Chapter 3
Kylie
I don’t know if you know this, but Mondays during tax season have a smell. It’s a combination of burned coffee, panic-induced pit sweat, and printer ink.
By ten a.m., my boss, Martin Feldman, has already made fifteen laps around the office, his bald head shining beneath the fluorescent lights while he wears a rut in the blue Berber carpet, bitching to everyone within earshot and freaking out in nerd speak.
His tie is loosened, his sleeves are rolled up, and because of the wear and tear on his loafers, he’s shrunk half an inch.
I don’t look up from my screen. “Pseudocide would complicate payroll, Martin, and at this stage of the game, I don’t need any more complications.”
“Good point.” He peers at my monitor. “How are you doing over here, Moon?”
“Thriving,” I say. “Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve dreamed of having the kind of stress that causes hair loss, brittle nails, and wrinkles as a part of my career.”
“Stress causes hair loss?”
I suck my lips into my mouth and point my eyes directly at his barren head. “Nooo.”
He snorts. “Well, good news, if we survive the fifteenth, drinks are on me.”
“And if we don’t survive?” I ask, pessimistically amused.
“Burn this place to the ground with me inside it. Oh, and make sure you tell my wife I loved her.” He pats my shoulder and keeps moving, already muttering about needing to file extensions for the Bergwitz, Holsten, and Smith families, and leaving no opening for me to explain that if we don’t survive, my corpse won’t be able to burn anything down.
Or, I suppose, tell anyone that he loves them.
I don’t have anyone to tell besides Gammy, but boy oh boy, is that a can of worms for another time.
I have too much shit to do. Working here in the spring is the kind of busy where all you can do is brace yourself for the wild ride to hell and hope you have enough flame-retardant clothes to come out the other side. You can quite literally work at a breakneck speed and still feel behind.
After I manage to submit the twenty federal filings Martin has signed off on so far today, I step out of the office to grab a sandwich from my favorite deli a few blocks away.
The streets are slushed from a mid-March snow and ruthlessly cold weather, so I head for my car down the block instead of making the walk—since there’s no way I can finish the workday with wet feet.
A dark SUV creeps along the curb behind me, likely looking for a spot to park with all the snowbanks, and I glance over my shoulder every so often to see if they succeed.
They’re still idling when I return to the office—chicken salad sandwich in tow—before finally speeding off through the light and around the corner as I enter the small parking lot reserved for employees of Feldman CPA.
There are several empty spots on the street—I see that now—and a weird tingling sense of unease washes over me.
Boston traffic is a nightmare, I tell myself, brushing it off. And it’s probably not even the same SUV. Pretty sure everyone and their mother drive blacked-out Escalades around here.
I stay busy at the office until a little after seven, when Martin decides it’s time for us to go home, eat dinner, cry in the shower, and get some sleep—his real instructions at quitting time every day, by the way.
It’s another forty minutes before I get home because living in Boston city center is way out of my price range.
And I’m barely through the door—haven’t even laid eyes on Alyssa—when my phone starts ringing.
I half expect it to be Martin with a new take on postmortem care, but it’s my grandmother’s name on the screen.
“Hey, Gammy,” I greet nonchalantly—as though I haven’t been avoiding her or her request to get together for the last two days with Olympic-level agility. “How’s it going?”
Guilt niggles slightly as she pauses. Normally, she’s ready to dive into some kind of gossip right out of the gate, and if she’s not, I can only imagine it’s because she’s feeling annoyed with me.
“Gam, I’m sorry—”
“Are you okay?” she cuts me off.
My chin jerks to my chest in surprise. “Uh…yeah…I mean.” I shrug to myself. “It’s tax season, so I’m not okay, but I’m okay at the same time, you know?” I snort. “I’m surviving.”
Another pause. “I know work’s busy this time of year, Kyky. I mean everything else. You’re sleeping okay? Eating enough? Feeling…safe?”
I frown as I toe off my heels, the SUV from earlier today ushering unbidden anxiety into my mind. “Safe? Gammy…you’re starting to make me feel like things aren’t supposed to be okay. What’s going on?”
“I can’t do this over the phone,” she says gently. “I just need to see you.”
I glance at the clock. “You live forty-five minutes away. I’ve been working twelve-hour days six days a week.”
“I know,” she says. “But I never get to see you, and this is important. Don’t you miss me?”
I roll my eyes. Grandmothers really have a special gift for charging every single encounter with guilt.
“Gammy.” I close my eyes, feeling torn in twenty directions with no stretchy flesh to give. “That’s not fair. You know I miss you.”
“Life isn’t fair, baby,” she counters. “It’s fast and furious and complicated in a thousand different ways. Come tomorrow, after work, doesn’t matter how late. I’ll make pot roast—your favorite and it can sit for hours.”
I sigh. “You play dirty.”
“See you tomorrow night, sweetheart,” she says cheerfully, hanging up before I can argue.
I stand there for a moment, phone in hand, considering the implications of my grandmother’s pushing. Either something serious is going on or I need to set parental controls on her TV. Fast and furious? Am I safe? I need to block Vin Diesel and true crime, like, yesterday.
Still, I don’t think I can make it there tomorrow night without chancing a full-on mental breakdown, no matter how badly she wants me to.
Ugh. Whatever.
Tonight, I’m choosing peace. Tomorrow morning, I’ll break the news of my continued absence and then set my phone to silent.
A disturbing visual of my roommate Alyssa, sprawled out with one leg on the back of the couch and the other draped off the edge with both hands in a bowl of cheeseballs, is the first thing I see upon exiting the kitchen.
Her laptop is closed on the coffee table, her shirt covered in orange dust, and her red hair is in a messy bun that signals the end of her latest academic ordeal.
She’s not a simple, happy girl when she’s under the gun—but rather a stressed-out, soul-siphoning metaphorical demon—and the fall into relief afterward often looks apocalyptic.
“What’s your status? Can I assume by the junk-food-indulging-bowl-of-balls that you’re finished?”
“Freedom, baby,” she declares, stretching and sitting up to set the bowl on top of her computer. “My paper is submitted, I am officially brain-dead, and thankfully, I don’t need to worry about the next butt-puckering assignment for another three to five business days.”
At which time, she will, once again, deadline-crunch at the last minute. Some cycles really are predictable.
“That’s great! Want to come to the rink with me to celebrate? I’m brain-dead too, and I need to skate off some of this anxiety or I’m afraid I’ll wake up melted tomorrow.”
“Hell no.” She groans. “I plan to sit here and rot.”
“I’ll buy you dinner after. Whatever you want. Even if it’s that horrible taco joint you love so much.”
“Sorry, no sale.” She points to a grocery bag filled with more junk food at her feet. “I plan to rot with snacks.”
“Oh, come on, Alyssa!” I call over my shoulder as I head into my bedroom to change out of my work clothes. “It’d be nice to have a little female companionship there tonight. The hockey guys were particularly feral on Saturday.”
“They always are!” she yells back to me. “They see one woman on ice and forget how to act.”
I toss on a sports bra, leggings, and a hoodie before slipping on my favorite pair of runners. When I walk back into the living room, Alyssa still hasn’t budged an inch, other than to move from cheeseballs to Pringles.
“You don’t feel…weird when you’re at the rink around those guys?” I question. “I mean, they stare. A lot.”
“No.” She shakes her head, but then a beat later, she smiles.
“I mostly feel horny. Maybe a little jealous. Rook Slater always looks at you like he wants to chain you to his bedpost and have his wicked way with you, and I’d like to have my wicked way with him.
Or his brothers. Any of the Iron Knights will do, really. ”
A laugh bursts from my lungs. “He looks at me like he wants to kill me, Al.”
“With orgasms, maybe.” She snorts. “A death I’d happily accept if I were in your position. It’s been a long ass time since I’ve gotten my kitty licked.”
I pick up a pillow and throw it at her. “You’re foul.”
Alyssa laughs her ass off. “More like, I’m sexually repressed because school is turning me into a hermit. I’m definitely going to need to go out this weekend and get some play. Even stray kitties need love.”
I roll my eyes and laugh. “That’s exactly what you said two weekends ago after you met a deadline. And the deadline before that. And the deadline before that.”
She shrugs and pops another chip into her mouth. “Patterned desires are indicative of an underlying need, Ky. It’s scientific.”
Alyssa loves hooking up. I, on the other hand, take a more chaste—some might even say picky—approach to sex.
Sure, I’ve messed around with guys, but at twenty-four years old, I’ve yet to find the right guy to have actual sex with.
Alyssa thinks I’m batshit crazy for holding out this long, but I’ve never second-guessed it.
For some reason, I’ve always felt really confident that I’ll know when the time is right.
“You really don’t get skeeved out by them?” I ask again, the thought looping back as a shiver runs down my spine.
“They’re harmless, Ky.” She waves a hand. “Just a bunch of macho cavemen.”