“Good.” Ellie smiles just enough for her dimple to show. “Because I really do want to be friends.”
“Right,” I say. But I can’t quite make myself agree.
seven
“She’s her MOTHER?!”
Kathryn’s voice is a shrill speakerphone squawk echoing throughout every inch of my car. She’s lucky I’m at a stop sign when I break the news, or I’d be at risk of running straight off the road with a reaction like that. We have plenty to talk about so far as last night goes, but I couldn’t bury the lede on what is undoubtedly the most uncomfortable moment of my life. Some things just take precedence, and this is undeniably one of them.
“HER MOTHER!” I screech back. “Professor fuckin’ Meyers. She literally tapped on my car window. It was a goddamn jump scare.”
Kat wheezes a laugh. “I’m dead,” she announces. “I was dying and now I’m officially dead.”
“Same,” I agree. “RIP.”
“So wait, back up a little bit. After we left the bar…Ellie spent the night at your place?”
“We kept drinking and Ubers were expensive,” I explain. “It was a last-minute call.” Under normal circumstances, I’d replay every joke, talking point, and low-level trespassing charge that went down after she and Daniel left, but I’ll pocket all that so long as Kat and I are ignoring the drama between the two of us from last night. For now, I’m sticking to necessary details only.
“So you drove her home, and Professor ‘Mommy’ Meyers is there to welcome you?”
“That isn’t even the worst part.” I grip the steering wheel extra tight, rolling the last stop sign on my way out of the subdivision. “She thought I was Ellie’s girlfriend.”
Kat howls like a hyena on laughing gas. “Iknewshe was gay! Daniel, didn’t I call that last night? I knew it!” Her self-righteous victory lap is hardly what I need right now.
“Can we focus, please?”
“Right, right, sorry.” Kat clears her throat, resetting herself. “So wait, does she have a girlfriend?”
“Had.Her parents were supposed to meet her this weekend, but they broke up, like, two weeks ago. Maybe three?”
“And she didn’t tell them?”
“Guess not,” I say. “And then Ellie tried to sell me on playing along with it. Like if I pretended to be her girlfriend, maybe her mom would actually pass me.”
This time, Kat’s cackle sounds more like a dying goose. The girl has a whole zoo trapped inside her. “That’s simultaneously the best and worst idea I’ve ever heard,” she says. There’s a crumpling sound, and she lets out a tinyope. “Hang on. Out of Cheez-Its. Be right back.”
To the beat of Kat’s footsteps, I round the corner into my neighborhood at nearly twice the speed limit. The big lawns and sky-high oak trees are always a warm welcome, but in the thirtyish minutes I’ve been gone, a smattering of unfamiliar minivans has appeared, each one overflowing with relatives carrying tinfoil-topped casserole dishes. For half a second, I had almost forgotten it was Thanksgiving.
“I’m back,” Kathryn chirps, ripping into what I assume is a new box of Cheez-Its. “You’re on speaker though. Daniel’s here.”
“Hey, Murphy.” His voice is quieter than Kat’s, more distant, like he’s talking to me from the bottom of a well. He’d be more welcome there than he is on this call, but I’ll tamp that down for now. “How’s it going?” he asks.
“It’s going,” I say, but even that feels generous given the events of the day so far. As I come careening back into my driveway, the bump of the curb bounces me out of my seat with a full Mississippi second of hang time. Maybe I need to slow down.
“Soooo, what happens now?” Kat asks, steering the conversation back to where we abandoned it. “Are you gonna play along?”
“Of course I’m not going to play along. I’m desperate, but I don’t think I’d ever bethatdesperate.” I kill the ignition and take my phone off speaker, then climb the last bit of driveway at double speed, grimacing against the cold. “We did get along, though, so maybe we’ll hang out again when she’s back in town.” Just in case, I rap my knuckles against the garage door for good luck before punching in the code. It’s as close to knocking on wood as I can get at the moment.
“Hang out? Orhang out?” I can practically hear Katpunctuating the second iteration with a suggestive shoulder shimmy.
“The first one,” I say decisively. “Nothing happened.”
“Yet,” Kat says.
“Or ever. She’s fresh off a breakup.”
“It won’t always be fresh.”
