Chapter Seven #2
Chances were, I was making a terrible mistake, and I’d regret involving Phoebe in something so dicey. With the odds stacked high against me, I let the ball keep tumbling down the hill on the off chance optimism might stick to it like moss along the way.
Even as anxiety ballooned in my chest, I fixed my face into what I hoped was a convincing smile and said, “I feel good about this, Arden. It’s okay.”
“How is this okay to you?” Arden asked. “I’ve been telling you that you deserve a life for months, but I meant going on dates or a new hobby. Not taking a road trip with a stranger.”
Arden could say I needed a life all day long, but she’d never understand. This was my life. I didn’t have the luxury of being a normal twenty-six-year-old, and I couldn’t be not okay with that.
“I wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t one hundred percent on board,” I lied. “Phoebe is more excited than I’ve ever seen her. I trust Dex, I think. At the very least, he’s not a murderer.”
“That you know of,” Arden replied darkly.
“We can change our minds at any time,” I said, lowering my voice in case Phoebe was still eavesdropping. “If it’s awful, we’ll come home. No harm, no foul.”
“And crush Phoebe?” Arden raised her eyebrows. “No, you won’t. You’ll suffer for her.”
“You keep telling me to be the guardian. I’ll put my foot down.”
She looked at me like my nose had grown by the end of the sentence.
“It’ll be fine,” I insisted. And I mostly believed it, because Phoebe hadn’t stopped smiling since Dex dropped us off last night.
Phoebe’s door squeaked open and she slipped out, angel-faced and armed with Dad’s Polaroid camera. “Heeey,” she said, dragging out the word. Arden narrowed her eyes at her. “Are you mad?”
“Am I mad?”
“Don’t be mad.” Phoebe shuffled over, dropping onto the cushion between us. “It’ll be fine. This is gonna be good for us.”
“It won’t be fine. Want to know why?” Arden made a show of drawing her phone out of her pocket and opening the search engine. I sighed.
“Are you googling gruesome statistics?”
She held up her phone, eyes wild. “Eighty-eight percent of woman die while traveling with strangers!”
“That cannot be true,” I said.
Phoebe snatched her phone. “What did you even look up? God.”
“You can’t do this,” Arden pressed. “It’s not safe.”
“First of all, don’t trust the AI function,” Phoebe said, handing her back the phone. “Second, that’s not even what the statistic is. It says eighty-eight percent of women feel unsafe while traveling alone.”
“I’m panicking!” Arden cried. “You can’t unload this information on me and expect me to be like, ‘Bon voyage!’ ”
“No one says ‘bon voyage’ anymore,” Phoebe said. “It’s cringe.”
Arden recoiled. “It’s French.”
“I don’t expect you to be okay with this,” I cut in, earning their undivided attention.
I hated being the reason Arden’s eyes were swimming, but Phoebe sat between us, beaming, and I couldn’t let that go for anything.
“I’ll keep you updated every step of the way.
I’ll even get the creepy Find My Friends app if you want me to. But this is happening.”
Arden fell into our scratchy three-dollar throw pillow, flinging her arm over her face. “Fine. You win,” she said. Phoebe threw me a victorious smile, but I couldn’t bring myself to return the gesture. None of this felt like winning.
“It’ll be fine,” Phoebe insisted, patting Arden’s leg. “Right, Vi?”
“Of course it will,” I said. Phoebe glanced at me, hope sparking in her eyes. My words meant something to her; she’d done her best to keep it buried, but here was a tiny hint of that adoration she used to showcase without a second thought. I still mattered.
And I guess I knew it all along, but it was nice to see.
Arden sat up, eyes sharp, and pointed right in my face. “You’re getting the Find My Friends app.”
“I said I would.”
“And I want hourly updates.”
“Yeah, that’s not happening.”
“Do you want me to go crazy?”
“As if we’re not already there,” Phoebe muttered under her breath. I jabbed her with my elbow and she stifled a smile, turning her attention to the camera in her lap.
“You have to trust us, Arden. We can handle ourselves.”
“I do trust you,” she said. “It’s him.”
“He’s harmless,” Phoebe said, waving this off. “Before Vi picked me up yesterday, he offered to drive me home because I had a blister. Dude’s a total softie.”
Arden shot me a dubious look. I wouldn’t categorize Dex as a softie, by any means, but he’d revealed small, softer factions of himself in the short time we’d known him.
A tissue, a ride home in the rain, a Sorry for Your Loss that didn’t feel like obligation so much as understanding.
He remained a mystery, but something deep in my bones whispered we were the same.
“Sure. Harmless,” Arden said. “But we definitely need a code word. Use ‘papaya’ in a sentence if he’s holding a gun to your head.”
“How would we use ‘papaya’ in a normal sentence?” I asked. She rolled her eyes.
“ ‘I’ve been craving some juicy papaya.’ ”
“Ew. I’m not going to say that.”
“I hope to God you won’t have to.”
I opened my mouth to argue and Phoebe held the camera out, angled toward us, a flash immediately blinding us.
“My eyes!” Arden wailed as I rubbed the stars from my eyes.
“Whoops,” Phoebe said. “Is there a way to turn the flash off?”
I dropped my hands, squinting at her blurry form on the couch wielding the Polaroid camera. “Why would you choose that moment?”
“This is the beginning of the trip. I want to remember it.” She held the camera up to her eye, angling it around the room before setting it down on the couch cushion beside her.
She pinched the photograph of Arden and me between her fingers and shook it.
“Plus, your face was really funny when Arden said ‘juicy papaya.’ ”
“She’s not wrong,” Arden said. “But you’re not supposed to shake Polaroids.”
Phoebe froze. “What? Really?”
“Yeah. It could alter the chemicals and make the picture all wonky,” I mentioned. Phoebe studied the photo, tilting her head slightly.
“Huh. Doesn’t look wonky to me. Except your face.”
I rolled my eyes. “Nobody is photogenic when they’re blinded.”
“You look like you’re about to sneeze. Arden looks like a goddess.”
Arden beamed. “I was discovered at a mall in high school by a modeling agent. My absolute nightmare, of course, but it was so flattering.”
“From what you’ve told me about that interaction,” I said, “that guy was not a modeling agent.”
Phoebe gasped. “Oh my god, Arden. You were almost true crimed in high school?”
“He was an agent! He said I could be the next Kate Moss!”
“He asked if you’d ever do tasteful nudes.”
Arden threw up an exasperated hand. “I looked older than I was at sixteen!”
“Gross.” Phoebe hopped to her feet, weighing the camera in her hands. “So, do we think we’re staying in, like, hotels? Or Airbnbs?”
Arden leveled her gaze on me, awaiting the answer to this question. I drummed my fingers on my thigh, scrunching up my nose. I’d texted Dex last night telling him I had a tiny bit of savings I could contribute to the budget, to which he replied: There’s no budget. Don’t worry about it.
The nonprofit had to be a front for some Heisenberg-level shit.
“No idea,” I said, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt. “But Dex seems to have pretty high standards, so I would guess hotels.”
“Swanky,” Arden said, lifting a brow. I shrugged. “Tomorrow, huh?”
Anxiety rolled through my stomach like thunder. “School’s out on Monday and nothing was official with the bartending job, so… Why not, right?”
“We wanted to get going ASAP,” Phoebe said with a grin.
This was true for her, but I had a feeling Dex and I agreed on the early departure so we wouldn’t lose our nerve.
Every minute between now and eight o’clock tomorrow morning was an opportunity to back out; the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to hunker down and never leave the apartment again.
Arden was looking at me like she knew it. “This is too weird. Do you guys not realize how weird this is?”
“Oh, I am acutely aware,” I said.
“Arden, weird is good,” Phoebe chimed in. “It keeps things exciting. It keeps you alive.”
Arden’s face went soft. When she turned her gaze to me, I knew she understood; she didn’t necessarily agree and she still wasn’t completely on board, but she could see the difference in Phoebe. She knew why I had to do this.
It would’ve been nice if it didn’t take this to make Phoebe feel alive. I wished I could’ve managed it on my own.