“Let him pay you,” Zach encourages. “It’s the least he coulddo. Wow, Doc, you really wanna leave, huh? Coming in here and breaking shit.”
“It was an accident,” I hiss, rubbing Nicholas’s shoulder. Nicholas tenses and shifts aside. I notice that Melissa witnessed this, so I step closer to Nicholas again.
“No worries!” Brandy sings again, looking a bit frantic. “It’s all good. Let’s get back to the game.” She takes her job as hostess very seriously, so she’s eager to smooth this over. Nicholas could step on every mask she owns and she’d smile and apologize for leaving them out on the walls where anybody could step on them. “Is everyone having fun? Yeah? This is fun!”
Nicholas’s eyes dart between Zach and Melissa, who trade whispers and grins. I’m not close enough to hear what they’re saying, but Nicholas is. His jaw clenches.
Melissa giggles. Her eyes fall to Nicholas’s polished loafers and she makes a low comment to Zach. I don’t hear his entire reply, but he makes sure the last three words are audible.Trying too hard.
“How’s that tooth?” Nicholas asks him in a tone that is not at all nice. Zach once went to Nicholas for a toothache, and when he said a root canal would be necessary it blew up into this whole ordeal with “Dentists just want people’s money!” and “Dentists exaggerate minor problems to defraud insurance companies!” Someone in the waiting room recorded six minutes of the tirade and put it on the Internet, then linked it to Rise and Smile’s Yelp page. My fiancé and coworker are now low-grade nemeses.
Zach gives him a disingenuous smile. “All better.” Not true. Zach has refused to go back to the dentist and can no longer chew on the right side of his mouth. “I went to Turpin, which is where I recommend everyone go.”
“Hey, I have an idea,” I say. “Let’s get back to the game.”
Melissa ignores me. “The people at Turpin are more professional,” she says.
Zach nods. “And not self-important quacks.”
Brandy’s starting to sweat. “Let’s... ah... let’s all get along. No problems, okay? Whose turn is it?” She sounds like a harried preschool teacher.
“I don’t have a problem,” Melissa says sweetly. Her stare cuts to Nicholas. “Do you have a problem?”
Zach looks elated. He loves drama and definitely wants someone to have a problem.
Nicholas’s face darkens as he grows quiet. A storm cloud above my head begins to rotate, sucking all of my energy. When I want him around, he’s never there. When I don’t want him around, he’s the devil on my shoulder. If he gets into a fight with my friends, my work life is going to suck. Will he care? No.
We’re playing Clue at the kitchen table when Nicholas makes his next move. His ego is all bruised and battered now, so it was only a matter of time before he struck back.
He turns to Melissa. Cocks his head. “Didn’t you use to go out with Seth Walsh?”
He knows damn well that Melissa used to date Seth. He also knows that Seth cheated on her with a married dental hygienist who works with him. Rise and Smile is a hotbed of scandal.
Melissa glares at him, then me. “Yeah.”
“Hmm. Why’d you break up, again?”
Cyclops from X-Men has nothing on the burning fury in Melissa’s stare. “We broke up,” she says venomously, “because I was walking out of the West Towne Mall one day and I saw Seth’s car in the parking lot. When I went over there, he was inthe back seat screwing another woman.” She doesn’t add it, but we all think of the rest:On top of Melissa’s Lawrence University sweater.
I vividly remember the day she discovered them. At that point, I’d been working at the Junk Yard, a shop of eclectic finds, for roughly three months and Melissa and I were friendly. We bonded over our mutual loathing of Zach’s playlist, which he subjects us to on Wednesdays when it’s his turn to control the music, as well as owning the same checkered shirt and red jeans, which we used to purposefully wear on the same day.
I haven’t worn my checkered shirt together with my red jeans since our falling out, because I don’t want her to think I pine for the good old days when she didn’t vibrate with fury at the sight of me.How could you not have known? Nicholas’s BFF getting it on with Nicholas’s own coworker! He had to have known, and he would’ve told you about it. You let me make a fool of myself over that guy and didn’t say anything.I truly didn’t know Seth was cheating and still feel guilty for introducing them. Nicholas says he didn’t know, either, but I can’t make any promises on that front.
“Seth’s an asshole,” Zach says, rolling the die and moving one space short of the kitchen door. The murder weapon has got to be the rope, which is the only clue I’ve worked out. Zach’s going to guess everything correctly. He has a superhuman knack for this game and won the previous two rounds as soon as he edged his little Colonel Mustard game piece into a room.
Nicholas, who wouldn’t play unless he got to be Professor Plum, cuts Zach a dirty look. “You don’t even know Seth, so don’t talk about him. He’s my friend.”
“Doesn’t say much about you, then.” Zach is honestlyfearless and he will tell you exactly what he thinks about you, right to your face. It’s a quality I find nerve-racking when I’m on the receiving end of it, and right now I’m somewhere between reveling in watching someone stand up to Nicholas and embarrassment that my personal guest is about to ruin this party. I forget to be an actress who pretends to be one hundred percent in love, and Nicholas glances at me, noting my silence, before turning his stare to Zach.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Zach is a shark. “I mean that you choose asshole friends, and that reflects poorly on you.”
Across the table, Brandy fidgets with her Miss Scarlet figurine and Leon’s eyes flash to mine.
“Obviously, Melissa’s still upset about Seth cheating,” Zach continues. “You could easily keep your mouth shut, since you know she has every right to be upset, but instead you rush to his defense. There’s a reason you’re empathizing with the asshole, and that’s because you see yourself in him. Ergo, you’re also an asshole.”
You could hear a fly land on the wall.
