Teddy shrugged. “I started going to Dr. Frank after the divorce and really got in touch with myself, so he recommended us to Miranda, who does couples therapy.”
“I suppose it turns out that shit doesn’t just work because you want it to.” Steph adjusted her pearls in an unusually human gesture. “Sometimes you have to make it work. Well, first I had to admit that Iwantedit to work. But especially with the two of us. We’ve both been independent for so long now. Actually, I’ve been independent. Teddy’s been cared for by a pack of wild porn stars, if we’re being real—”
She shrieked as Mr.Tumnus leapt over her shoulder and onto the table. With a low growl, he darted off with a piece of salmon from Isaac’s plate.
Steph blinked. “Did that fluffy void just launch itself onto your antique dining room table like he owns this mansion?”
“He sleeps in Isaac’s room at night too,” I told her.
“He’s waiting in case I stop breathing, so he can feast on my carcass and take over the deed to the house,” Isaac explained.
I pointed a chopstick at him. “I saw you refill his water bowl in the middle of the night. You love Mr.Tumnus.”
“Fear is often mistaken for love,” he said.
A soft meow came from under the table and Teddy, Steph, and I ducked our heads down to find Mr.Tumnus curled around Isaac’s feet and licking his paws.
“That cat is a power bottom,” Teddy said.
“Yeah, you’re that cat’s bitch. Hell, that cat should work for me.” Steph stood up. “I’m making a drink.” She walked over to the bar cabinet while I cooed at Mr.Tumnus and Isaac nudged his foot, but my perfect fur boy refused to move.
“What. The. Fuck. Kind. Of. Bar. Cabinet. Is. This?”
Steph stood in front of the open cabinet, which was stocked top to bottom with nothing but Capri-Suns.
Isaac shrugged. “I find squeezing the juice out of the pouch to be very satisfying. Plus the Costco near Burlington had a sale. I’d actually never been to a Costco before. Have you had their pizza? They have clothes too. I bought a Kirkland’s Signature sweatshirt.”
“Babe, bring me one or two of those juice things,” Teddy said.
“We have some wine coolers in the fridge,” I told her.
“Wine coolers? Did you steal them from your mom’s stash?”
“Her mom is dead, actually,” Isaac said.
And for the first time in her life, I’m sure, Steph D’Arezzo looked completely mortified. “I’m—I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”
I couldn’t keep a straight face and wheezed with laughter. “The dead mom card,” I said. “That was so good.”
Isaac was laughing now too, his eyes beginning to water.
“You two are fucking sick,” Steph said as she headed off to the kitchen, her composure in check again. “Those wine coolers better not be some kind of bullshit flavor like cucumber.”
Teddy chuckled and gave me a wink.
We spent the next few hours listening to Teddy tell us stories about the time he stage-managed a knock-off version of the Blue Man Group called BlueMenGroup until they were hit with a cease and desist order. Steph told us about the time a certain height-challenged actor tried to get her to become a Scientologist, and about a very dicey situation involving a maturing diva, two different boyfriends, and a nonconsensual food fight on a private jet that left one of the boyfriends hospitalized with caviar impacted in his ear canal.
I watched as Steph and Teddy bickered and flirted, nipping at each other like two cats who couldn’t decide if they wanted to groom each other or swat the hell out of each other. They weren’t perfect. Not even a little bit. But they were happy. They’d found this little crossroads where the two of them could exist and it gave me this startling sense of hope. A sense of hope I didn’t even want. But after watching Bee and Nolan and then Kallum and Winnie fall so effortlessly for one another, it was nice to see these two fuckups just happily stumbling through life together side by side. Maybe one day Isaac could find something like that. Maybe one day so would I.
And it was getting harder to remember why we shouldn’t try to find that imperfect happiness together.
After we finished dinner, I served Eggos with Nutella and strawberries for dessert. Teddy and Isaac polished off half a box of Capri-Suns while Steph and I plowed through the pomegranate wine coolers.
At the end of the night, Steph walked outside in a pair of slippers borrowed from Isaac and Teddy guided her to their rental car.
Isaac and I stood and waved from the portico with his arm curled around my waist and Mr.Tumnus pacing at our feet, his tail bristling.
“See?” I said. “I didn’t even have to kick them out. No helicopters needed.”
