“Yeah.”
“Huh.” Her face registered disbelief, then something more pensive. “I guess I can’t blame her if she finally snapped. You can be pretty annoying.”
“Gee, thanks.” He was already regretting giving Kiki more information than was strictly necessary, but at the same time he couldn’t seem to get off the subject. “I invited her out to the beach this weekend.”
“Oh, that’s awesome,” Kiki said. “I would’ve invited her myself if I’d thought of it.”
“Maybe then she would’ve said yes.”
John was typing something on his phone, acting like he wasn’t listening, but even his eyebrows rose at that. Asa didn’t like this itchy feeling, like he was exposed in some way. He rushed to explain what he meant before Kiki could draw any wrong conclusions.
“Like you said, she finds me annoying,” he said. “Or she thinks she’s better than me, or both. I can’t tell. The point is, she’s not coming to the beach. I just wanted to give you a heads-up that I invited her, in case it came up, or she changed her mind.”
Even to Asa’s ears, that explanation sounded pretty flimsy. The truth was, he had no idea why he’d mentioned it at all. Kiki reached forward to grab her Coke off the coffee table and take a big gulp. John was off his phone now, watching him. For someone who didn’t even know who they were talking about, Asa had the sneaking suspicion that John understood more of the undercurrents in the conversation than might be expected. He could be the very definition of still waters run deep.
“Why would she think she’s better than you?” John asked.
Asa shrugged, resisting the urge to say Because she is better than me? He didn’t believe that, deep down. But it was hard not to see all the ways that, if she believed that, she’d be right. She had a college degree, a job where she worked in an office, her own apartment （which she undoubtedly rented, but still—in this economy?）。 She was responsible and competent and professional.
Well, except for the snowball incident.
“She doesn’t,” Kiki said. “I know Lauren might seem stuck-up, but she’s really not like that. Sometimes I think—”
Elliot came bounding into the room, plopping down on the second couch next to John. “Okay, sorry about that,” they said. “I swear my mother feels the need to narrate every single second of any commercial that makes her cry. Which is practically all of them at this time of year. Have you seen the one with the old guy training to lift his granddaughter up to put the star on the tree?”
Kiki reached for the remote to restart the show. “Haven’t seen it,” she said. “But I know the type. You’ll be internally rolling your eyes at how emotionally manipulative it is, and that’s the moment when you’ll get completely wrecked.”
Asa forced a laugh. On the screen, the host was laying out this week’s challenge, and the candidates were reacting with the appropriate level of excitement and trepidation. Asa found it hard to focus. He wished Kiki had been able to finish her sentence.
Chapter
Seven
Lauren had been meaning to clean out her closet for a while, and now seemed as good a day as any. She’d taken out all of her clothes and piled them on the bed, putting on some upbeat music to try to trick her brain into finding the task fun.
Normally, this was the kind of thing Lauren found fun. She had an almost compulsive need to catalog things, to cull and curate them. The act of sorting her clothes into categories felt ritualistic and almost soothing—these to keep, these to be donated, these to be thrown away. Of the ones to keep, these were for work, these for casual gatherings, these for lounging around her apartment. Once, Lauren had read an article recommending a wardrobe of only thirty-three items, providing ways to mix and match for maximum efficiency. She’d been excited to try it herself, as a kind of experiment, only when she laid all of her clothes out she realized she didn’t even have thirty-three items to begin with. She’d done too good a job keeping everything as minimalistic as possible.
That was one reason, at least, why she wasn’t at the beach. The only bathing suit she owned was a green bikini she’d bought on one of those whims where you thought a new piece of clothing would turn you into a different person. Someone more confident and carefree, someone who didn’t overthink everything and feel self-conscious every second of the day.
She lived in Florida, and that bathing suit still had its tags on it. It should really be one of the first items to go in the donate pile, but for some reason, Lauren couldn’t bring herself to do it.