I looked at Megan. “Can you believe this shit?”
“I mean…” She held up her hands in defeat.
“So, we know some of the details from Connor on the No Gans thread, but let’s just go over this again,” Paige said. “Because it’s been made all too clear to every one of us that life is way too short to throw away a good thing because of a frickin’ reversed video.”
“It wasn’t that,” Megan said. I gave her a look. “Notjustthat,” she amended.
And we were off. And it wasn’t mainly Megan and me doing the post-mortem. In fact, she and I said very little as Connor and Paige, mostly, with a little from Dustin and Bailey, rehashed Megan’s and my reasons for breaking up, confirming at one point that we were definitely a couple (I gave Megan a “told you” look at that), and dissecting which one of us was in the wrong, if at all.
She and I would chime in with confirmations of things, and some objections, but it went round and round. Marlo fidgeted a bit, kept an eye on Megan and me, but let Paige and Connor cook.
And they did, getting into stuff that felt like it was more about their personal baggage than what Megan and I were going through.
Megan was getting antsy, I could tell. I wasn’t feeling great about basically replaying our conversation from her dorm two Sundays ago. And Bailey had checked out a few minutes prior, her eyes going back and forth between Dustin and Paige, Megan and me, like she was watching a tennis match. Dustin tried to settle Paige and Connor down, but they kept at it.
Until Bailey said loudly, “So, I never mentioned how my boyfriend died, did I?”
Record scratch. Total record scratch.
Megan grabbed my arm. We had often wondered about the “freak accident”—Bailey’s words at our first session—that caused her boyfriend’s death. Now, it seemed, we were going to get an explanation. All because Bailey wanted the back-and-forth between us all to stop.
I was grateful to her, and judging by Megan’s hand relaxing on my arm, so was she.
“You didn’t, Bailey,” Marlo said. Her voice was as smooth and calm as it always was. As if the past few minutes of bickering hadn’t happened. “Would you like to share that with us now?”
Bailey nodded. “Yes.”
I leaned forward in my chair, as did Connor and Dustin in the chairs facing Bailey.
“He blew a blood vessel in his brain. A kind of aneurysm,” she said.
We all murmured, “Sorry,” but also looked at each other with questions in our eyes. That was more of a medical emergency than a freak accident. Not that we’d quibble over Bailey’s word usage when telling us about her loss. But yeah, not a freak accident.
“It came from a clot.”
We again all nodded.
“That started in his neck.”
Okay. But…
“That came from a hickey.”
Silence. Complete silence as we digested that. Connor almost broke first. A half chortle tried to escape, but he quickly swallowed it.
“It’s okay to laugh. It’s fuckingridiculous,” Bailey said, sitting back in her chair, folding her arms over her chest.
That was all we needed. “Oh my God,” Paige said. “I mean, it’s not funny. I’m so sorry, of course, but—”
“A hickey? Like a regular hickey on his neck?” Dustin asked. Bailey nodded.
Megan looked at me, her eyes huge. I tried to convey to her that she had better not make me laugh, but then the corner of her mouth quirked up and we both lost it, breaking into laughter.
And all the bullshit melted away. Dead brothers. Dead mothers. Hockey. Parents. Toxic suitemates. School. Even Grief Inc.
And it was just the two of us.
“And here’s the kicker,” Bailey said, pulling Megan’s eyes from me, and back to her. “I wasn’t even the one that gave him the hickey. Cheating asshole.”
