I snapped out of it. “Yeah, sorry. That was smart of you. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem,” she said. “What can I do for you?”
“Actually, this is going to seem really weird, but I have a huge favor to ask you.”
Chapter 5: Ella
Ihung up the phone and stared at my closed bedroom door. Benjamin Kakoa just called and asked me to come to his house tomorrow to take a selfie with him to send to his parents. How was this my life?
I double-checked my phone, confirming that yes, I did just get an incoming call from an unknown number, and no, I didn’t hallucinate the whole thing. I also didn’t ask the very obvious “WTF, Ben?” question that had sprung to my lips.
But seriously, what the fuck? It was such a random thing to ask someone you just met. The fact that he’d offered no explanation was also weird. Like, this felt like a test weird. Or maybe he didn’t explain himself because we just met and he didn’t trust me with any more information than he absolutely had to give me. Which was fair. But what if he was doing that and was also testing me to see if I pried, or posted something cryptic about it on Facebook?
Argh! I was going to sleep like crap again. I just knew it.
A snuffling sound came from beneath my door, followed by the threat of a whine. The dogs. I’d been up here too long. I was being a bad hostess.
I pulled up Ben’s number to save it but hesitated over the contact name. Stan had come blurting out of my mouth when he called because it was the most bland, unassuming male name I could think of on the spot. No offense to all the Stans out there. I don’t blame you. I blame your parents.
I decided to stick with that name and saved the contact as “Stan”. I was paranoid enough that now that I’d called him that once, it would be safer to always call him that. You know, on the off chance that Megan, who had never once in her life showed even the least interest in spying on me, chose this visit to try to hack into my phone.
I rolled my eyes at myself and went to the door. The dogs stood right outside, waiting to greet me like we hadn’t seen each other in a week. I reached down to pet them. “Hi, yes. I missed you too. That was a long five minutes, huh?”
Megan and Stacey were stretched out next to each other on the chaise lounge when I reemerged downstairs. Stacey was of Norwegian descent, and her feet extended a whole foot farther than my sister’s. Megan’s head rested on her wife’s shoulder, her long raven locks contrasting with Stacey’s blonde pixie cut. They turned when they heard the floorboards creak under me.
I paused just behind the couch.Come on, Ella. Time to lie like you’ve been doing it all your life.
“That was my friend, Stan,” I said.
Megan gave me a look like,Noshit, Sherlock.
I guess I did kind of scream that name a few times after picking up.
“He’s going through a rough patch right now,” I told them. “If it’s okay with you guys, I’m going to swing by his place tomorrow morning to check in on him. I still want to go cross country skiing with you, though.”
Ella Jones: artist, entrepreneur, stone-cold liar.
Stacey smiled. “That’s fine. We can go after you get back. Maybe the snow will have started by then.” She looked at Megan, her smile widening, a sparkle in her eye. “Won’t that be nice? Like skiing through a winter wonderland.”
I’m not sure what she expected in response, maybe for Megan to confirm that yes, that did sound romantic AF, or something similarly gushy, but my sister, still grumpy from their long drive, made a decidedly unromantic harrumphing sound instead. “As long as we don’t get stuck out in the woods because of it and have to eat the first person to freeze to death just to stay alive. Or get run down by wolves. Or trampled by a moose with a brain worm.”
I stared at my sister. “Jesus, Megan. Want to throw in death by mountain lion mauling?”
Stacey put her hands over Megan’s ears and stage whispered, “She’s just tired.”
Megan batted her away.
I laughed and rounded the couch to join them. They’d been here just long enough to drop their stuff in the spare room, listen to Mom complain about Charlie, and then collapse on the chaise in exhaustion before Ben – er, I mean Stan,STAN– called.
“How was traffic?” I asked.
Megan scrunched her nose. “Terrible.”
“It really was,” Stacey said. “We took Route One out of the city, which was a parking lot right up to I-95. We thought it would clear up after the merge, like usual.”
“Not so much this time?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Not so much. It’s a good thing we left earlier than planned, or we’d still beon the road.”
