13 - Jess
Jess
Petty is an underrated virtue. It lacks the grand scale of vengeance, certainly, but it keeps the blood moving on a weeknight when the humidity outside is thick enough to chew.
The glowing screen of David’s Mac sat between a bowl of heavily salted popcorn and a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc that tasted mostly gross.
On the television, two women in bandage dresses were screaming about a charity gala in Orange County, their voices muted just enough that the audio sounded like cats fighting in a dumpster.
“You tell her, honey,” he muttered to the one with the pixie cut. Not really watching, but invested enough to comment.
His fingers flew across the trackpad with the speed of a concert pianist. If concert pianists wore silk robes that had seen better days, that is. And the look on his face was one of absolute glee.
"She used the hashtag blessed twice in the same paragraph," he murmured, his gaze fixed on the grids of perfect squares. "And the filter. My god. She looks like a ghost that died in a tanning bed."
I sank into the cushions, the cold condensation from my wine glass dripping onto my bare knee.
On the laptop, Amberleigh held a giant inflated flamingo in what appeared to be an infinity pool in Tulum.
Her hair was that specific shade of expensive, buttery blonde that required three hours of chemical bleaching every four weeks.
"Give her the fitness influencer burner," I said, reaching over to pick some M&Ms out of the popcorn. "The one with the avatar of the celery stalk."
"Already ahead of you, darling." David clicked a button with an audible snap. "I went with fit_mom_dcmd. Fit Mom wants to know if the latex in the floatie was ethically sourced or if Amberleigh just preferred the taste of microplastics in her organic green juice."
A small, tight knot of satisfaction uncurled in my stomach.
It was a stupid game, a cheap high, but the anonymous digital ecosystem allowed for a beautiful kind of asymmetric warfare.
In the real world, Amberleigh was accomplished in her career, a woman who sent emails ending in Best!
while actively plotting the corporate execution of her colleagues.
In the digital world, under the scrutiny of fit_mom_dcmd, she was just another target in a target-rich environment.
David scrolled down to the next image. It was a throwback post from our sophomore year at Georgetown.
That knot came twisting back with a vengeance.
A group shot at a tailgate outside the stadium.
I was standing on the far left, slightly blurred and wearing an oversized sweatshirt that made me look like a potato with legs.
Amberleigh was dead center, her arm draped over two guys.
Carter was one of them. He wore his fraternity fleece, teeth flashing in that easy, golden-boy grin that used to make my heart flip like a pancake.
The caption read: Missing the glory days with the best crew. #HoyaSaxa #TBT #CollegeSweethearts
"The revisionist history is truly a work of art," David said, his voice dropping into that dry, clinical tone he used when analyzing a bad Tinder profile. "She’s completely excised the part where the crew stopped talking to her because she was busy doing the horizontal tango with the potato’s boyfriend. "
"I was nineteen. The potato look was a choice.
" I took a long swallow of the terrible wine, letting the acid burn the back of my throat.
Five years. A whole half-decade of adult life, a degree in archival science, a job that involved handling three-hundred-year-old parchment with white gloves, and yet the sight of that specific shade of fleece still felt like an eviction notice served to my pride.
"She still has the skin of a corporate reptile," he offered, trying to keep the mood light. "Look at the pores. Or lack thereof. It’s all blurring tools and prayer."
"Use the other account," I muttered, my fingers tightening around the base of my glass. "The one from the fake yacht rental company."
David perked up, his eyes widening. "Oh, the Monaco one? What are we saying?"
"Ask her if she’s cleared her account balance for the July charter. Mention something about a non-refundable deposit for the jet skis."
He cackled and rubbed his hands together. "Brilliant. Elegant. Hints of financial ruin with a side of identity theft. I love it." He typed it out, his tongue sticking out slightly between his teeth.
On the television, one of the housewives threw a glass of champagne across a marble island.
The sound of shattered crystal cut through the low thrum of our refrigerator.
We watched the replay in silence, the dramatic tension of two multi-millionaires fighting over a seating chart providing a nice, comforting white noise for our own personal pathology.
"Your turn," he said, sliding the laptop over until the edge of the aluminum frame bumped against my wine glass. "Use Fit Mom. Amberlouse just posted a story from her kitchen. She’s making a smoothie that looks like pond scum. Hit her where it hurts. Comment on the tile selection."
I stared at the screen. The story was a ten-second loop of Amberleigh tossing spinach into a blender, her huge diamond engagement ring catching the light with every movement. The kitchen was all white marble and polished copper. Staged for a magazine and never actually used to cook anything.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard. The letters A-S-S were right there, begging for it. Or I could write something witty. Something dry and dismissive that would make her look twice at her own reflection before she went to sleep in her three-thousand-square-foot townhouse in Arlington.
But the keys felt cold.
The image of the tailgate stayed behind my retinas like a burn from a flashbulb.
It wasn't the infidelity that stayed with you—not really.
The body handles the shock of that eventually.
It was the logistics of it. The realization that while I was studying for an exam on the third floor of the Lauinger Library, she was borrowing my key to 'grab a sweater' and using the bed I had picked out at IKEA to undo three years of shared history.
It was the memory of walking into our dorm room and seeing her hairbrush on his desk, a tiny, mundane detail that had settled into my brain like a splinter that refused to work its way out.
"Come on," David urged, nudging my foot with his slippers. "Tell her the subway tile is outdated. Tell her it looks like a public transit station in Bucharest."
"I— I don't think I can," I said, my voice coming out flatter than I intended.
He stopped chewing and looked at me, his eyes softening under the ridiculous silk hood of his robe. "Jess."
"I'm fine," I said automatically, the lie tasting exactly like the wine. "It's just... it's a lot of energy for someone who doesn't even care that I exist."
"That’s the point," David said quietly. "It’s her whole superpower. She’s a void where self-awareness goes to die. Why do you think she invited you to her wedding?"
I closed the laptop with a soft, final click, cutting off the blue light that had been painting our faces. The television was still going, the housewives now crying in a limousine, their mascara running in neat, expensive tracks down their cheeks.
"I'm going to bed," I said, standing up and leaving the wine glass on the table.
"But we still have half a bottle of the battery acid," David said, his tone dropping the theatricality.
"Keep it,” I said through a yawn, stretching my arms to the side. "Use it to clean the grout. It’s probably better at that anyway."
But the night wasn’t over by a long shot. David caught the hem of my sleep shirt, and yanked down until my momentum reversed.
"Sit," he ordered, already reaching for the bottle. "We are not concluding a perfectly good evening on a note of emotional bankruptcy caused by a woman who thinks a capsule wardrobe is a personality trait."
The Sauvignon Blanc glugged into my glass, rising well past the halfway mark. He filled his own to the brim, then moved the laptop aside with a definitive shove, burying the ghost of Amberleigh’s Tulum paradise beneath a layer of brushed aluminum.
"The trolling is officially decommissioned for the night," he announced, crossing his arms over his silk robe. "You've done too much emotional heavy lifting over the last month to let that succubus drag you down. Tell me about the dead people. Give me something wholesome from the basement."
I slouched into the corner of the sofa, letting my head rest against the fabric. He had a point, annoying as it was. The museum had actually provided a bizarre sort of sanctuary over the last forty-eight hours.
"Constance," I murmured, watching the Orange County housewives carry out their silent, muted warfare on the screen behind him. "The 1920s suffragette from the box near the old boiler room. I found the uncataloged correspondence from her companion down in the lower vaults."
David’s ears pricked up. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his wine glass held between his palms like a chalice. "Oh, do tell. Was the companion a worthy gentleman with a high-society mustache?"
"The companion was a woman.”
His jaw dropped, eyes gleaming with the scandal of it. It encouraged me to keep going.
“No name. We know her as ‘R’, who wrote from a boarding house in Baltimore," I said, a small smile finally cutting through the sour aftertaste of the wine.
"They spent years exchanging updates on the local temperance union meetings, but if you read between the lines, they were basically running a full-blown romantic operation under the noses of the entire D.C. elite.”
“Portrait of a politician of fire,” he breathed, hanging onto my every word.