That had been awkward enough to keep them from asking much more. Until, of course, I’dmentioned Zoe.
Charlie swallows, sets down her sub. “This does sound dumb,” she says, grudgingly, and Ahmed smiles in satisfaction.
“It’s not how it sounds,” I say, my neck hot. But of course, it is exactly how it sounds, and they don’t even know the half of it. I tell Charlie about the Dillards, tell her about the disadvantage I’m at, up against threeother families.
“Man, Aid. Whenyou go all in…”
“It’s important,” I say.
“How’d you meet this woman?”
“She’s a friend of the family,” I say, an appalling, offensive lie. One morning and maybe she’s rubbed off on me; maybe by the end of this thing I’ll be as deceitful as she is.
“It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard,” says Charlie, and Ahmed groans, slapping a hand to his forehead.
“Aww, Charlie. Don’t encourage this.”
She picks up her sub again, takes a bite, and chews. Charlie’s a thinker, a problem solver, and dear God I wish Ahmed hadn’t called her in here. I wish I hadn’t mentioned any damn thing about Zoe. “What’s she like?”
Confusing,I want to say.Weak enough to faint in one moment, strong enough to stand up to me the next. Scary enough for me to want her to leave, intriguing enough for me to ask her to stay. Cold, hot.
“Convenient,” I say. “Available. Willing.”
Ahmed snorts, and Charlie narrows her eyes. “You’re going to have to do better than that if you want to convince anyone of this thing. You’ve got a look on your face like indigestion’s coming on.”
“Maybe the sub,” I say.
“I’m serious,” she says. “You want people to think you’re engaged to her, you’re probably going to have to break your three-words-or-less-per-sentence rule andactuallytalk.”
“I’ll work it out.”
“That was four words,” says Ahmed.
“If she’s a friend of your family, you’ve got to know something more about her. What about your parents, are theyclose to her?”
Fuck, fuck, fuck.“Not really,” I say, and Ahmed holdsup two fingers.
The truth is, I’d only really thought of how this thing would work in terms of my parentsafterZoe had driven off. They know about the camp, know about how I’ll be spending time out there, making my case to the Dillards. But there’s no way I can tell them this, and so I’m going to be a liar twice over, at least. I tell myself it won’t matter; they’ve pretty much cocooned themselves down there in Florida, my dad not really fit for keeping in touch with friends back home, and my mom preoccupied with him and with the ten thousand hobbies she’s buried herself in to get over Aaron. I doubt they’d ever find out, but just to be safe, I’ll think of something. I’ll tell them it’ll make it easier for me to stay on message, present a coherent package to Paul and Lorraine, if they staywell out of it.
“Do you see what I mean, Charlie?” Ahmed says, balling up his wrapper and tossing it into the trash. “He can’t pull somethinglike this off.”
I keep my head down and concentrate on finishing off my food, feeling both of them stare at me, waiting for me to protest. But I’m not going to. They’re both right—it isn’t the worst idea, nor is it something I’m likely to pull off.
When I stand from my seat, clearing my trash and theirs, I catch Charlie nudging Ahmed’s elbow. No doubt they’re doing their own silent commiseration now—I’m the odd one out, again, as it should be. As much as Charlie and Ahmed rag on each other, there’s genuine affection there, the kind where they know details about each other’s families and occasionally hang out outside of work, and that’s the kind of shit I am still, and probably forever, avoiding. It’s clear that I’m rattled by what happened with Zoe, or else I never would’ve opened my fucking mouth in the first place, a thoughtless response to Ahmed’s endless questions about the camp, about whether I was ready for next weekend.
“I’m going to check the rig,” I say, not looking back at them as I head into the bay. There’s nothing to check, not really—when we came on duty we did all our procedures—but I need some space. I climb into the back of the ambulance, pull the eTablet down from its tray, and open up inventory lists—the kind of mindless task that seems good for me right now. I’m counting syringes, pads of gauze, bags of saline, whatever, losing myself in the work. But I’m not as lost as I want to be, not so distracted that I’m not still thinking of her, and everything that’s brought her into my life.Your family went through something terrible,she’d said, and I’d felt a new wave of frustration at that. As one of the lawyers who’d worked on behalf of Opryxa, she knows it all, the whole terrible story: my brother, an opioid addict since he was twenty, not long after he got prescribed prescription painkillers after a minor car crash. My brother, in and out of rehab since he was twenty-three, long, expensive stays that had bankrupted my parents twice, had prevented me from ever getting to more than a thousand bucks in savings. My brother, prescribed another drug, one that would help himkick the habit.
A drug that killed him at the ageof twenty-nine.
I’d read every single correspondence from Willis-Hanawalt. I knew what they’d argued about my brother. I knew the carefully phrased liabilities they’d acknowledged when proposing settlements. I knew the ugly digging they’d done about his past, the way they’d made it seem like Aaron was likely to die anyway, was always an unlikely candidate for success in pharmaceutical treatment of addiction. I knew now how hard they’d worked to settle individual cases, to prevent class action suits. To bury the extent of Opryxa’s risk factors. I knew that my parents had agreed, once they took the settlement, to release them ofall liability.
I’d seen her name on all that correspondence, and it gives her a strange, uncomfortable power over me, all she knows about my family. I don’t know whether she’s made the worst, most painful connection between Aaron and me, and I don’t know whether I want to know. But it’s Aaron I have to keep in my mind here, Aaron who’s at the front. Aaron who I’m doing all this for, and I’ll do anything. It’s the attitude I should’ve had when he was still alive, and it’s the attitude that’ll make it possible for me to do what I have to do with Zoe Ferris, to pretend to be inlove with her.
And there it is, the alarm letting us know we’ve got a call in, and I can already hear Charlie and Ahmed hustlingout to the bay.
I try not to takeit as an omen.
Chapter 3
