The forty-five-minute drive home will be plenty of time to begin the considerably less fun conversation about blockers and clinics and the simple unworkable fact that the woman we have collectively decided to stand between and the world is, in her own bones, convinced she does not matter outside an arena.
I pull a twenty-dollar bill from my pocket, snap it once in front of her face, and tuck it between her fingers.
“Why do we not,” I say, easily, “go get some ice cream?”
She lights up like the truck has been parked at the end of the universe for her, specifically, since the moment she was born.
She squeezes the twenty in one hand and the new phone in the other and bounces twice on the balls of her feet, and the three of us watch her go off down the sidewalk a few strides ahead of us, beelining for the painted side-window of the truck with the small uncomplicated joy of a person who is, for one rare three-block stretch, allowed to want a simple thing.
Jude falls into step on my left. Rémi on my right.
Neither of them says a word. They do not have to.
The look that passes between the three of us at the back of her is a treaty.
This conversation is not over.
But for now, the only way for Pinky to understand we actually care is through action. Not bullshit.
CHAPTER 16
Knottingley Ever After
~JUDE~
The first rule of curating a movie night with a roommate you have known for nine days and would like to know for nine years is that you do not, under any circumstances, let on that you have curated the movie night.
The second rule is that you absolutely have curated the movie night.
I have chosenThe Cutting Edge.A romantic comedy from 1992 about a figure skater and a hockey player. Two stubborn people. A rink. A rivalry built on bad first impressions, dragged inch by inch into love. It is, on its face, a perfectly defensible pick from a man whose career is on the ice, and I will not, under cross-examination, confess that the figure-skater protagonist with her tongue in her cheek and the hockey player’s wounded dignity have, in the privacy of my own head, ever read like a precise portrait of the woman currently fighting a popcorn bowl on the other side of my couch.
Plausible deniability.
It is the captain’s preferred currency.
“Alright. Behold.”
Matteo arrives in the living room carrying the largest mixing bowl in our kitchen, the popcorn inside it heaped so high it has its own weather system, and a smell hitting me before he does that is honestly best described as a war crime against the concept of buttered corn.
“What,” Rémi says, from the floor in front of the coffee table where he is, I now realize, doing something I am going to have to address in a moment, “is on it.”
“Spices. Multiple. Proprietary. Tonight’s blend includes — you are going to love this — smoked paprika, chili lime, a teaspoon of brown sugar, the merest whisper of dried oregano, and a final dusting of nutritional yeast, because we are sophisticated.”
“Santori.” Iris pads in behind him, twisting her wet pink hair up into a knot at the crown of her head and securing it with whatever woman-elastic she keeps stashed in her wrist. “Where on earth did you even get the chili lime.”
“Movie theatre.”
“Excuse me?”
“The movie theatre, sweetheart. On Wendell Street. They sell little canisters of their seasoning blends at the snack counter for four dollars apiece, the public is sleeping on this resource, and I have, frankly, made it my personal mission to be the only winger on this roster carrying a working pantry of theatre-grade pop.”
“Oh my God.” Iris settles cross-legged on the rug to inspect the bowl, sniffs it, makes a small considering noise. “I need this in my life.”
“Which is why,” Matteo announces, plonking the bowl on the coffee table in the spot where Rémi is, I now confirm,building something,“I made enough for an army.”
“Rémi,” I say.
“Hm.”
