Chapter 18
E llie hated to break bad news over the phone.
Any lull in the conversation made her wonder if the other person was processing what had been said, or if they’d dropped their phone in the toilet.
Since she didn’t want to wade through that ambiguity with Melinda, she suggested they meet up for drinks.
“I’m actually seeing a friend in the city this afternoon,” Melinda said on the other end of the line. “Is tonight good?”
“Tonight is great,” Ellie told her, even though it was terrible.
She collided with her desk as she slid around her home office, forcing her glass mushroom lamp to wobble.
Nancy tucked her wet nose under the door and sniffed at the chaos.
Ellie would need an excuse to go out. Thursdays were their Thai food and monster movie night.
She and Drake tended to get into character, smashing the plastic cartons of noodles with their fists and raising their utensils high above their heads like they were ready to fight.
“Are you headlining a pop tour or something?” Drake asked when Ellie came down the stairs later. She’d spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to pick the right outfit and had landed on a funky silver jumpsuit she’d never worn.
“I’m getting a drink.” Ellie’s hair was having a tantrum. She pushed it away from her face and hoped it appeared dramatic.
“What, do you have a big date?”
Ellie angled herself away from him when she used Jen as her alibi. “She keeps wanting to party with mocktails now that she’s pregnant.”
Sometimes, it amazed her how easy it could be to lie.
Inside Strange Alchemy, the smell of craft spirits kissed her. The bar was one part mixology, one part sultry cavern, with a dash of Jim Henson whimsy. At the back of the room, a bartender slid a cocktail menu Ellie’s way while pouring a sky-high gin fizz.
“Ellie?” Melinda called. The sight of her, otherworldly in a green silk dress, made Ellie question her jumpsuit.
Melinda’s carefree air was now overtaken by a polite glamour.
The look felt like the aftermath of a high school movie makeover where the lead actress was always beautiful: glasses off, hair down, now she’s got it !
If Drake saw both of them for the first time tonight, who would he have spoken to?
Ellie was overthinking things again. Where was the confidence that was her superpower? “Well, come on,” Melinda was saying as she reached for a hug. Ellie wasn’t usually a hugger. “I found us a booth.”
Melinda took her time ordering a rose gimlet.
She asked the waiter an encyclopedic number of questions about the drink with a kind, slow affectation, as if to underline that she was still a small-town girl, despite the dress.
Ellie got the Dragon’s Lair. It was her favorite drink on the menu.
The cocktail came with a yellow Szechuan flower rim that caused invisible lightning bolts to strike the inside of her mouth.
“I’m glad we’re doing this,” Melinda said. She seemed energized to be out with a potential new friend. Ellie regretted not getting this over with on the phone. “And I’m grateful you’re doing the story.”
“You don’t have to be grateful. It’s a story, not a kidney.”
“Can I be honest?” Melinda asked. Ellie offered a quick nod. “I thought this would be awkward at first.”
“Oh, yeah,” Ellie said, before she realized she didn’t know what Melinda meant. Ellie assumed she was referring to how nervewracking it is to be out with a new friend, so she said, “Don’t worry, I save all my celebrity impressions for the second outing.”
Melinda chuckled. “No, I meant …because of Drake.”
Ellie froze. She searched for the right move to make, but she wasn’t sure what game they were playing yet.
Melinda had looked her up. She’d claimed to be a writer who could help her store, and what—Melinda wouldn’t do a quick search to make sure that was true?
The room was closing in on them; the perimeter pushed itself so close that the velvet paintings hanging on the walls were about to rub up against her bare arms. Ellie expected, knew, that she was about to be called out.
“I recognized …” Melinda started. “Well, mostly, I recognized you from Beth’s photos,” she admitted, which Ellie was not expecting.
Surely there was another Beth, a communal Beth, a Beth who wasn’t Drake’s mom.
There had to be a Beth who she’d met at some cocktail party who somehow kept a trove of Ellie’s photographs strewn around her apartment. Oh, that Beth. Stalker Beth.
But she only knew one Beth. And if anything, Ellie was the stalker here.
“We bake together sometimes,” Melinda said.
“We’ve stayed close.” Ellie was ready to spit fire.
The Beth who was about to be her mother-in-law had “stayed close” with Melinda?
The horror grew as she imagined Melinda attending casual gatherings at the Nielsons’ condo, Melinda spooning some kind of deliciously complicated casserole on each plate.
“Anyway, I know why you didn’t tell me.”
“You do?” Ellie asked, curious to be enlightened about her own antics.
“Drake would want this whole thing to seem random,” Melinda explained.
“Gosh, it’s typical Drake, isn’t it?” She rested her head on her hand.
“I mean, he would send you to help me stay open and make it seem anonymous. You know how he is.” The you-know sneered at Ellie.
She did know. She didn’t need Melinda to tell her about her fiancé.
“But I’m not good at secrets. And I also figured that’s why you called me here. ”
The drinks landed, along with some chips. Ellie took a big gulp of her Dragon’s Lair and started to cough.
“Are you okay?” Melinda asked.
“Oh, I’m fine.” Ellie pointed to her glass.
“My drink has a spicy rim. It’s a festive kind of affliction.
” Melinda shook her hair down her back and took the smallest sip of her gimlet, like she was at a tea party.
A memory came back into play again: Drake and Melinda on the hardwood floor, sipping hot beverages from chipped mugs, all starry-eyed.
“Anyway, you got me,” Ellie said. She wasn’t sure why she was about to go along with Melinda’s version of the truth.
If, and more likely when, Drake found out about all this, she’d be digging herself deeper.
“Drake did want it to seem anonymous.” Now that Ellie was in the hole, why not keep going?
“Speaking of,” she said, “he’s been fairly shy about the whole thing. What happened between you two, anyway?”
Melinda pushed back a little in her seat. “He didn’t tell you?”
“I mean, he did, yeah.” Ellie chewed on some of the chips. She was doing a bad cover-up job. “I’d just like to hear it from your perspective.”
“Ellie,” Melinda said. “Look, I’m all about honesty.
But it seems like this is a conversation for you two.
” Ellie could see Melinda piecing together their relationship in her mind.
She had decided something was wrong with it, Ellie suspected.
She and Jamie probably sat around the table assigning colors to their feelings, or whatever it was that show-off communicators did when left to their own devices.
Melinda’s judgment made Ellie want to play her own power card—the I’m calling the story off card—but the events that would follow unfolded in her head.
Melinda would reach out to Drake, heartbroken, and detail Ellie’s transgressions.
Drake would sympathize. He might even go to the shop to comfort her.
Maybe he would bend over to pet Pasta the cat and a wave of nostalgia would take over.
Ellie was spinning in circles, all the more reason she should’ve untangled herself right then.
But she couldn’t; she was stuck in a trap she’d built herself.
The plan had changed. Ellie would keep the story. She needed to show Melinda that she was the one in control of this narrative.
The waiter arrived to check on them, and Ellie turned up the charm.
“Drake and I will talk,” she said casually.
“But, back to business. Now that we got why I asked you here out of the way, tell me more about Jamie,” she said, crossing her fingers under her chin.
“I’m almost done with my new draft, and I’d love to add some detail there. ”
Ellie replayed the exchange with Melinda in her mind as she drove home. She now knew more about her fiancé’s ex than was healthy, through no fault of Drake’s. It was always going to bother her that Melinda and Beth were friends. What else would she discover if she kept this investigation up?
As Ellie pulled into the driveway, she debated calling the story off for the second time that day, but her thought spiral was broken by the chirp of a text.
It was from Nolan. He’d already read the draft she sent him and sent a frenzied paragraph-long response using too many emojis.
He wanted to meet for breakfast to talk. Was she free tomorrow?
Tomorrow was eager. Nolan was excited about something.
Ellie’s biggest mistake in all of this, she realized, was not telling Drake first. He would be furious when he found out she’d gone behind his back.
She vowed that she would sit him down and tell him the truth that night, but when she got home, he immediately hopped up to microwave a buffet’s worth of leftover Thai food for her.
“Is it too late for a movie?” Drake asked.
“Sure,” Ellie said. “I mean, no. It’s not too late.”
“It’s your turn to pick,” he told her, setting their food down, along with a small snack plate for Nancy so she wouldn’t feel left out. “Any genre. We don’t need to be monster-exclusive tonight.”
Ellie chose a French film. Drake disliked the foreign films she loved. When she had put on Amélie for him one time, he insisted the subtitles were too fast and couldn’t follow the plot. Knowing he would fall asleep in minutes, she pressed Play on a movie musical called The Umbrellas of Cherbourg .
“Just what this night needs,” Drake said next to her on the couch, stealing a bite of the food he had heated up. “A musical about a struggling umbrella shop.”
Ellie nearly choked on her noodles. “Have you seen this before?”
“No,” Drake insisted. “Not my thing. Hey, how was Jen?”
“Why?”
“Because you were just out with her.”
“Yeah, sorry,” Ellie said. “I’m kind of tired.”
“Are you hiding something from me?” He went for another bite.
“No.” She was jumpy.
“I’m kidding.” Drake laughed. He pulled her closer into him until they were one snuggly human.
Halfway into the movie, Ellie took a breath and pressed pause. “Actually, Drake, there is something I wanted to tell you—”
His snore landed next to her on the couch. He was already asleep. Ellie tossed a blanket over their legs and set her head on his shoulder.
The news, she decided, could wait a little longer.