The fact that I haven’t informed Deiss of this update to my financial status is unjustifiable. He allowed me to stay with him because I truly needed a place to live. I can’t take advantage of his generosity by pretending to be needier than I am. And I certainly can’t trick him into making me his live-in girlfriend.
I’m going to tell him. Tonight.
“Liv?” Phoebe frowns. She’s dressed me up for tonight’s concert at Studio Sounds and is beginning to look frustrated by my lack of response to her efforts.
“This is sexy,” I say, forcing myself to focus. Pivoting from side to side, I examine myself in front of Phoebe’s full-length mirror. Her room looks like a tornado has blown through, littering its path with thrift store treasures.
“Good sexy or bad sexy?” Phoebe tightens the knot of the men’s Zeppelin t-shirt she’s tied to reveal my midriff. She claims its largeness offsets the tininess of the shorts she’s had me shimmy into. But her logic doesn’t work if we tie the shirt up to be smaller.
“I haven’t decided,” I say.
“Trick question!” She claps her hands together. “There’s no such thing as bad sexy.”
She puts on a scarlet slip dress and searches the gold-hooked board of jewelry she’s mounted on her wall. With a pleased murmur, she ties a velvet choker with dangling gold in the middle around her neck. She pairs it with simple gold studs in her ears.
“See-ola?” She holds her arms up and spins triumphantly. “I look like I forgot to put on the rest of my clothes, and it’s still not bad sexy.”
I concede to her wisdom and bring up her date with the guitarist again. They went out last night, when I was out with Deiss, and I can’t decide if she’s being cagey because my excuse for not doubling with the drummer was too vague or because she didn’t have a good time.
“He was nice, though, right?” I ask as we walk to the record store. If Seth has done anything to upset her, I can’t possibly work with his band. I don’t care how great of an opportunity it might be.
“He was wonderful. He’s just—” She cuts herself off, pointing at the window display in a boutique across the street. “Check out that dress. Isn’t it gorgeous?”
“I guess,” I say, squinting at it. The shop is closed and dark. The streetlight barely illuminates it enough to see the outline of the window’s contents. “What’s going on, Phoebes? Are you not telling me something?”
“What?” She slows, blinking at me with feigned confusion. She’s making her innocent face. I’ve seen her use it hundreds of times, for professors and parents and bosses. She can’t possibly believe it would work on me.
I reach for her hand. “You can talk to me, you know. If you want to.”
She nods but says nothing, and I feel a pang of hurt, knowing her silence doesn’t mean there’s nothing to be said. I can’t push her, though, not when I’m keeping secrets of my own. Still, it stings. She and I have spent more time together in the last few weeks than we have since college. If she’s holding things back from me now, I can only assume she’s been doing the same for years and I was simply too out of touch to realize it.
“I just wanted to get back,” Phoebe blurts out, her hand tensing in mine. “I was having fun with Seth, but I couldn’t stop thinking about getting back.”
“Back to what?” I stop and turn toward her, but she tugs me forward, not meeting my eyes.
“Mac,” she says, her gaze fixed on the Studio Sounds sign in the distance. A bulb on it is has shorted, and it’s begun to flicker erratically. “It always comes back to Mac.”
My breath catches at her confession, and my heart floods with conflicting emotions for her. Mac loves her—it’s so obvious. But does he love her enough?
“You—”
She cuts me off. “I can’t talk about it. If I do, it will be real, and everything will change. Because I can’t keep spending all of my time with him if you make me admit that it’s preventing me from moving on.”
“But what if he—”
She cuts me off again. “He broke up with me once. How could I ever trust he wouldn’t do it again?”
“I don’t think he’d—”
“Liv.” She says my name so plaintively, I break off, despite my determination to finally complete a sentence.
“Seth did have a bit of a sheepdog quality,” I say, giving in.