Penelope pushed her fingertips into her eye sockets to stave off a headache.
Can you be furious and grateful at the same time? She was right that it would have been a ridiculous late fee. The balance was so high. She felt only mildly embarrassed that Willa had seen it.
“Look, I’ve been helpful, too, you know. Not just this awful violating, lurking person. I’ve been picking the kids up all week.” Willa’s voice took on an injured undertone. “The other night, when you fell asleep? I took Linc to his lacrosse meeting.” She saw Penelope’s face fall. “You just remembered it, didn’t you?” She shook her head, clucking softly. “You think I don’t see it? You’re falling apart here, honey.”
Penelope took a breath and handed Willa back the condoms. She kept the pills, knowing that Tara had already started them and it was better for her health to continue with something she’d started than to switch. Practical Penelope. “Thank you for taking Linc to his meeting. And picking him up from practice this week. I won’t need you to do that anymore.” Her voice was wooden. She felt awful about Linc. Why hadn’t he said anything? Her sweet, pliable, happy son. Was he mad at her? When was the last time they’d really talked? Penelope pushed her hair off her forehead and tried to focus. “I’m not falling apart—”
“You are! But it’s okay. Everyone does. I’ll pick you up the way you picked me up. I needed you, and you’ve come through. Let me help you.”
“Not by buying my kids birth control. Taking them to see a doctor, for God’s sake. That’s over the line.” Penelope’s voice was firm, but she felt the previous blinding rage seeping away anyway. Willa could always do this to her—Penelope would always cave, always defend her.
“You’re right. I’m so sorry, I am.” Willa stood up straighter, swiped a thumb under each eye, and gave Penelope a weepy smile. “I’ve been here over a week. It’s long enough. I’m going to start looking for a new place to go, okay?”
Penelope felt a sudden surge of guilt. She was her friend, for God’s sake. She was abused. She needed help. Not constant suspicion. She swallowed back the lump in her throat. “You can take your time. I mean, we should all have a plan moving forward, but you don’t have to like . . . move out tomorrow or anything crazy.”
Willa’s shoulders sagged with relief. “I owe you so much, Pip. Truly.” She reached out and hugged Penelope, her hair a soft cloud, her breath smelling like peppermints.
Penelope patted her back, and they pulled apart.
“Hey, what happened to your necklace?” Penelope asked, lightly touching Willa’s collarbone. “You know, BREATHE?”
Willa tilted her head, her eyes narrowed in confusion. “What necklace?” she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Then: The Spires
They called her Pip now. It started on Wednesday.
They had gotten drunk together, lazed on couches, drinking long island iced teas—which were just a mix of whatever liquor they had on hand with a touch of iced tea, so not at all long island iced teas, but Jack kept proclaiming they were, and pouring them into tall glass tumblers he found in the kitchen.
Jack declared that after a few stiff drinks, Penelope was too hard to say, so he looked up nicknames for her, and they all settled on Pip. Penelope didn’t dislike it—but she doubted anyone outside the Church House would ever call her that.
So now they were Jack, Flynn, Bree, Will(a), Pip. They sounded like a band. Spent a little bit of time coming up with a band name: the Heretics, Sunday School Dropouts, Existential Dread, the Holy Rollers, the Apostates—this last one was Jack’s and, they all agreed, the most clever.
“What about the Spires?” said Willa then. She was outside, the back french doors open to the patio. She was looking up, the milky swan of her neck exposed. “We live here. In a church, right? The church, technically, has a spire. Plus, it means to be at the pinnacle of something.”
“So this is the pinnacle of our life?” Pip asked. She felt like this could be true for her alone. If this was the pinnacle of everyone else’s life, she felt sorry for them. What was that saying? Why would I want to be part of a club that would have me for a member? An old Groucho Marx favorite (she used to watch Johnny Carson reruns at two in the morning).
Willa threw her hands in the air. “I mean, don’t you feel like that? Look, we’re done with school. That stress is behind us. We’ve got nothing but the great big world ahead of us. I mean, fuck, probably kids and jobs and spouses, and goddamn, that all sounds awful. Right now, though, it’s just us. We get to live here. Together. Having a goddamn party every night.”
Bree made a sound from the back of her throat—half in agreement, half mocking. Flynn grinned widely. “I’m definitely having the time of my life.”
Jack laughed and said, “Okay. The Spires it is. That’s us. Beautiful. The world at our feet. The top of our game, baby.”
Willa had belted from the garden, in gorgeous, rich vibrato, Standing on top of the world!
By Friday, Pip had worked all week at the Deer Run Used Bookstore. Her manager was a fiftyish woman named Amelia with brown bobbed hair, small gray eyes set too far apart, who smelled like baby powder and the waxy odor of lipstick, although she didn’t appear to wear any. She was kind and laughed too much at things Pip said that were only mildly funny, but the days flew by as they categorized, organized, discarded donated books whose covers were too ripped or falling off.
At the end of the day, Pip would wait for Jack at the corner by the coffee shop, and he’d come strolling out, his messenger bag flapping against his back, and he’d greet her with a wide happy grin.
“How much of your book did you get written?” she’d ask, and he’d tell her a word count—usually five hundred to seven hundred words, and they’d walk home together in the sweltering heat, and little by little she got a little bit out of him about his book. Writers, she found, couldn’t resist the call to talk about their work, if asked.
The sun was behind them, Pip’s back on fire, the crown of her head hot to the touch, but Pip barely noticed. Jack was explaining about his book, growing up in Brooklyn, half-Cuban, his mother dead. “In this book, which is fictional, there’s a murder. But the protagonist is only seventeen, so it will still be young adult,” Jack rambled on. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if I could sell it? God, I can’t tell you. I feel like I’ve spent four years studying computer science and finance to wake up and realize it was all wrong. Now I have a mountain of debt, and I want to pay it off by writing a novel? I mean, I guess it’s possible. Some novelists are rich, right? Why not me?”
She let him go on, enjoying the rumble and cadence of his voice, the soft soothe of his excitement and the way he’d say, And then I had an idea; listen to this! And clutch her arm, his neck flushed and hands gesturing, and she thought to herself, Why not me?
Then Pip thought about Flynn’s face, shining under the firework sky as he looked not at the bright bursts of color above him but at Jack, whose arm was slung around Willa’s shoulders, her head resting prettily on his arm, and thought, Why not him?
Did you have any control over who you fell in love with? A year ago, Pip would have said of course. She’d had a form of love before—in high school. Ronald Baure, the son of the local grocer. Sneaking out in the middle of the night and into his bedroom, or he into hers. Her aunt slept so soundly she never heard a thing, the television in her room blaring. She wouldn’t have suspected Pip of being the kind of girl who could sneak a boy in anyway.
Actually, Pip wasn’t sure Aunt Belinda thought that much about her at all.
Ronald Baure was the first and only boy she’d slept with, in high school. College was stringent and difficult, and Pip had thrown herself into studying, only to come up for air on quarter-draft nights with Willa, where she met Jack and they started meeting every Thursday to play pool at Yawney’s bar. That was the extent of her social life junior and senior year.
Every once in a while, she’d end up at someone’s apartment party with Jack and W
illa, and if she saw Flynn and Bree (always the twosome), they’d all collect in a corner, drawn together, laughing, teasing, talking, sharing a bottle of wine, or taking turns nipping at the keg. Had she realized then, about Flynn? She tried to think about the moment she realized Flynn was gay—whether he’d said it or not—and found that she couldn’t. Just that she knew—and also knew that no one else really acknowledged it or talked about it. She hadn’t known about the depth of Flynn’s feelings for Jack until that first night at the house.
At the Church House, Jack let himself in, calling “’Ello!” in a cockney voice up to the loft and down to the basement, tossing his messenger bag onto the overstuffed leather couch. Pip followed behind him; it was Friday, typically the night for cocktail hours and Jack’s night to cook. Pip pulled a carefully wrapped brown-paper package of shrimp out of the fridge and starting chopping onions to help him.
“You don’t have to help,” Jack said, biting into a celery stalk at the same time Pip said, “What are we making?”
His mouth twisted up in a lopsided grin. “Paella.” Then, “Bree can pick the meat out.”
“Jack! It’s all meat! Chicken, sausage, shrimp!”
He laughed wickedly but agreed to make her dish separately. “She eats seafood,” he amended. He leaned over and kissed Pip’s cheek quickly as he slid past her for the wine on the counter. “I’ll do it for you. You’re a good friend to her.”
“Who’s a good friend to whom?” Willa took the steps two at a time and flung herself into the closest dining chair.
“Pip. She’s everyone’s BFF. Always looking out.” He said the last part in a singsong, smart alecky.
Bree floated in from somewhere, because that’s what Bree did. Pip wouldn’t see her for hours, and suddenly, poof, she’d appear in the room as if by magic. Or a trapdoor. She barely heard her—only rarely saw her come and go from the house at all. Where did she spend her time? The garden, Pip assumed, her face always striped thinly with mud.
She wore that white dress again—still filthy.
“Bree, do you want me to wash that for you?” Pip offered, but Bree laughed.
“This is my gardening dress. It’s just so damn hot out there. It’s the lightest thing I own, that’s all.” She pulled it out to the side, inspected the smears of dirt on the hem. “Don’t mind me—I’m a mess!” But she didn’t change out of it, instead poured herself a vodka soda, bare toes tapping on the hardwood floor, heels limned with grime.
Even as they ate dinner—stuffed themselves on Jack’s paella, Willa liberally pouring the wine—Pip kept thinking, How can Bree not want to shower and clean up before eating? It seemed—like Jack had called the Fourth of July—barbaric.
Flynn came through the front door halfway through dinner, carrying a stack of old board games—backgammon and go and Risk—their box edges crumpled and broken.
“I used to love Risk!” Bree exclaimed, clapping excitedly.
“I found them in the trash behind the library.” Flynn dumped the stack on the coffee table and helped himself to Jack’s concoction growing gluey in the pan. He took his plate to the living room and began setting up the Risk board. Pip loved Risk, the strategy, the long game, investing in something that might not pay out immediately.
“I haven’t played this since high school.” Willa got up from the table, leaving her plate. She always left a small trail of debris wherever she went. Likely Flynn would clean it up later—his tolerance for untidiness was well below the others’, and he spent most of his time at the house cleaning up after Bree’s mess.
They each took their colors (so predictable, and would become permanent, although they didn’t know that at the time: Jack—red, Flynn—green, Willa—yellow, Bree—pink, Pip—black), dealt the cards, and placed their game pieces. Willa poured everyone gin and tonics with limes she had picked up at the farmers market by the basketful. Jack stationed his men around Africa, the whole time Flynn insisting that you couldn’t hold Africa for any length of time, while Bree quietly amassed an army in Australia.
“The problem with Risk,” declared Jack much later, drunk, the red on the board down to two strongholds—one in Egypt and one terminally stuck in Madagascar, “is that there are only two, maybe three, workable strategies. And the players have to fight for those. And everyone knows what they are. There’s no real intelligence. It’s only pretending to be a strategic game.”
“You’re just saying that because you’re going to lose,” Bree piped up, her soft voice steely as she coolly handed Jack the red die set, bright-blue eyes blinking like an owl. The board was largely pink, with Flynn holding Europe and Pip keeping her hold in North America, a tight cluster of black. A streak of pink cut across India and the Middle East. As though she’d come straight for Jack.
“They call this a religious war, you know,” Jack bellowed, standing up, blowing on the die in his hand. Pip drank deeply from the tumbler, which was now more melted ice than gin, but felt the burn anyway, the lime acrid on her tongue. “There was no strategy, no logic. It’s too emotional. You came straight for me? Why, my sweet Bree?”
“Maybe I’m not so sweet.” She grinned wickedly, tossed her long tangle of hair, and laughed as Pip refilled her glass. On her knees, Bree leaned forward, and Pip could see her blackened heels, the thick streaks of mud up her calves.
“That’s not your problem,” Jack countered, rolling a four and five to Bree’s five and six before he plucked two of his men from the board and placed them back in the game box. “Your problem is you pretend. Sweet. Even innocent. Rich. But all the while, your mind is working under there—conniving, even. With your pink little pieces on your purple territory. Even your game strategy screams pretty princess.”
Flynn hooted, but Pip shifted uncomfortably. Jack’s commentary held a new edge, something sharp and hidden; the only one sensitive to it was Pip. Willa clapped excitedly, a rock of ice pushed into her cheek as she bent forward over the board, whisper-chanting fight, fight, fight, a gleam in her eye, cheeks flushed. Flynn leaned back against the couch, his eyes closed, his mouth curved slightly into a soft smile.
“Princess?” Bree expelled a breath through her nose, and Pip could see the twitch there, something moving under the surface. She rolled two fours to Jack’s three and one, and suddenly he was down to two men, Bree’s pink cavalry looking comically ominous.
“You’ve been killed by the princess army.” Bree cocked her head, a smile on her face, but something about it made the hair on Pip’s arms stand up.
“See? You just pretend to be innocent.” Jack sat back down, his eyes flashing, and this time Pip was sure of the undercurrent. Flynn caught it, too, his gaze flicking between Jack and Bree, his hand cupping Bree’s elbow protectively. She sat up then. “Bree, the virgin. Helpless Bree. But that’s not it, is it? You’re so far from helpless. It’s an act.”
“Why are you such a fucking prick?” Her voice was low, cut with venom. Pip had never heard that out of Bree before—not like that.
Jack shrugged, leaned back, an easy grin on his face. “Did Bree tell you her dad was a Hollywood star? Got an Emmy or some shit like that? Like, twenty years ago?”
It wasn’t clear who Jack was talking to, presumably one of them.
Then, softly, “I looked him up. Was it true, Bree?”
She said nothing, her jaw set.
“Jack, why are you being such a douchebag?” Willa called from the kitchen. She crossed the expanse of hardwood, licking her fingertips. “Seriously, why do you get drunk and do this sometimes?”
“Do what?” Jack finally broke his gaze and looked at Willa. “What do I do?”
“Get drunk and be an asshole,” Willa said.
Pip couldn’t help it, felt sorry later for rushing to Jack’s defense. “Doesn’t everyone do that?” Then, quieter as they all swiveled to look at her, “Sometimes?”
“Look, all I’m saying is, Bree acts like she’s this ingenue here. We all do her bidding. But she tells some lies. She
kind of acts a little better than the rest of us.”
“Oh, fuck off, I do not,” Bree finally spoke. “I don’t act better than any of you. I don’t lie. I’m not an ingenue or whatever you said earlier.”
“You know another word for virgin?” Jack poured gin straight into his glass and gulped it down warm. “A tease.”
“Why do you even care so much?” Bree said, her voice breaking and chilled. “You’re a sexist pig. All the time. What does it matter to you?”
“It doesn’t matter to me,” Jack said evenly, a smirk on his face, his eyes slitted. “It’s just interesting.”
“I think it fucking sucks that the most interesting thing about anyone is whether or not they’ve had sex.” Bree spat the words out, her voice low and teeth clenched.
“I don’t think it’s the most interesting thing about you. I just said it was interesting.” Jack held his hands up, palms out.
“I think you just don’t like it that I won’t have sex with you,” Bree said finally.
Even Willa had shut up by this point, tucked into the corner chair, her chin resting on the armrest, her eyes tracking the fight, hand clutching a warm brandy snifter of vodka.
“I didn’t ask, darling.” Jack laughed then, too loud. But even Pip could see the faint flush up his cheeks. Was that it, then? Had Bree rejected him? Or was he preemptively striking out? She saw his jaw tighten, working.
Nobody spoke for what felt like an hour but couldn’t have been more than five minutes.
Finally, Jack smiled. Charm returned. “I was mostly joking, you know.”
“You weren’t, Jack,” Bree said. She stood, raised her eyebrows to Flynn, who also stood. She threaded her arm through Flynn’s, her head resting on his shoulder, her face wounded. He patted her back benignly, unsure what to do in the midst of this unprecedented argument. They’d never fought before. Willa and Jack sometimes. But never all of them, choosing sides. Bree led Flynn downstairs, but not before shooting one last look over her shoulder. Penelope thought that maybe she looked not hurt or upset, but satisfied.
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