Chapter Twenty-Six
Phoebe
Halfway between dreaming and awake, my fluffy white comforter is ripped off my head. I groan through the sunlight of the Saturday morning, only in a cropped pink tee and panties. Hailey crawls onto the mattress beside me, her phone to her ear. “Yeah, Dad, we’ve been doing well.”
Wait, what?!
I shoot up like Hailey zapped me with electricity. Her worried eyes meet mine. Why is she talking with her dad? Why did she answer that call?
She taps the speaker button, and I hear Everett’s voice. “I could use some more ideas for the next job. When do you think you’ll be done with yours?”
Hailey and I share a cautious look. It’s October first, and we’ve sufficiently been evading our parents for a month and a half. But in that time, they’ve become aware we’re somewhere in Connecticut, and they believe we’re working on a new job of our own. Lies usually don’t weigh on me. But I’ve never lied to my mom like this. I’m drowning in a vat of guilt for keeping this one alive, and I hope that when my mom learns the truth, she doesn’t hate me for it.
“We’re unsure when it’ll be finished,” Hailey says casually enough. “We’re just playing it by ear right now.”
Everett goes quiet for a second. Hailey tucks her legs to her chest on the bed and bites at her thumbnail.
Sensing her major anxiety, I wrap an arm over her shoulders and mouth, We’re good.
She drops her thumb and rubs at a bruise on her kneecap.
After another strained moment, Everett says, “Plans are necessary. They can be malleable, but you shouldn’t be playing anything by ear.”
Hailey winces, and she puts the end of her phone to her forehead in distress. I can’t say anything—I’m not supposed to be on this call.
After a deep sigh, Hailey says, “Yeah, I know.” Her eyes shift to me, and I see the guilt in them, too. She mouths, Should I tell them?
I shake my head hurriedly. No, no. We do not tell Everett the truth about how we’re done conning. After what Rocky told me, I trust Everett the absolute least of all our parents.
Hailey wavers, then mouths, He could be cool.
I make an X with my arms. Do Not Pass Go. Hell fucking no. He won’t be cool about us ditching everything we were taught.
“I have to go,” Everett says before Hailey can decide. “I’ll call back in a couple weeks about your proposals. Brainstorm in the meantime.”
He hangs up.
Proposals.
One of Hailey’s tasks is to formulate new cons in new towns—a task that my mom and Addison usually handled until Hailey got older. Nowadays, they all share in passing the pen that draws the blueprints. I’ve joked before how Hailey is the secret mastermind behind all the jobs—but that joke lands with less humor now that we’re trying to make a clean break.
Hailey groans and falls back against my pillow, just wearing checkered pajama shorts and a black cotton tank top. “That went soooo bad.”
“Why did you answer his call?”
“It was an unknown number,” she replies. “I thought it was Trevor.”
“Shit,” I breathe out. As I lie down next to her, our shoulders bump up against one another. We stare up at the ceiling, nothing special but a fan spinning slowly.
But it’s not yellowed or moldy.
It’s been a nice ceiling. A nice home.
Her voice goes soft. “I want this to work so badly, Phebs.” Her head lolls to the side, and our eyes meet, hers carrying a heavy weight. “But my dad is right—plans are necessary. And this entire thing was half-baked from the beginning. I thought Rocky could stall for us and buy me time to figure out a way to tell our parents... but time is running out. And whenever I imagine telling them we’re done, I picture my mom’s crushing disappointment and the worst kind of guilt-fest from all three.” Her voice teeters. “I-I’ve never wanted to confront them with these types of feelings, and I-I-I don’t know how...” She stammers. “Even when we dropped out of that prep school back in the day... it wa-wasn’t this big. Our moms knew we wouldn’t be there... in that city f-for long anyway.”
She means back when we were fourteen and I invoked inertia. The pact. When she had to muster the courage to rebel against their wishes with me.
This time is different. More permanent. A more drastic change in course.
I pop up on my elbows quickly, my heart clenching. “Hey, Hails. There’s still time. We can figure it out, and I’ll be right there with you when we tell them we’re done grifting. You’re not alone in this.” And hopefully they’ll understand.
My words pierce whatever’s going on inside of her. Silent tears leak out of the corners of her eyes. “I’m failing you—”
“What? No.” I angle toward her. “If anything, I’m failing you. If I remember correctly, I’m the one fake dating our landlord. This was our new beginning as honest people, and I royally fucked it.”
“You did not.” She rubs her nose with the bottom of her tank. “You had a minor blip. A relapse. And anyway, I could see you and Jake hooking up for real.”
My stomach twists at that idea. “Yeah, right. I think Jake tolerates me.” I splat back down on the mattress.
“I think he likes you,” Hailey says thoughtfully.
“We’re just using each other,” I mutter and then nudge my knee against hers. “What’s with the bruised kneecaps?”
She sits up on her elbows now and glances at the black-and-blue marks. “Country club storage closet, the floor there wasn’t soft.”
Storage closet. The memory of Rocky pushing me up against the shelves of tennis balls and croquet mallets suddenly surfaces and bathes heat against my cheeks. I can almost feel his fingers clenching around my hair.
I smooth my lips to keep my breath steady. “Were you digging around for pickleball rackets?”
“No,” she says, “I was just blowing Erik.”
I sit all the way up and face her. “Erik? As in Bartender Erik?”
Hailey shrugs. “He’s hot and sort of has a Brad Pitt circa Fight Club edginess. He has a ton of tattoos.”
Now that I think about it, Erik always wears long sleeves. “Did not know that...”
“One is on his thigh.”
“Definitely did not know that.”
She smiles, then shrugs. “I like giving head. It’s fun.”
I crinkle my nose. “I still loathe blow jobs, and I know you said the more I do it, the more I might like it, but it’s always been work. The only part I do enjoy is when, or if, they grab my hair.”
Again, all I can do is picture Rocky’s commanding hand sliding up the base of my neck. His fingers weaving through my hair and scrunching tightly. Pulling. The hot breath of his teasing lips creeping up my collar.
I try to act very interested in my fluffy comforter while heat ramps up across my body. I should confess my sins to a higher power for having these stupid dirty thoughts about my best friend’s assholish older brother while I’m right in front of her.
Hailey sits up fully now and crosses her legs. “I like watching their face. It turns me on seeing them lose their shit over something I’m doing.”
I still can’t subscribe. I mostly know what I like (I’m sure I haven’t discovered everything), and blow jobs are firmly off my list of turn-ons. “It hurts my jaw when I do it,” I tell her, “and it looks like it busted your knees.” I’m smiling.
She smiles back. “Sex bruises are my favorite bruises.”
I lean back on my hands. “Print it, frame it, make a T-shirt out of it.”
“Sell it for five hundred bucks and say it’s award-winning art—rare, one of a kind.”
“It was hung up in the Met. Didn’t you hear?”
We laugh, and when our smiles soften, Hailey says, “Speaking of Erik and Jake...” She reaches for the end table and turns the digital clock. “We have an hour before our double date starts.”
I rock back. “Double date?”
“Yeah, I called Jake to set it up.” She scoots to the edge of the bed. “If you want to fake date the most eligible bachelor in Victoria, you’re going to need to make it look real.”
Hailey and logistics. A match made in heaven. Or hell. Depending on how you look at it.
I shouldn’t be surprised that she’s fallen into her usual routine much like I have. But is this it for us? Is this what we’re made for? As she climbs off the bed with a staggered breath, I see how she tries so hard not to break down and cry again.
“I’m going to make it work here, Hails,” I tell her. “I promise. And if your dad calls back, just tell him we’re between jobs and building connections right now.”
She thinks this over and nods. “Yeah, okay. That might work.”
“Sooo...” I draw out the word. “Is this thing with Erik serious?”
“What? No.” Her lips downturn. “It’s just casual sex.”
“It’s a double date.”
“Okay, but we’re not dating.” She looks flustered. “You know I have a three-date max, and you know how I’ve always imagined I’d be with someone in our field.”
“Carter.” I clarify where her heart lies.
She sends me a deadpan look. “Shut up.”
I’m grinning. “You loooove him.”
“You’re awful.” She throws a pillow at me, smiling. “His forgeries are literal masterpieces, and he undercharges me for fakes, so...”
She’s blushing.
Dating a guy in our field.
No application necessary. High risk. And almost impossible to quit.
She wants a romance like her parents. Solid. Committed. Everlasting.
Addison and Everett’s love story is one for the storybooks. She was pretending to be a graduate student at an Ivy League. He was pretending to be a professor, and they both tried to con each other out of a sizeable chunk of money. Addison pulled it off. She boarded a train with my mom that was heading to the West Coast, and when the train started clunking along, Everett strolled down the aisle and sat right across from Addison.
He smiled and congratulated her on the win.
They’ve been together ever since.
This is the first time I’ve heard Hailey talk about things she’ll miss in her old life. Her dreams of dating a con artist. A future she painted for herself.
I’ve never shared in that future. Because I never looked that far ahead. I tried not to romanticize what could be.
I slide off the bed. “Maybe Erik has some hidden talent that’ll make you go wild.”
She bites the inside of her lip. “Yeah.” She seems sad, giving up the idea of Carter. When she sees me staring, she says, “This is better. I know it is.”
I frown, wondering why she’s trying to convince herself. She’d been so ready to die on her sword for this new life after Carlsbad. I thought I was the only one having a hard time with it.
“You take the first shower,” I tell her.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, I’m going to figure out what to wear on my fake date with my fake boyfriend.” Who’s strangely not Rocky.
She smiles, but it wavers in and out before she leaves my room.