I flipped through the pages of the yearbook and landed on one that had been dog-eared. It was a photo of Brett and Joe in football uniforms, sweaty and exhausted after a game, their arms thrown over one another’s shoulders—except that Brett’s figure had been Xed out with a thick, black marker.
I set aside the yearbook and quickly pulled out the rest of the contents from the backpack: a Swiss Army knife, a receipt for an oil change, a pack of gum that was mostly empty, and a case with one silver CD inside.How very early 2000s of him.
I flipped the case over to see handwriting that matched the loopy scrawl from the yearbook:Our Big Romance.
It was part of the name of Brett and Presley’s reality TV show from two years earlier but with the possessive plural pronoun added. I considered the implications, which depended on the answers to a few key questions. Whose romance, exactly? And was the tone intended to be nostalgic? Sarcastic? Derisive? The show playing in the Media Room earlier that night came to mind. Did this CD also contain footage ofSmall Town, Big Romance? I needed to find out, and since I didn’t have anywhere to put it, I lifted the back of my shirt and tucked it in the waistband of my jeans.
As I began to stuff the other items back inside the bag, someone stepped forward.
It was Presley, a puzzled expression on her face. “Dakota?”
I stared blankly at her.
Jutting her head like a schoolmarm who’d caught a kid cheating, Presley said stiffly, “Can I help you?”
I didn’t immediately answer because I was confused as to why she was asking if she could help me with Joe’s things. What business was it of hers if someone rifled through Joe’s personal belongings?
I grabbed the closest thing within reach, which happened to be Joe’s headshots, inventing a feasible lie, something I’d never been good at. As Momma always said, I was a born truth-teller. My face, if not my words, gave me away.
“I opened the wrong locker,” I said.
She glanced down at the open backpack. I wasn’t fooling anyone, and we both knew it.
“What are you doing all the way in the kitchen?” I asked, realizing that perhaps I could turn the questions around and stump her.
Presley straightened and then crossed her arms. “I was looking for Joe.”
I raised my eyebrows to study her, and now she was the one to squirm.
“All of this has been so…” Presley’s eyes began to fill quickly, and her shoulders crumpled forward as she sank onto the bench next to the backpack, which still had the yearbook sticking out of the top.
Her tears bought me time to think. I wasn’t sure if I should try to comfort her or demand answers about why her name was on Joe’s headshots. I sat down next to her, at a loss for how to proceed and feeling defeated by this whole terrible night. I placed the headshots in her hands and decided to let her tell mewhat she wanted, when she wanted. I was almost too tired to do otherwise.
“Joe wants to be famous,” she said, taking them from my hands and hiccupping. Presley put a hand over her lips and smiled down at the image of him. “He’s so much like Brett.”
I knew that look: the same one Lacy had when she turned to Anton; the same one I likely had whenever Charlie came into view. So it was true. Brett’s girlfriend had eyes for his former bestie. I could only wonder how far these feelings had gone.
“Is Joe actually like Brett?” I asked, struggling to see the similarities. Of course, they’d always been buddies, and they’d always gotten into trouble together. But Brett had struck me as a self-obsessed jerk while Joe seemed to have a couple of redeeming qualities. He could carry on a conversation without making it all about himself, for example. And Joe was a hard worker, even if he couldn’t ever seem to find his calling in one particular career.
“He and Brett were always competing, even for me. That’s why I told him I’d help him get a foot in the door in Hollywood. What he doesn’t understand is that a foot is never enough. You have to give over your whole self, every ounce, every inch.” She shivered and drew her arms around herself. “It’s like being eaten alive, bite by bite.”
The words Lacy had said to Anton came back to me:I know how to handle a man who bites.My heart beat faster, and I inhaled deeply. Those words didn’t mean anything. They didn’t.
I watched Presley wipe at her eyes with a clenched fist and decided to slightly redirect our conversation.
“I bet Joe was pretty jealous when Brett’s song became a hit,” I suggested. “Do you know if he wrote ‘The One That Got Away’ about Lacy?”
“I thought so, but when I asked…” Presley shook her head. “He wouldn’t tell me.”
That was odd, to say the least.
Presley’s eyes were bloodshot, and there were rings under her eyes, which were also smudged with mascara. Her obvious signs of fatigue reminded me that time was running short, so I decided to go straight to the key information.
“Do you have any idea what Brett’s email password might be?”
Her eyes squinted, as if she were trying to get her bearings in the middle of a conversation she didn’t know we were having.
“His password? How would I know that?”
