Chapter Seven

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. “I knew she 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 tiny ope . “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 be that desperate.” 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? Or hang out ?” I can practically hear Kat punctuating 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.”

“And she’s moving to New York City,” I add.

“So?”

“And she literally told me flat out that she only sees us as friends.”

Kat pauses, then sighs. “All right, fine,” she says. “I can’t really argue with that, I guess.” Whatever she says next sounds like mishmash beneath the whirs and squeaks of the garage door.

“One more time?” I say.

“Oh nothing, Daniel’s just being cute.” Kat giggles—the kind of flirty, airheaded giggle I’ve only heard her do when she’s talking about Harry Styles. Maybe Daniel is the real deal after all. “Anyway, I need to start getting ready, but you are telling me everything when you get here. What time are you coming over?”

My stomach swan dives as I struggle out of my coat with only one free hand. I’m feeling a little caught in my own trap. “I, uh. Actually.” I kick off one shoe, then the other, each of them hitting the mudroom wall with a thud . By the time I complete my escape artist act, my mind is made up. “I think I’m gonna hang back today.”

“To go to Ellie’s?”

“No, I just really need to clean.” I fling my coat over a kitchen chair in passing, trying to play off this whole moment as casually as possible. “My mom would kill me if she saw what the house looks like right now.”

“But she’s not home till Sunday,” Kat reminds me, not that I’ve really forgotten.

“Sure, but work is going to take up most of the next two days.”

I tug open the fridge and pop the top on a can of lemon LaCroix, waiting for a response that doesn’t come. “Kat? You there?” I pull my phone away from my face just to verify the call hasn’t dropped.

“I’m here,” she says, but her voice is raw. “I just don’t love the thought of you staying back from Florida just to spend Thanksgiving alone. Especially when the whole plan was to spend the day together.”

My breath rattles around my lungs as I try to form a response that won’t immediately start a fight. Since when does Kat care about sticking to the plan? She sure didn’t care last night. Maybe if she had, and Blackout Wednesday had gone as intended, I wouldn’t be so opposed to third wheeling today. I step over an open bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and collapse onto the white leather couch, which releases a little puff of air beneath me. Even the couch is sighing.

I’m still trying to figure out what to say when Kat speaks up again, this time in a soft, unsettling whisper. “Is this about last night?”

I let an exhale leak through my teeth. Kat’s not dumb. Of course this is about last night. But I really don’t want to have this conversation—not with Daniel listening, not while I’m still a little hungover, and really, not at all.

“Of course not,” I lie. “This is a me thing. I really need to clean and probably study, too, so I should hang back. Don’t worry, I’m good by myself.”

Kat pauses, trying to decide whether to believe me or not. “You sure?”

“Yeah. I’m like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone , only older and gayer.”

I can hear her smile through the phone, the tension breaking. “I always thought there was something gay about him in those movies. I mean, he was obsessed with those two older men.”

“He was ten and they were trying to rob his house,” I remind her, taking my first sip of LaCroix, which I immediately regret. It tastes like carbonated lemon Pledge. “Bleurgh. Have you had lemon LaCroix?” I ask, airing out my tongue.

“No, is it good?”

“No.”

Kat laughs. “Noted.”

I set the can down on a pink tile coaster. Maybe it’ll taste better once I’ve fully squashed this hangover. “I think I’m gonna take a nap before I clean.”

“Sounds good. Text me later, okay?” Kat says, sounding marginally less sad. “And if you change your mind, you know you’re always welcome here.”

“I know, I know. Thanks.” I reach for a throw blanket, trying to spread it over my lap with just one hand. “Daniel, good luck meeting the family. Watch out, they’re all just as judgy as Kat.” Bonding over jokes at his girlfriend’s expense is the only type of bonding I know how to do.

Daniel laughs. “Thanks for the tip. I’ll put on my judgiest face.”

“You’re the worst, you know that?” Kat whines. Whether it’s directed at me, Daniel, or both, I’m not sure.

“You loooooove me,” I remind her.

“Yeah, yeah. You love me too. Bye.”

I end the call, dropping my phone on the coffee table and nestling deeper into the couch. Or at least I try to. Mom has gradually transitioned the whole house into this crisp, clean aesthetic over the past few years, and although it looks sharp, I miss our ugly, comfy furniture from before she went Barbie Dream House on us. I could inflate the air mattress again or, God forbid, actually go up to my room, but somehow, that feels like more work than just leaning into the discomfort. I squeeze my eyes tight, trying to imagine that the sunlight seeping through the bay window is a warm beam of Florida sunshine. Maybe my reject LaCroix flavor is just a poorly mixed beach drink. And the hum of the heat kicking in…crashing waves, I guess? I give the too-small throw blanket another shake, trying to cover at least my legs, but it’s too itchy to be my pretend beach towel. No wonder I’ve never seen anyone use it.

I ditch the blanket and scrunch my knees toward my chest, trying to make myself as small and sleepy as possible, but a piercing screech in the backyard interrupts my nap before it even begins. Maybe that’s…an injured seagull? The screeches double, then triple, followed by bubbly laughter too loud to ignore. I sit up, peering out the window at a small flock of kids, most of whom I don’t recognize. They’re running laps around the neighbor’s yard, tiny arms flailing in their swishy little puffer jackets, leaving a trail of miniature hats and gloves strewn across the icy grass. Their moms are supervising from the safety of the patio, balancing full glasses of wine in perfectly manicured fingers and laughing over a joke I’ll never hear. Just as I’m trying to decide who I’m more jealous of, one of the husbands swings open the back door, wandering out to top off their wine glasses. When he reaches the last of the three women, he weaves an arm around her waist, pressing a long kiss onto her forehead before beginning his pour.

My heart does a pirouette in my chest. That. That is what I’m most jealous of. Mom is with Dad, the neighbor is with her husband, Kat is with Daniel, and I am with an itchy blanket and a reject flavor of LaCroix. What I wouldn’t give to be someone’s first choice.

I turn away from the live action made-for-TV movie unfurling outside the window, drawing in a deep breath and holding it there. Anything to temporarily fill the hollow feeling. And then the voice in my head reminds me of the thing I’m desperate to ignore: It doesn’t have to be this way.

I rub my lips together, weighing my options. What’s worse: acting out a lie that makes you happy, or sitting lonely in the truth? Before I can decide, my phone buzzes on the coffee table, and I lunge for it. One new text from Ellie with a link to a Tribune article about Sip’s reopening. Cool. It’s sweet of her, but it doesn’t affect me half as much as the trio of pictures from last night perched above it in the thread. Tipsy Ellie smiles at me from the screen in all three. She’s barely propped up by Tipsy Murphy, who is faking the world’s least convincing laugh. Neither of these poor, inebriated idiots knew what we know now, but if they did, would they have done anything different? I’ll take the awkward morning after if it means I get to keep last night. I hold my thumb against the pictures, saving all three, and warmth flickers in my chest as the blackout curtains on my memory part just an inch, just enough to access a hint of a moment from last night. It plays like a fuzzy vintage film in my head: me and Ellie, laughing as we battle the air mattress pump and test the firmness of our bed for the night. I can still hear her laugh, like jingle bells caught in a spin cycle, as she fell onto her back, deflating the mattress. I can still see a shadow of something warm and curious in her eyes as she caught her breath. The memory fades, and I know that whatever last night was, it was never supposed to last, but I can have it again—and hell, maybe save my grade and Ellie’s grad school dreams too. My fingers fly across my phone and hit send on a text before I have the better sense to stop them.

is the thanksgiving offer still on the table?