Page 12 of Cherry Picking

I consider telling her. That I buried a man my age today, that his brother is a professional athlete with those big, wounded brown eyes. A man who looked at me like a door left open, making me wish I hadn’t looked back.

“I’m good,” I say instead. “Just a long week.”

She gives me a look that says she knows I’m lying, but she lets it go. That’s the gift of a decade-long friendship—the benefit of the doubt, on credit.

“Text me when you’re in,” she says, and then she’s gone, her burnt-orange top swallowed by the neon parking lot.

I don’t go back inside. The guy on the floor was nice enough, but I’d regret the morning after, and I’ve had enough of that mind meld this week. I start walking.

It’s a mile and a half back to my apartment, and I’m doing it on foot because my car’s been making a sound like a dying accordion for two weeks. I have to ration its remaining heartbeats for things that actually matter.

The route takes me past a 7-Eleven, a chapel with a flickering pink wedding ring, and a gas station, where I stand for sixty seconds debating a hot dog. It would be my third this week, and I have to have some standards.

My place is on the second floor of a fourplex the color of a weathered Band-Aid. Out here, the city starts to thin, and the desert presses in, the noise of the Strip finally fading away.

Most people assume Vegas is nothing but the glitter. They forget it’s a desert first. Drive fifteen minutes in any direction, and the neon evaporates, replaced by the scent of creosote and old dust.

I have a terrace, in the most technical sense. A concrete step, a railing, and just enough room for a single folding chair. I sit there when I can’t shut my brain off, which is why I’m folding myself into it now. Somewhere in the distance, a coyote howls.

Shit happens, and then you die, and someone talks about it like it’s weather.

That’s the easy version. Maybe it’s the only one that works.

I pull out my phone and shoot Hazel a text.

Evie

home, alive, love you

Then I lean my head back against the stucco, look up at that handful of stars, and think—with no particular destination in mind—about a man with a mustache and a neck tattoo of dahlias.

He was handsome. Not in the polished, corporate way I’d expect from a face on a billboard. Dark hair in a shaggy mullet that should’ve been a disaster but wasn’t. A mustache. A jaw that hadn’t seen a razor since Tuesday.

But it doesn’t matter. He’s a grieving client I’ll never see again, and I’m out here memorizing his side profile like a teenager. I head inside before I can do any more of it.

A persistent buzzing drags me awake at 7:42 on a Monday morning, which is a remarkably rude hour for anything other than an alarm I’ve personally consented to. I fumble for my phone on the nightstand, answering without bothering to check the screen.

“’Lo.”

“Did I wake you?” my dad asks, his tone suggesting he already knows the answer.

“Obviously,” I mutter, pushing myself upright. “What’s happened? Did I leave the supply room open? Because I specifically remember the latch—”

“You’re fine, Evie. Stop worrying.” I can hear the familiar static of the funeral home in the background—the buzz of the industrial refrigeration, the NPR broadcast he always keeps at a whisper. He’s likely been at his desk since sunrise. “It’s about the Maxwell family.”

A cold weight settles behind my ribs.

“What about them?” I ask, my voice going professional.

“The older son called,” he says. “Briggs. He wants to meet with you.”

The last of the sleep evaporates instantly. I am suddenly, inconveniently awake.

“With me?”

I’m already running the numbers on our last encounter. He was a bit of an asshole yesterday, but I was arguably worse. I have a long-standing policy against giving men the benefit of the doubt, so I hadn’t given him an inch—never mind that his brother had barely been in the ground an hour.

“Oh, God,” I say. “Did he lodge a complaint?”