I wouldn’t mind being yelled at. It’s not my favorite thing in the world, but if the payoff is being able to talk to someone who passed a background investigation—though she doesn’t know we did a background investigation back before we got close, and her friend Eloise is highly suspicious to Uncle Guido—then I think I can handle being yelled at.
Sure enough, it takes fewer than two whole rings before Parker picks up. “I’m trying really hard to be patient and understanding about how much you have going on right now, except you’re hanging out with Tripp Wilson, aren’t you? I always picked Davis Remington first—hello, tattoos—and I have to love Levi first because of that thing where he played with our band last summer, which I still can’t believe happened, but Tripp is definitely third or fourth in my Bro Code rankings. And even if he was fifth, he’s still Bro Code, which makes him hotter than basically every man on the planet except for maybe fourteen. With Knox at the top.”
“I kissed him,” I blurt while she pauses for a breath.
Her squeal is so fast and high-pitched, I drop my phone. I scramble to the ground to pick it up, and suddenly realize that if this desk had a secret compartment that my mom hid her childhood diary in, it would be under the desk.
“Do not repeat that.” Oh, hell. I’m sweating. The last time I told a friend in confidence that I kissed a boy that I didn’t want the whole world to know about, her mother called my mother and all of the neighbors listened in while my mother called my boyfriend’s mother, and we ultimately had to have a conference with our kindergarten teacher, because kissing and dating in kindergarten isn’t allowed.
At least, it wasn’t at my school.
Yes, I learned at five years old to not kiss and tell. Not that I wouldn’t have learned it otherwise from my mom in all the subtle lessons from a spy that she slipped into my childhood, but parent-teacher conferences were never my favorite after that.
“Lila. I’m not going to tell. But I do need something juicy for book club. Everyone will want details. Also, please don’t leave book club just because everyone will want details. We like having you at book club. Especially when my brothers are there. Jack and Brooks and Gavin are still arguing over which one of them you liked best at the wedding. Speaking of, please tell me you didn’t make out with Jack.”
“Is he saying that?”
“He’s not not saying it. The family text messages since the wedding have been brutal.”
“Nothing happened. He asked me if Dalton ever invests in overseas securities.”
She sucks in a loud breath, and I also hear traffic in the background. She must be walking to work. “That’s why you two disappeared?”
“Isn’t don’t make out with your friend’s brother a rule or something?”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”
There’s a story there. And I don’t need to have had a spy for a mother to pick up on the undercurrents in her voice. “I didn’t make out with Jack. It was a business discussion, and obviously a short one at that. Are your brothers making out with your other friends?”
“Rhett’s dating Eloise.”
“Eloise? The…interesting one? And Rhett—he’s the SEAL, right?”
“I don’t want to talk about it, because talking about it makes me picture them having sex, and I’m not going there.”
“I approve of this plan.”
“Now. Back to Tripp Wilson. I can tell Knox, right? You know I can’t keep secrets from him. But he won’t tell anyone or else I’ll threaten to hide our favorite unicorn blanket.”
I squat to the floor behind Uncle Al’s desk and start studying the space where the chair goes, looking for secret panels. “Will this interfere with me being able to look Knox in the eye?”
“No way. We’ve actually agreed if I ever get the chance to jump Davis, it’s not grounds for divorce, though I probably wouldn’t do it because he’s top on half my friends’ lists too. Anyway. Tell me about this kiss, and if I lose you in the elevator, you’re going to have to tell me again when I’m off. Was it totally romantic? Was he comforting you and then it just happened? Did you stumble walking down the hall and he caught you? Or was it lust at first sight? Are you going to sleep with him? Or was it a one-time thing?”
The first kiss? Or this last kiss? “It was…an angry kiss.”
“Ooooh. So he was mad that you basically fired the entire Fireballs organization?”
“Yes.”
“And so he kissed you?”
“Yes.”
“Lila and Tripp Wilson, sitting in a tree…”
“I will hang up on you.”
“Men don’t angry-kiss women they’re not totally into.”
“He works for me.”
“So fire him. And then jump his bones. I approve.” There’s a ding, then a shuffle, and for a second I think I’ve lost her, but I’m wrong.
She says something quietly that I don’t catch to someone else. Getting to the office this morning, I assume.
“Sorry. I’m back. Continue. Tell me about how you’re going to live out every teenage fantasy that I ever had. Or…later than teenage fantasies. Whatever.”
The paneling under the desk is solid. Nothing hidden in here. “First, I don’t think that’s the normal way into a man’s pants. Second, I can’t, or else the baseball commissioner will force me to sell the team and move them wherever he can find a buyer for them. Ouch!”
“What are you doing? You’re breathing hard. And not in the I’m calling to talk to you about Tripp Wilson while riding him naked kind of way. Which would be awkward.”
“This entire conversation is awkward.”
“If people would embrace their own awkward more instead of trying to conform to some random normal defined by people who probably have bigger problems than the rest of us, can you imagine how much more humanity could accomplish? Like, if all the people in the world would quit putting energy into pretending they didn’t have quirks and issues? That’s the biggest energy suck in the entire universe and it’s keeping us from unlocking our full potential.”
I rub my head while I climb back out from under the desk. My skirt is not built for this kind of stretching and sneaking around, and not for the first time in my life, I understand why my mom preferred pantsuits when she had to play the businesswoman.
Also not for the first time, I understand how Parker can be the vice president of marketing at the nation’s fastest-growing organic grocery chain. She embraces her own quirks and uses them to steer marketing campaigns that people relate to at a gut level.
“I don’t know how not to conform,” I tell her. Conforming makes you blend in. Blending in keeps you safe.
And speaking of safe, I’m going to need a hazmat suit to go through Uncle Al’s drawers. The middle drawer, where normal, conforming people would keep pens and spare staples and charging cords, is instead filled with used peppermint wrappers, condoms, and—oh, god.
That’s a cock ring.
And now I’m thinking about duck penises. “Dammit.”
“Ohmygod, I can’t believe I didn’t think of this sooner. Do you need help? Like, someone to come down there and help you go through your uncle’s stuff? Are you staying at his house?”