’t actually done enough work to require a break.
“Giulia is bringing lunch in about an hour,” is all she says in response, and I nod, leaving her to her furious typing.
Problem is, once I’m out of the dining room, I’m once again unsure what to do with myself. I could take the car into Orvieto—we still haven’t done that, happy to hide ourselves away in the villa—but that would require going back into the dining room and asking Chess where the keys are, and we clearly need a little space from each other right now. I’m already a little waterlogged from consecutive afternoons spent by the pool, and obviously writing is not on the agenda.
Instead, I find myself drifting back upstairs to the little library and picking up Lilith Rising from where I left it on top of the shelf.
The cover looks even more lurid today, and I snort softly. Thirty-five years old, almost thirty-six, and I’m about to hole up with a scary book because my friend hurt my feelings.
I find a good spot for that kind of Peak Seventh Grade Wallowing, a window seat tucked into the upstairs hallway, and I fold myself up, an undeniable thrill running through my fingertips as I turn to the first page.
Houses remember.
“Good opening line,” I murmur. “Well done, Mari.” Opening lines are important, after all, which makes them the hardest part of the book sometimes. And Mari came up with that one when she was just nineteen.
I keep reading.
Lilith Rising is a good, old-fashioned haunted house book, so it builds up that dread about the setting right away, and I’m deep into Chapter Two before it clicks.
Somerton House sat on a small rise overlooking a quaint and peaceful village, and Victoria liked to spend afternoons on the window seat at the top of the stairs, watching the lawn slope into trees, watching the trees give way to rooftops.
She was there on the summer afternoon it all began, sitting on that same seat with its faded green cushion, a small tear in the left corner, stuffing spilling out in a way that made her think uncomfortably of wounds. It was raining, as it had been nearly every day that week, and Victoria watched the water slick down the glass as （with a diamond ring pilfered from her mother’s jewelry box just that morning） she stealthily scratched a “V” in the right corner of the furthermost pane.