Chapter 31 #2
Her smile slips slightly, and a prickle of self-consciousness sets me on edge. Did I go too far? Was even that too much?
Then Pansy’s voice rings out over the ambient sounds of strangers’ chatter, balls hitting pins, and a popcorn machine at the refreshments counter. “There you are.”
“I need a drink,” I announce.
Nora pushes up onto her toes and kisses me, and even though we’ve been kissing a lot over the last few weeks, part of me fears this kiss was for them.
“I’ll have a cider,” she says.
“Traitor,” I quip as I step away, nodding to José and Pansy as they join us.
They don’t look any happier today than they did on our first disastrous double date.
He has the hollow-eyed look of someone who hasn’t been sleeping, and his clothes, usually immaculate, are wrinkled.
Pansy, on the other hand, has a hyped-up, near-manic energy.
She’s wearing her hair in pigtails and is dressed in a white minidress that seems like a strange choice for a bowling alley.
Everyone except for José will have to look away when she bends over.
“You’re getting drinks?” she cries out. “José, please go with him. I need a drink.”
José grits his teeth but follows me to the counter.
He doesn’t say anything to me this time. The silence is so uncomfortable I find myself making an inane comment about the weather.
“It’s not as hot today, huh?”
Oh God, who have I become?
He grunts, which I take as agreement about the weather, and then we head back to the lane and pass out the drinks.
Within five minutes, the four of us are playing a listless game of bowling. José is the only one who’s any good, but he looks about as pleased with his strikes as Nora is with her gutterballs.
“You’re doing it all wrong,” Pansy snipes the third time Nora rolls a ball straight into the gutter.
“I’m playing for fun,” Nora says, although she doesn’t sound like she’s having a good time. None of us are, but I have to admit the cider is surprisingly good. Maybe they’re onto something with all those apples.
A few minutes later, José glances down at his phone, whistles, and turns to face Nora. “Jeff down at Twenty-Seven Flavors wants to talk to us.”
“Right now?” she asks, looking at me with concern. “We take Mondays off.”
“You don’t think it’s worth hopping on a quick call if we can get distribution with them? They have forty locations across the state.”
“Forty-two,” I say, because I overheard their ad on the radio, and pointless information has a way of sticking with me sometimes.
“Are you okay with this?” Nora asks.
I bend to kiss her cheek and whisper in her ear, “Reluctantly.” Then I smile and give her a tiny push. “Go be brilliant. Pansy and I will practice.”
“Yeah, we’ll be fine,” Pansy insists with a wide smile. “You talk business. We’ll be right here waiting.”
Something about the way she says it puts me on my guard, but I don’t say anything. If she’s up to something, it’ll become clear quickly enough.
José and Nora leave the building, my gaze trailing them, and as soon as they’re out of sight, Pansy wraps her hand around my arm.
I flinch and turn toward her.
“José set that up for me.”
“Why?” I try to tug my arm away, and she digs her fingers in, her nails scraping my flesh. I wince as I pull myself fully free.
“He thinks I’m going to apologize for trying to get you interested in Pads by Pansy.”
“But he’s mistaken?”
“Nora doesn’t appreciate you.” She tugs one of her pigtails. “The other day, she straight-up told me she only started seeing you for your money. Who even does that?”
I frown at her, my mind sluggishly trying to decode what she’s playing at.
“Why would she tell you something like that? She doesn’t even like you.”
My response clearly caught her off guard, but I’ll give Pansy this, she doesn’t know when to give up.
“I called her on it, and she couldn’t deny it. I just hate to see a man like you go unappreciated. You’re so sweet and supportive. You deserve to be with someone who notices.”
She reaches for me again, and I step back.
“There’s something else I need to warn you about,” she says.
I wait, watching her.
When she realizes that’s the only response she’ll get, she says, “José and Nora are in love. I tried to get in the middle, but I can tell he’s never going to get over her. I…I found this gift she gave him a couple of years ago. It’s a key to the brewery on a chain—”
“Uh, why wouldn’t he have a key to the brewery he runs?”
For a split second, her expression is honest—her gaze narrowed in contempt—but then it clears, and the syrupy sweet smile returns.
“They changed the locks. But he’s kept the original in his underwear drawer all this time.
Plus this old Valentine she gave him in college.
” She gives her pigtail another tug. “The only reason I came tonight is to talk to you. And to tell you that you’re the nicest, sweetest man I’ve ever met. If things were different…”
She bites her lip and reaches for me again. With dawning horror, I realize that I am the plan she mentioned in our text exchange. She thinks she’s going to leave him and move on to me.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Pansy. I’m in love with Nora.”
“But she’s not in love with you. Sorry. She’s only dating you to make him jealous.”
I know she’s only trying to drive a wedge between Nora and me, but her words land. Haven’t I worried about exactly that?
Still, I’m not going to show her that.
“That’s okay. I’ll take her however I can get her.”
She stares at me aghast, her mouth dropping open. “You’d honestly choose her over me?”
“Sounds like I’m not the only one,” I mutter, my mind on José, outside with Nora. José, who might have kept that Valentine for the same reason I’d kept the note she’d been forced to write to me—because I figured it was the closest thing to a love note I was likely to get from the girl of my dreams.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he felt that way about her. I’d probably question his sanity if he didn’t.
The real question is: how does she feel?
Pansy says something to me, then pokes my chest when I don’t respond.
“Huh?”
She seems genuinely annoyed with me now, but she rolls it back and says, “If things don’t work out between you and Nora—”
“Oh, they probably won’t, but you wouldn’t be interested in me anyway.
I’ve poured the majority of my money into a nonprofit foundation I’m running with my friend Kenji, and I don’t believe in useless frivolity.
So there wouldn’t be any fancy twelve-course dinners or gold-sprayed chocolates or whatever people do to waste their money. ”
It occurs to me that I haven’t fully explained the foundation to Nora. I guess I’ve kept it quiet because I know what she’d say.
Go run your business with your friend. You’ve been protecting my dream, and you deserve to have yours.
She’d cast me off to California and convince herself she was doing us both a favor.
As proud as I am of the work we’re doing, I don’t want that. Not even a little. And I hope to God she won’t actually want it either. So I’ve been waiting, hoping to find the right moment and the right words.
All of the human expression leaks from Pansy’s face. “You’re a strange guy. Are you autistic or something?”
“Probably, but I’ve never felt the need to get evaluated.”
She stares blankly at me.
“Oh, you were trying to insult me,” I say. “Well, I don’t consider it an insult. Only someone uneducated would.”
“Maybe you and Nora deserve each other.”
“I hope so.” I hesitate before adding, “I’m the person who’s been texting you. I know all about Bradley Ruche and those two other guys.”
She breaks into a clipped, harsh laugh. “So you’re the one who’s been fucking with my life? You’re doing it for her, I guess.”
I see no reason to deny it.
She sits down and starts removing her bowling shoes.
“I probably would have left before it went too much further anyway. He got cold feet about pushing her to sell the place. You know, I wasn’t lying.
” She eyes me the way that raccoon was probably checking out Cookie in the woods.
“He’s in love with her, and if she recruited you to help her get rid of me, she’s definitely in love with him. She used you.”
Anxiety begins spinning funnel clouds inside of me, but I stand still, a statue made of salt capable of crumbling at the slightest touch, and stare her down. “You were trying to use him.”
She gives me a caustic smile. “Everyone uses each other for something. If you don’t realize that, then you’re probably the one getting used.”
My mind is still turning that one over as I watch her grab her things.
“Aren’t you going to wait for José?”
She laughs. “Don’t you get it? I’m not going home with him. I was never going to go home with him.”
I watch her approach the shoe station, wondering if she was right about any of it. Wondering if her departure means this strange chapter of my life has just ended.
Nora and I have been in a fake relationship because she first wanted to placate Pansy, and then to get rid of her. Now that Pansy’s gone, does that mean our arrangement is over too?