Chapter Fifteen Hutchinson, Minnesota Present Day
Chapter Fifteen
Hutchinson, Minnesota
Present Day
That night at the budget hotel, Scarlett slept like the dead.
If anything more had been needed to illustrate that all was not well with Scarlett, it was exactly that: She’d gone to bed at a reasonable hour, her plate of french fries largely untouched and one of Chrissie’s shapeless sleep shirts covering her body.
And then she’d stayed asleep. The sunrise had come and gone without Scarlett there to greet it, a breakfast of rubbery eggs and tepid coffee consumed without her commentary.
“Ten fourteen? Is that clock for real?” Scarlett sat bolt upright in the bed, her makeup so smudged that the dark bags under her eyes looked stenciled on. “Chrissie, please tell me you didn’t let me sleep for twelve hours.”
Chrissie and River both looked up from the foot of her bed, where they sat playing Go Fish with a deck of souvenir playing cards they’d found in one of the bedside tables.
The game had been a lackluster one, and River had spent most of it looking increasingly uncomfortable with the length of time Scarlett was spending asleep, but none of that mattered as soon as Scarlett’s rich brown eyes popped open.
“Good morning, Sleeping Beauty,” Chrissie teased as she swept up a pair of threes. “We were starting to worry that we’d have to hit the pool without you.”
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” Scarlett tossed back the covers and bounded to her feet with an energy that made yesterday’s near-faint seem like a faraway dream. “Half the day is gone already. And it’s a nice day, too. Look. The sun is gorgeous.”
“It’ll still be gorgeous this afternoon,” Chrissie promised, unperturbed. “The coffee is cold and the eggs are even colder, but you should probably eat something. You’re looking way too thin, and you know how you get when your blood sugar is low.”
Scarlett’s only response to this was to scowl and shove a dry bite of toast in her mouth. She chased it with a gulp of cold coffee. “There. Happy now, Mommie dearest?”
“Not really. You should eat something with protein. I still have some of that buffalo jerky if your teeth are feeling up to the task.”
River dispelled the growing tension with a laugh and a matching threesome of jacks.
“You guys have known each other for a long time, huh? You remind me of the kids I grew up next to. There were three of them, all less than a year apart, and the way they used to aggressively tackle-hug each other is exactly how you two interact.”
“I’ve never tackle-hugged anyone a day in my life,” Chrissie protested, but Scarlett chose that moment to plow her into the bed with a hug that was definitely on the aggressive side. “Scarlett! Ugh. Stop kissing me. Your breath smells like death warmed over.”
Instead of stopping, Scarlett nestled into her, the little spoon to Chrissie’s bigger one. When they were younger, they used to sleep exactly like that, Scarlett’s overheated body burrowing against Chrissie’s until they both woke up in a sweaty tangle.
“If that’s how you sweet-talk Walsh, it’s no wonder you haven’t gotten to second base yet,” Scarlett said. Her breath was still awful, but Chrissie had to admit that it felt good to be like this again, with none of the reserve that being an adult seemed to impose on affection.
“What makes you think we’ve hit first base?” Chrissie asked without letting her friend go.
“Oh, that much was obvious when you got so flustered from the bikini pic. You wouldn’t have been that ashamed of yourself if he hadn’t tasted the inside of your mouth at least once.”
“Scarlett, ew.”
“What? It’s a man’s tongue, not a piece of gum you picked off the bottom of a chair.” Scarlett turned to River and waggled her eyebrows. “Back me up here, River. How far down her throat do you think he got before she put a stop to things?”
River unfolded herself from the bed and scooped up the cards. She began backing away, but in a slow, smiling way that indicated how much she was enjoying this exchange. “I’m gonna go put my suit on. We’re still doing a pool day today, yeah?”
Chrissie nodded before Scarlett could say anything to the contrary. “If you get down there before us, snag some of the good lounge chairs. I’ll bring extra towels.”
With that, River snicked the adjoining door closed, leaving Chrissie and Scarlett alone on the bed. Chrissie was almost always the first one to pull away in situations like these, so she forced herself to stay put.
She also forced herself to confront the elephant that was standing, clad in nothing but a pink bikini, in the middle of the room.
“Why are you suddenly all gung-ho about me and Kat’s volleyball coach getting together?
” she asked. Scarlett started to rear back, but Chrissie’s massage-therapist arms were much stronger than Scarlett’s radio-host ones.
“No, don’t. Walsh and I have been friends for years.
And, yeah, we did kiss once, but that was a while ago—and it was less of a game of tonsil hockey and more of a slip when we both went the same direction for a greeting. It was awkward.”
“That’s exactly why. You need all the help you can get.”
“Yeah, but you’ve never shown an interest in my personal life before this. Not since before Kat was born. It was like the moment she was put into my arms, you assumed my sex life would become forever null and void.”
For the most part, it was, but what Scarlett didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
“I’m just being a good friend, that’s all. I’m tired of seeing you shackled to that girl’s moods and whims.”
Those moods and whims were literally what got Chrissie out of bed in the morning, but she didn’t bother trying to explain it.
No matter how many times she told Scarlett that being a mother was the thing she loved most about her life, even when the difficulties dragged her down, she couldn’t get her friend to believe her.
She disentangled herself from Scarlett’s embrace and slid off the bed, no longer feeling the warm coziness from before.
“Is this the part where I ask you how your love life is going?” she countered. “Because if I remember correctly, your last boyfriend proposed to you on the Oracle Park Jumbotron before you soundly rejected him.”
Instead of taking offense, Scarlett grinned.
“Don’t feel too bad for Hugh. He did it more for the PR than out of love for me.
He was trying to get the people at iHeartRadio to bump his application to the top of the pile.
” She paused, considering. “It worked, too. I should’ve said yes just to teach him a lesson about using unsuspecting young women as professional springboards. ”
A now-familiar surge of annoyance replaced the warm, happy glow brought by the lazy morning.
“I’m just saying, Scarlett. It’s not fair for you to stand there and judge all my life choices when your own aren’t exactly ideal.”
A frisson of something dangerous—something real—started to spark between them, but Scarlett brushed it off with a laugh. “Uh-oh. Sounds like someone wants me to pull out the list again. Do we need another lesson so soon after the last one?”
Chrissie’s response was a grunt and to start rummaging in her bag for the pink bikini.
“That’s what I thought.” Scarlett tossed the words—and her head—as though she’d clinched the argument. “You only fight other people’s battles. Never your own.”
Chrissie wasn’t sure why that particular jab was the one to make it through. She was well practiced in ignoring the things that Scarlett—and Kat—said to try and hurt her, and if the past few days had proved anything, it was that Scarlett was trying very hard to hurt her.
“And I’m getting seriously tired of it,” she said, more to herself than to her friend.
“Then fight back,” Scarlett suggested. “Right here. Right now. Show me what you’ve got.”
But Chrissie only looked at Scarlett long and hard, taking in the exhausted lines of her face and the way she was curling her arms protectively over her stomach as though expecting an incoming blow.
To strike at her now would only be cruel—and that was the one thing Chrissie refused to be, no matter how strong the provocation.
“I won’t give you the satisfaction,” she said as she headed for the door. “You forget how well I know you, Scarlett. And how much better I know myself.”
* * *
Although the temperature was warm enough when they made it to the kidney-shaped pool, the sun decided it was tired of showing off. In May, this part of Minnesota was as mercurial as Scarlett, and the clouds blowing in from the west proved it.
Still, all three of them shimmied into their suits and flip-flopped out to the water’s edge, determined to pretend, if only for a few hours, that they were basking in the tropics instead of a chlorinated concrete hole across the street from a strip mall.
“All I need now is a cabana boy and a wool cap, and I’m set for life,” Scarlett said as she whisked off her towel and settled into the lounge chair.
River had thoughtfully arranged them so they caught some of the steam rising from the hot tub.
“Remind me again why we aren’t taking a road trip to Mexico? ”
Chrissie was too busy taking a book out of her bag—I like to sit and read without interruption—to answer. The choices at the take-a-book, leave-a-book shelf in the hotel lobby had been surprisingly robust, assuming you enjoyed eighties-era Danielle Steel novels.
Which, Chrissie was happy to admit, she did.
“Oh, how cute,” River said as she watched Scarlett settle into her lounge chair. She was once again clad in her high-necked black halter bikini. “I love that suit. My mom had the exact same one. She said it cost a small fortune for a top like that, but it was worth every penny.”
Scarlett didn’t respond. Chrissie, afraid that her friend was taking her bad mood out on River instead of its true target—herself, stepped in to fill the breach.