“I’m fine to stand,” Wyn says, pulling the final available chair out for me. He meets my eyes. “Go ahead, honey. Give yourself a break from those heels.”
I wonder if my fake smile is doing anything to soften my very real glare.
“Well, someone sit,” Parth says. “You’re making me nervous.”
“You know what?” I touch Wyn’s bicep. “I’ll sit in your lap.”
He balks, and I push him toward the chair. With the air of one resigned to his grisly fate, Wyn sinks into it, and I drape myself across his thighs like a living toga.
His arm comes around my back, a highly impersonal touch, but it’s all it takes for my body to remember, replay, relive that moment in the cellar.
A server stops by, and Sabrina puts in an order for a pitcher of margaritas, a truckload of fries, and Cleo’s usual soda with lime.
“Could I get one of those as well?” I call as he’s walking away. As badly as I want some alcohol to disrupt the electrical impulses firing through my neurons, I need to stay clearheaded.
The memory of Wyn’s velvety murmur: Arms up, baby.
My drunken warble: Did you get me the shirt about the rodeos?
My spine prickles. The backs of my thighs warm.
The crowd is roaring along to Shania Twain now, a bachelorette party tipsily leading the charge from the karaoke stage at the back wall.
Before Kimmy, Cleo mostly dated ultrahip people who were completely uninterested in hanging out with us. Laura, who rode a motorcycle and had the bridge of her nose pierced. Giselle, who always wore red lipstick and never laughed. Trace, who joined a punk band that got huge, and then dumped Cleo for the famous model daughter of another famous model.
Then Cleo met Kimmy, a gorgeous and affectionate goofball who never stopped laughing, while working on an organic farm in Quebec.
The first time she came on the trip, Kimmy, Sabrina, and I smoked the best joint of our lives in the Lobster Hut bathroom, then performed “Goodbye Earl” together.
From the beginning, she belonged. With Cleo. With us.
An uneasiness needles between my ribs. Again, I find myself wondering what we’ll be, exactly, after this week, when the trip is over and the cottage is sold. When Wyn and I come clean.
Sabrina has started filling salt-rimmed glasses from the margarita pitcher, and I fight the urge to throw one back. Instead, I lean across the table to grab one of the sodas the server dropped off and, in so doing, inadvertently shove my ass back into Wyn’s crotch.
Wyn shifts uncomfortably. What did he call it? Vindictive grinding?
I drain my soda like it’s my last shot of moonshine before an 1800s doctor pries a bullet from my arm, and then lean forward exaggeratedly again to return my glass to the table.
While the others are busy pouring their drinks, Wyn drops his lips beside my ear. “Can we step outside for a minute?” he asks stiffly. “I need to speak with you.”
So did I, I think. Five months ago.
It’s too late to talk. It’s too late for him to ask if I’m happy, or how my residency’s going, or whether I’m dating the man he pinned our breakup on. I didn’t sign up for that. I signed up to play this game, and now I’m going to play it.
I sift my hand through his hair, winding the ends around my knuckles. “Don’t you just love Wyn’s hair like this?” I shout to the others over the music.
Over the sweating lip of his margarita glass, Parth says, “He looks like he’s the tormented leader of a motorcycle gang.”
Wyn clenches my hips, a warning that I’m playing with fire. “Just haven’t had time to cut it, honey.”
“I think it looks great, Wynnie,” Kimmy says. “And the beard.”
“I’m going to shave that too,” he says.
I turn into him with an exaggerated pout, slinging an arm around his neck. “But I like it.”
The skin above his collar prickles, and our gazes lock in a game of chicken, his hand sliding across my stomach, his palm almost preternaturally warm.
On a laugh, Parth says, “Hey, remember when we swore this would never become a couples’ trip?”
Sabrina takes a sip. “Pretty sure you were the only one who cared.”
“Pretty sure you only said it because you didn’t want Sabrina to bring her boyfriend,” Cleo puts in.
“That was just an added bonus,” Parth says. “The main thing was, I wanted to stay young forever. Couples’ trips seemed like such an old-person thing. My parents would go to Florida with my aunties and uncles all the time, and then they’d make us look through one hundred separate pictures of them inside a Margaritaville.”
As long as I’ve known him, Parth’s been morally opposed to chain restaurants. Probably because, like me, he grew up in the suburban Midwest and those were the only offerings at hand. Personally, I find chains comforting. You know exactly what to expect, no huge surprises. Chain restaurants are the Murder, She Wrote reruns of the food industry.
Wyn leans past me to plop his half-downed margarita onto the table. “You’ll have to excuse us,” he says, hoisting me out of his lap. “This is Harriet’s and my song.”
I’m sure I look baffled. Our friends certainly do.
He gives me no chance to argue, just grabs my hand and pulls me into the crowd, Sabrina’s voice trailing after us, “How the fuck is Vitamin C’s ‘Graduation’ their song?”
13
REAL LIFE
Tuesday
WE SETTLE ON the dance floor, in front of the stage. Stiffly, I ring my arms around his neck and let him draw me in close, partly because Cleo’s watching us and partly because at least this way, I don’t have to look at his face.
“You’re playing dirty,” I say.
“Me?” he replies. “You just gave me a lap dance.”
“I did not,” I say, “and I will never.”
“Doesn’t Wyn’s hair look sexy like this?” he parrots in a breathy voice.
“I didn’t say sexy. When did I say sexy?”
“You did the voice. I knew what you meant.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m playing my part.”
“What part is that? Marilyn Monroe singing ‘Happy birthday, Mr. President’？”
“The part where I’m supposed to be in love with you,” I say.
He stiffens slightly. “Yeah, well, maybe you don’t remember this all that well, but back when you were in love with me, you didn’t often straddle me in public.”
“Well, considering I haven’t straddled you tonight either,” I say, “one can only assume you’re employing reverse psychology right now. Sorry, Wyn. It’s not going to happen.”
He scoffs but has no comeback.
We angrily sway to the music for a few more seconds.
“We’re really not going to talk about what happened in the cellar?” he says.
“Nothing happened in the cellar,” I remind him.
“So you don’t have any thoughts about what almost happened.”
Something he said a long time ago pops into my mind. “Tumbleweeds,” I say. “Rolling through my brain.”
He shakes his head once, the side of his mouth brushing my temple.
“Graduation” has ended. Someone’s singing “Wicked Game” now, someone who can actually sing. Not as well as Chris Isaak, but well enough to make the song appropriately devastating and inappropriately sexy. It’s the kind of auditory hard-right turn common to karaoke nights but less than ideal for these specific circumstances.