There’s no television in here where Bridgette can appear. There’s a camera for me to stare into awkwardly, and a speaker on the wall that Drew talked to me the last time I was in here.
“Okay, Ariana, patching you in now.” Bridgette’s voice is bright and cheery. They must be planning to keep her part in the episode, then.
I barely have time to adjust myself and get comfortable when I hear him.
“Hey, Ariana.”
Derrick’s voice is jarring in this situation because he sounds like Sax, sending me right back to all of those late-night conversations. My talk with Grant helped me conceptualize Sax as three people, and it’s making the whole thing easier to swallow, but my heart is struggling to reconcile this voice with the man who lied to me all of those years.
“Uh. Derrick. Hi.”
“How are things in the house?”
“They gave us matching pajamas.”
Out of everything that happened today, the secrets I shared with Grant, Ivan’s confession about the ornament,the jokes we told each other, and the pajamas are what I mention?
“Oh, that’s fun. I’d ask you what they look like, but that veers really close to a ‘what are you wearing’ conversation.”
A conversation we’ve had several times over the years, and then pretended we didn’t.
“Yeah, maybe we can skip that for now. What are you up to?”
“I was tidying up before they called me, but now I’ve got some tea, and I’m taking a break.”
“Cleaning? At this hour? Where are you?”
“Virginia, so same time zone. I like cleaning at night, especially when I need to think. Idle hands make the devil’s playthings or whatever it is that they say.”
Virginia. That’s where he’s been all this time? It’s far from South Florida, that’s for sure.
“So you live in Virginia, then?”
“Yeah. Ivan is from here, so after college, we moved here. If I had known where you lived…”His words trail off, but I know what he didn’t say.
If he had known where I lived, they would have come to me.
We were teenagers when we met, and not only did we keep our names anonymous, we kept our locations secret, too. It was never a conscious decision. By the time either of us would’ve felt comfortable meeting up with someone from the internet, it had been so long that we just didn’t tell each other.
I never asked, and neither did he.
People watching the show are probably going to think we’re weird as fuck. Not knowing each other’s names or even the states we live in, and yet we claim to have fallen in love with one another?
“I’m from Hollywood, Florida.”
“Ew.”
“Like you have much room to talk. Virginia is not better than Florida. And our weather is nicer.”
“At least we don’t have iguanas falling from trees and people who get arrested for stealing fried chicken while pantsless and wearing flippers.”
I cross my arms over my chest and glare at the speaker, forgetting that the camera is there for a moment. “Okay, look. People love to shit on the weird stories that come out of Florida, but it’s only because we have laws that make all arrest reports accessible to the press. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of weird shit happening there, too.”
“Mmmm, I don’t think so.”
As I open my mouth to argue back, my conversation with Grant plays through my mind.
Derrick was always the one I argued with.
