7. Daphne
Daphne
For a hot second, my temper flares. The sad truth is that I'm enjoying Rickie's attention. It's a good thing I'm not drinking tonight, so I don't do anything stupid. My sister's interruption is probably well timed.
And when I look up at May, I feel the usual flare of guilt. I haven’t been a good sister. “It's no problem,” I say, scrambling to my feet. "What do you need?"
"Well, it's almost time to cut the cake. But first I need to show you something.”
"Sure. Anything." I cast a quick glance back at Rickie. He gives me a slow nod and then a wink. He looks exceedingly good tonight in a crisp, pink-and-white checked shirt which is open exactly one button further than is polite, giving me an enticing preview of those tattoos I like so much.
Until this very moment I had no idea that a man could make pink-and-white gingham sexy. But here we are. Rickie is a study in contrasts. I never know what he's going to wear or say or do. He drives me crazy. I know I ought to resist the pull. But he does not make it easy.
And now that I know his weird secret, he's even more irresistible. It humanizes him. Maybe I have a vulnerability kink. Although that doesn’t explain how I fell for Reardon Halsey’s charms last year. He's about as vulnerable as a rattlesnake.
May is shooting me sideways glances as I follow her to a corner of the deck. "Okay, I feel bad interrupting. Are you going to jump on that later?"
"May!"
"Oh please don't sound so shocked. Like the idea never occurred to you? He's smokin’.”
I make a noise of irritation. "He knows it though." And this is the weirdest conversation. May and I aren't close. We never dish about guys.
"He's not creepy, is he?" She gives me a look of alarm as she pulls out her phone.
"No, he's not," I admit. "He's flirty, that's for sure.
Really flirty. But..." It's hard to explain Rickie's unusual appeal.
Every sexy word that comes out of his mouth is infused with humor.
Like he's teasing himself at the same time he's teasing me. As if he doesn’t mind sounding a little ridiculous if he makes his point.
I feel drawn to him, even though I don’t want to admit it. He seems different than other guys.
But, ugh, he's probably not. And it's just my usual stupid crush getting in the way of seeing the world the way it really is. "He's not creepy,” I repeat. “He's fine. And also fiiiine . Good eye candy in the upstairs hallway this summer.”
“Keep me posted," she says, opening up a photo on her phone. “I wanted to show you this project I started. Now let’s see…”
I wait patiently, even though I’m not very interested in all the home decorating projects she’s taken on lately.
My sister’s life is coming together in every possible way.
Her boyfriend loves her. They own several businesses between them—the bar, May's small law practice, and Alec's growing brewery operation for nonalcoholic beers, which May inspired him to start.
She used to be the fuckup that everyone worried about. Her life was a mess. But now she’s super happy and accomplishing all her goals.
Meanwhile, my life is imploding. Not that I’d tell her about it because we are not close. That’s also my fault. When she was at her lowest, I betrayed her and embarrassed her.
These days we tiptoe around each other. May tolerates me. And I should probably be more grateful.
“Here it is! See? I’m stripping and refinishing this piece of furniture. Look.”
I squint at the screen. “Is that…grandma’s old desk?”
“Yup! Doesn’t the bare wood look great?”
“Wow.” I take the phone and zoom in on the photo. My grandmother liked to sew, and she kept her machine on a beat-up old desk that had been painted an odd shade of gray-blue. But that’s gone now. “Nice work. It’s so pretty.”
“I thought so too. Do you want it?”
“Want what?”
May looks to the heavens. “Want the desk . You’re moving to Burlington, and you might need one. Griffin and Audrey were moving some old furniture out of the Bungalow. And I thought you could use it.”
Oh geez. “I can’t take that. Not after you’re spending so much time on it.” Like I want to owe May anything else. “Besides, I’ll only be in Burlington for a single academic year. Then I’ll leave again for graduate school.”
“You don’t have to, you know,” May says.
“Go to graduate school?” I yelp. “Yes, I do.” I can’t change my plans. If I do that, Reardon Halsey wins.
“You don’t have to leave ,” she says. “There’s a graduate program in public health at Burlington U, right?”
“Sure, but…” I bite my lip. May went to graduate school right here in Vermont, and then set up shop locally.
But I’m more ambitious than that. I want a degree from a top-ten university.
I thought it would be Harkness. But now I’ll have to look elsewhere.
Like Berkeley, or maybe Johns Hopkins. “I’m probably not staying,” I say.
“And you should keep this.” I hand the phone back to her.
“It’s going to look great, but I’d have to move it twice in nine months. I really can’t use it.”
“But…” May seems ready to argue the point. But then she closes her mouth and shoves her phone into her pocket. “Okay. Good to know.” Now she looks pissed. “Happy birthday anyway. We’ll cut the cake as soon as the band stops playing.”
She turns and walks away.
And I’m pretty sure I failed some kind of test with her. They’re the only kind of test that I usually fail. I watch her thread her way through the party, without another glance in my direction.
Shit.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I pull it out as a reflex. But my heart rate spikes when I see who the caller is. Reardon Halsey . The evil ex. Just his name makes me experience a fight-or-flight reaction.
Swiftly, I hit the button to decline the call. And then I take a deep, shaky breath. There’s no reason for him to call me. And I really don’t want to know why he did.
* * *
A little later, Audrey reveals our birthday cake. It’s really two cakes joined together in the middle. Audrey made it the way people divide toppings on a pizza—chocolate on one side and lemon on the other. A rich buttercream frosting covers the whole thing.
There are blueberries lining the edge, and Audrey has drizzled a message across the top in chocolate sauce: LOOK OUT WORLD. DYLAN AND DAPHNE ARE 21!
I choose a piece from the lemon side, and my brother chooses chocolate. We have never liked the same things, or read each other’s minds, or had a secret twin language.
Often, when I tell people that I have a twin brother, they say, “That’s so cool!” And Dylan is pretty cool. That’s why he has so many friends, most of whom are here tonight. His aim in life is to collect friends wherever he goes.
My aim has been collecting achievements. Not that I lack friends. But I poured all my energy into my life in Connecticut, and then walked away from it all. And I let my old high school friendships fall by the wayside. Now I’m lonely with nobody to blame but myself.
Nevertheless, I paste a smile on my face and thank Audrey for the cake.
And the wish I made when I blew out a candle beside Dylan was a simple one. Please let my twenty-second year be a little less terrifying than the last one .
* * *
When the band starts up again, two different men ask me to dance. But one of them is Roddy, my cousin’s boyfriend. And the other is my grandfather.
I say yes to both. But honestly, do I look that lonely?
After they reel me around for a song apiece, I treat myself to a single glass of champagne. I have never enjoyed getting drunk, because I don’t like to feel out of control. Especially in a room full of my extended family.
Eventually the band stops playing, and our friends begin to say goodnight one by one.
By the time we all climb onto the bus to head back to the farm, it’s one in the morning. I sit beside my grandpa.
“These dancing feet are tired. Happy birthday, Daphne. If you’re twenty-one, I’m probably legally dead.”
“You look fine to me. Did you have fun tonight?”
“Yes, until my date went home early.”
“Bummer,” I sympathize.
“Pick a wild one, Daphne.”
“What’s that?”
“Whomever you choose, make sure he knows how to party. Life is short, but the nights are long when you’re bored.”
A head swivels around to look back at us. It belongs to Rickie. He winks at me.
When we get home, I get ready for bed, but I’m strangely wired. That’s why I end up standing in front of the bathroom mirror, checking my phone. There’s a text from my ex. It says: Happy birthday, Daphne. Hope it’s a good one .
I eye this little missive the way you might look at a venomous spider. It makes no sense, for starters. The last time we spoke, he threatened me.
The result was that I didn’t tell Reardon I wasn’t returning to Harkness. After our ugly argument, if you can even call it that, I just quietly made my escape plans. I quit my job and finished my semester, head down, behaving as if nothing had changed.
Only then—after the last final exam—I went to the dean of my program and announced my departure. I never told Reardon. I don’t even know if he’s heard the news.
He’s probably on a golf course somewhere, summering . How does he even know it’s my birthday? Did I tell him that sometime? Some night after sex, when I still believed all the lies that came out of his mouth?
Just thinking about kissing him makes me squirm now. How could I have ever been so dumb?
And yet I’m afraid to ignore his weird little message. I’d like to leave him with the impression that our breakup had no lasting consequences. He should think that as long as he can.
So maybe a quick reply makes sense. I want to appear completely nonthreatening, at least until I figure out how to deliver him the justice he so richly deserves.
Thanks! I add a really banal smiley emoji and I hit send.
Five seconds later the phone rings in my hand.
“Shit!” I almost drop it on the tile floor.
My phone seems to ring for a year before finally going to voicemail, and I pause in the hallway to see if he leaves a message.
Nope.
“Shit. Shit shit shit .” I do not want to talk to him. And now he knows I'm awake and evading his call.
My heart beats wildly, and all for a ringing phone. But I feel as though I’ve summoned a monster. On my birthday, no less.
Before I make it into my room, the door to Rickie’s room swings open, and there's Rickie in nothing but a pair of boxers and—bizarrely—a silk bathrobe, his tats on full display between its open halves. “Hey. Is everything okay?” he asks.
“Yes.” No . But I’ve been cursing it up out here. “I was just, um…”
In my hand, the phone rings again. And I give a full-body jerk that probably makes me look like a nervous freak.
“You sure?” he asks.
“ No,” I finally admit. “Can I ask you a weird favor?”
“Of course. The weirder the better." He gives me an easy grin. Then he beckons me into his room.
Hastily, I close the door behind myself. “I do not want to talk to this man. Would you answer my phone? Maybe, um, pretend like we're hanging out together and he's interrupting?" It’s a good thing the light is so dim in here, because my face is probably crimson right now.
Rickie’s smile widens. “Oh, that’s no hardship.” He grabs the phone out of my hand and swipes to answer the call. “Hello? Awful late for a phone call, pal.”
I lean in, my head close to Rickie’s. And he tilts the phone a little to make it easy to hear the reply.
“She won’t pick up, huh?” The sound of Reardon’s voice actually makes me shiver. “Can you give her a message for me?”
“Sure, man,” Rickie says. “This better be important. Just saying.”
“Oh, it is. You tell Daphne that if she so much as breathes my name to anyone in our program I will bury her. Vermont isn’t that far away, you know?”
My heart might actually detonate, it’s pounding so hard. And I feel my legs start to shake.
“Interesting,” Rickie says in a strangely light tone. “Got some anger issues there, pal. I’ll let her know you called, so she can get that restraining order prepared.”
“Who is this?” Reardon demands. “Have we met?”
“Nah,” Rickie says. “But if you want to keep your face in one piece you’ll keep it that way.” Then he ends the call and drops the phone onto his bed like it’s made of hot coals and it’s burning his hand.