I unlock my phone and read the message. Sent at three in the morning. He must be drunk.
I’m sorry. Can we talk?
“He wants to talk.” I put the phone back on the table.
“Are you going to?”
“No. He’s just drunk.”
He takes a hit off the joint and peers at me. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“My drunk ex-husband?”
“Everything … involving your drunk ex-husband.”
“No.”
“Is there a reason you never want to talk about him?”
“I talk about— Wait, off the record?”
“Yes. We’re in our underwear.”
“Being in just your underwear means you’re off the record?”
“I mean, I think it should.”
I stretch my legs out, crossing one ankle over the other. Ben puts a hand on my calf. “I talk about him. But I’m not interested in recounting my sad marriage story for your podcast listeners.”
“Your sad marriage story is probably relevant.”
He has no idea how relevant. I shrug.
Ben slowly blows out smoke. “Was he that big of a dick when you married him?”
I give him an amused look. “No. Or, yes. I don’t know. He was a more lovable dick. Or I was more tolerant of assholes then. Probably a combination of the two.”
“I don’t really recognize the version of you that people talk about.” Ben finishes the joint and reaches up to drop it in an empty glass on the end table. “The twenty-two-year-old Lucy who married him sounds like a completely different person, the way they talk about you.”
“I was, in a way. I was Plumpton Lucy. Same girl I was in high school.” I reach for his drink and take a sip. It’s straight whiskey, and it burns as it goes down. “I always admired that about Savvy. She was so different than she was in high school. She wasn’t afraid to…”
“I thought it would be more upsetting, being covered in blood,” she whispers in my ear.
Ben looks at me expectantly.
“… change,” I finish.
“It doesn’t sound like you were so bad in high school,” he says. “You were the type of girl who went around punching assholes. I think we would have gotten along.”
“Or I would have punched you.”
He laughs. His eyes are slightly bloodshot, and he’s loose, high. “I was a huge nerd in high school.”
“I want to see you as a teenage nerd. Show me a picture.”
“No,” he says, with little to no conviction.
“Come on. You spend your days obsessing over every detail of my past. You’ve probably seen every picture taken of me in my early twenties.”
He squints. “That’s a really good point, actually.” He sighs as he reaches for his phone. “Fine.”
He swipes for a minute before turning the phone so I can see the screen. I take it from him.
It’s a prom photo. He stands next to a pretty brunette girl in a green dress. His tie matches. His hair is too short and he has a giant pimple on his forehead. It looks like he hit his growth spurt later, because he’s about the same height as his date, who’s wearing flats. Or maybe she was just six feet tall.
“You liar.” I pass the phone back to him.
He looks startled. “What?”
“You absolutely had girls lining up for you. You were cute and you know it.”
“I was a nerd! A bumbling, awkward nerd. I talked about Iron Man a lot.”
“Oh yes, talking about the billion-dollar Marvel franchise that everyone loves must have made you extremely uncool.”
“Hey. It was slightly less cool back then.”
“God, you’re so smug. You had hot prom dates and won fancy student journalism prizes. You solve crimes on your own and you get murder suspects to have sex with you.”
“Paige would be extremely annoyed to hear anyone thinks I solve crimes on my own. And how did you know I won fancy journalism prizes? You researched me?”
“You hired a PI to investigate me, so I don’t think you have room to judge my light googling.”
“I wasn’t judging, I was flattered.”
“Don’t be.”
He laughs, his fingers moving against my calf. I scoot forward a little, and his hand slides up to my thigh.
“What was your most likely thing?” I ask. “You know, in the yearbook? Like how I was ‘Most Likely to Kill Her Best Friend.’”
“You were ‘Most Likely to be a CEO by Thirty.’”