“I think Alva Grace just screamed into her pillow.”
“Is that your neighbor’s name?”
“Yep.”
“Must be some sex.”
“Yep.”
“Any other ideas?”
“Not off the top of my head. I’ll think about it,” I promised and hung up.
Reed and Basil. Married. I no longer loved Reed like that, but I still thought he could do better. Nash’s escort perhaps, because at least she was willing to work for money.
I dragged my bottom lip into my mouth, wishing I could get full off lies and unfulfilled dreams.
I’d never starve again.
The fourth sign of the apocalypse came when I snuck down to the fifth floor, our makeshift design office, at exactly eight in the morning on the dot. Chantilly sat on the couch, watching The Titanic.
She paused on the scene where Rose pretends there’s no space on the debris she’s laying on and Jack dies. When Chantilly turned and saw it was me, she pressed play on the remote without a word.
If I’d surprised her, she didn’t show it. Maybe she hadn’t left me out of the email chain on purpose. And maybe that overweight bird I’d seen flying like a drunkard outside the window was really a pig with wings.
Chantilly ignored my existence and continued watching the movie, a tear trailing down her cheek as Rose’s selfishness kills the man she supposedly loves.
“Gets me every time,” Chantilly whispered to herself, not a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
Murder?
“Umm… okay,” I drew out, wondering where everyone else was. Ida Mae had told me eight sharp. “Where is everyone?”
“The meeting was pushed back an hour. Not my decision.” She swiped at the mascara trailing a path down her cheek. “Shit. I need to fix this,” she informed me as if I cared.
I whipped my phone out, typed out a message to Ben, and waited for everyone else to show up. I considered telling him I’d had a wet dream about him, but I decided to go for something PG, especially because I’d pictured him as Nash.
Durga: Would you shoot your best friend in the arm for five million dollars?
Fair question.
Rose had sacrificed Jack, and Reed currently sat pretty high on my shit list. Marriage? To Basil Berkshire? The girl who’d filled my locker with Tampax the day after I’d gotten my first period in the middle of gym class.
Thankfully, the clothes I’d stained were gym clothes. I’d also dipped the tampons in red food coloring-laced water and left them in her locker, because “rise above” was not in my vocabulary, and my pettiness reached acceptable levels, in my opinion.
(Reed once informed me I was made of 99% pettiness and 1% white cheddar mac ‘n cheese, but he loved me anyway. I’d kissed his cheek and called him my best friend.)
Benkinersophobia: I don't have a best friend.
Naturally.
Ben had the personality of a porcupine in heat, pricking every surface of your skin with a voraciousness I personally reserved for hating people. He once told me our friendship was nothing short of a miracle. I had taken it as a compliment, but I wasn’t sure he had meant it as one.
Durga: Color me as surprised as a cheerleader being chased down by a man with a machete five minutes into a B-grade horror flick.
He didn’t answer for a while, so I sat on the couch, shoved my hands into the pockets of my black zip-up hoodie, and lifted my Chucks onto the coffee table. Because I was bored and enjoyed dishing Chantilly’s cruelty back to her, I sped the movie and hit pause at the part where Rose dumps the expensive necklace into the ocean instead of donating it to charity.
Benkinersophobia: I’d do it for twenty million.
I gave an unladylike snort that had Chantilly scrunching up her nose as she walked back in, and I swore, if I died before meeting Ben, I will have died having lived an incomplete life. Reed held the title of best friend, but Ben was Macaroni noodles drowned in Vermont White Cheddar cheese. Comfort food for the soul. The person who always knew exactly what I needed to hear to feel better.
I might have lost my family, my belongings, my future.
But he’d helped me find something important.
My smile.
And finally, the fifth sign of the apocalypse occurred after Hannah, Ida Mae, and Cayden had arrived—when Nash Prescott walked into the room and pretended he didn’t know me.
I never wasted my time explaining myself to anyone.
Ten out of ten times, people have already made up their minds about you. Time is too valuable to waste it on people devoted to misunderstanding you.
Delilah Lowell, however, was the exception. We had gotten off to a rocky start. I told her to fuck off, mistaking her for an over-talkative intern. She’d told me my insults didn’t faze her, and she owned a dog more threatening than me. (Had I known the dog was Rosco, I probably would have laughed in her face as I slammed my door in it.)
Four years later, she and Ma were the two people who had the privilege of knowing my phone number. Everyone else, including Reed, had my email address.
“Nash.” Delilah placed a hand on my forearm after I stepped out of the elevator onto the fifth floor. “That scowl on your face screams impending lawsuit. Whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t.”
Her hair stuck out in multiple directions. She carried her rat in one hand and dug through her orange Birkin with the other. I was ninety percent sure she’d been having phone sex with her husband before I’d forced her to follow me down here.
Two spruce-colored eyes narrowed, looking for any signs of trouble on my face before she added, “I’m already swamped overseeing the contracts on the Singapore location.” Her free hand continued rifling through her bag, stopping to grab my arm again when I turned to leave. “I’d like to be able to spend time with my husband sometime this century.”
I turned back to her, removed her hand from my arm, and deepened the scowl. “First, I’m not scowling. Second, I have nothing planned. Third, last I checked, overseeing the contracts on the Singapore location is your job. If you dislike your job so much, perhaps you should find another line of work. I’d be happy to hire someone to write you a letter of rec.”
Her attention had fled, returning to her bag. “I never said I dislike my job.” She stopped digging when she found what she’d been looking for. “And the you’re-not-the-boss-of-me routine? Seriously? We’re above that.”
“It’s a routine because it’s true. I am the boss of you,” I enunciated each word and buttoned up my suit. “Feels nice to have lowly minions.”
Finally, she pulled out a stack of papers, wrinkled at the edges and stained in brown by—I hoped—coffee in the center. Anyone who fell for Delilah’s manicured fingers and freshly-steamed power suits possessed stupidity I wanted no part of.
She was as likely to be put together as I was to fuck without a condom. (Re: a once in a lifetime mistake that, thankfully, did not end with a crying newborn I was bound to emotionally destroy.)
I relieved her of the papers and skimmed them. A list. Bullet points, a litany of action verbs, and thumbnail pictures, but my eyes honed on Emery’s. She posed like someone taking a mug shot.