Chapter 3
As we approached the billiard room, though, voices rose to meet us.
“Okay,” Dottie was saying, “but the tourists, right?”
Fox’s laughter was unmistakable.
“I swear, every time I go, there’s some bro named Steve wearing a neon tank. He’s usually from Australia, and he spends every night getting blackout drunk, and the only thing he can talk about is—”
Fox chimed in and said at the same time as Dottie, “Khao Sarn Road!”
They both burst into fresh guffaws.
I stopped in the doorway, distantly aware of Bobby standing at my shoulder.
Dottie had moved to the chesterfield. She was still wrapped up in the blanket meant for Bobby and me, and the box of chocolates was empty.
But she also looked…better, I guess, than she had on the doorstep.
Probably because she wasn’t freezing to death in the sleet anymore, but it seemed like more than that.
We’d always looked alike: the same dark hair, the same dark eyes, the same wiry build, the same crooked smile.
That’s where the resemblance ended. I was taller, and I had a tiny degree of fashion sense (gamer tees, canvas jackets, joggers—I’m talking sensible wardrobe staples).
I kept my hair short and managed, most days, not to make a total mess of it.
Dottie, on the other hand, preferred cutting her hair herself.
The current do consisted of extremely short bangs (like, so short they frizzed up into a tiny cloud), and then long hair in back, in a kind of half-up, half-down look.
It was kind of like a mullet ponytail, if such a thing existed.
And her clothes—so many layers! A biker jacket with lots of shiny zippers.
A Santa Cruz hoodie. A flannel. A Nirvana tee.
She had decided, apparently, not to layer her jeans (she was only wearing one pair, as far as I could tell), but the snakeskin boots more than made up for it.
With rattlesnake fangs sticking up in front, by the way.
She and Fox currently occupied the chesterfield.
All the Last Picks were there—having come over, I guessed, from Indira’s flat in the coach house.
Millie was perched on an armchair, bent toward them, her face alight with wonder and interest. Keme sat on the arm of the chair; he was clearly trying to remain wary of Dottie, but he was also clearly fighting a losing battle (although some of that must have been the thrill of getting to sit so close to Millie).
Indira stood against the wall, arms folded, an unreadable look on her face.
Then her gaze flicked to me, and I thought I saw her expression change.
“Dasher!” Dottie said when she saw me. “Oh my God, I feel so much better. Thank you.”
“Dasher?” Bobby murmured next to me.
“Dasher?” Fox asked.
“DASHER?” Millie, uh, said?
“Because my name is Dash—” I tried.
“Oh my God, you haven’t told them about Dasher?”
“No, Dottie, don’t—”
Twisting around in her blanket, she rummaged for her phone. “He wrote the most incredible one-act play—”
“Started,” I said. “Didn’t finish. Will never finish. Because the project is dead, buried, etcetera.”
“Dash wrote a play?” Fox asked.
“Was it SAD?” (Guess who?)
“Good question, Millie,” Dottie said as she produced her phone. “It was the saddest thing ever. It was called Dasher the loneliest reindeer, and it was about how all the other reindeer died in a plague, and Dasher was the only one left, and there was a lot of nudity—”
It’s hard to pick a single word for all the noises that happened in that moment. Cacophony, I guess. Or maybe just a sound explosion. Bobby coughed like something had gotten caught in his throat.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay! There wasn’t a lot of nudity—”
“Not if you count the antlers,” Dottie said.
“Please tell me there are pictures,” Fox said.
“Fox,” Indira said.
“Everyone’s wondering!”
“Of course there are pictures,” Dottie said, “but I don’t know if Dash—”
“Absolutely not,” I said.
“One?”
“One, Dash?” Millie asked. “Please?”
“One with your clothes on?” Dottie added.
“Oh my God,” I said.
Millie and Dottie shared a look and said, at the same time, “Yay!”
I immediately realized my mistake. I mean, it wasn’t a bad picture. I was wearing my brown reindeer suit, and the antlers were kind of cute. I looked like a baby because it had been, God, seven or eight years ago. The only problem was—
“Who’s that hunk of man?” Fox asked.
“That’s not Hugo,” Millie said.
Indira made a little sound that was almost a purr. “He’s very handsome.”
“Oh, that’s the quarterback Dash was dating. Dasher, what was his name?”
“I wasn’t—we weren’t—”
Keme looked at me and then looked back at the picture. He pushed his hair behind his ears, grinned, and chose that moment to say his first words of the evening: “Dude. Nice.”
“We all loved him,” Dottie said. “He was so sweet. He was perfect for Dash, actually.”
“He was perfect for a nervous breakdown,” I said. “Especially since he’s married to a woman and has three children now. I didn’t even know he was closeted for the first six months because I just thought he liked hanging out in my room.”
Bobby’s low “Oh my God” sounded particularly despairing.
“You know what?” I said, my face heating. “This has been so much fun, but Dottie has to go now. Right, Dottie? You’ve probably got a plane to catch to, uh, Kuala Lumpur. Love you, happy New Year, bye. See you when the first parent dies.”
“Dashiell,” Indira said.
“Oh, it’s from a TV show,” Dottie said, waving away Indira’s shock.
“Dottie can’t leave,” Millie said. “Dottie is AMAZING!”
Keme glowered at me.
“You’re not going to throw your sister out in this weather,” Fox said, “are you, Dasher?”
“I mean,” Dottie said slowly, “I was hoping I could crash here for a few days…”
Everyone must have seen the moment of defeat. Millie cheered. Keme’s glower eased into a frown. Fox shouted, “Huzzah!” And Indira smiled at me and nodded.
From Bobby, though, I felt only a keen, wary interest—and so I did my best not to look at him, in case that interest turned into a question.
“Come on,” I said to Dottie. “Let’s find you a room.”