Chapter 3 How Very Karen-y of You #3
“I explicitly said I wasn’t blackmailing him.”
His mouth lowered an inch, his words catching at the edge of his breath. “Is that how you sleep at night? You get all cozy in bed with your technicalities. In my house.”
She lifted her chin, holding her ground. Metaphorically speaking. Physically, he had her up against the counter.
“After twenty milligrams of melatonin, I usually sleep just fine.”
His eyes widened like she’d shifted into a shape he couldn’t make sense of. “That is an outrageous dosage.”
She squirmed free of his gaze. “No one asked you.”
“Jesus, Elaine. How do you even wake up?” Elliot’s face tangled in a way that almost made her giddy. God, he really couldn’t have done her the decency of being slightly less attractive, could he?
“If you’re going to feign deep concern for me, you should probably know that I go by Lainey. Not Elaine.”
“Sir.” Ernie cut in to their back-and-forth with a foot-long paper receipt. Elliot shot up straight, and she couldn’t help feeling like she’d won that round. “Sign here.”
Elliot grabbed a pen, pausing mid-signature the moment he noticed the amount. “Eight hundred and sixty-seven dollars? For what?”
“My private health information is none of your business,” she snapped, snatching the paper bag with her filled prescription. “And I wasn’t going to blackmail Ernie—my grandmother plays in most of his poker games. I was just making a point.”
Elliot pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why does it suddenly feel like I was your mark in this entire interaction?”
She beamed at him, triumphant. “If I had to guess, between your general sense of entitlement and your obvious gullibility, you probably feel that way after most interactions.”
Lainey hadn’t walked into the pharmacy with any intention beyond getting her prescription refilled by any means necessary, but if this man was determined to leave here feeling foolish, she was more than happy to oblige.
“You know…” Elliot shoved his credit card back into his wallet with palpable exasperation. “For a fee, you can request an instantaneous transfer to your bank account. It comes in handy when you don’t have the bandwidth for a short grift.”
“I knew that,” she lied. She did not know that, but he didn’t deserve the satisfaction of this minute victory.
“Perfect. Then request an instant transfer and send me the eight hundred and sixty-seven dollars.”
She fished her phone out of her pocket, avoiding his gaze. She tapped open her app.
“It says I can’t change the transfer type now that it’s in process.”
“You’re unbelievable.” He shook his head, laughing one of those despairing laughs that could easily teeter into a full psychotic break if he wasn’t careful. “I’ll just add it to our ongoing litigation.”
“Wonderful,” she forced through a clenched smile.
As she heel-turned for the exit, the realization that she had more purchases to make smacked Lainey in the temple. So of course, she hovered near the front door, waiting for Elliot to leave the premises with his variety pack of protein bars and maximum-strength insect repellent.
Once he was gone, she shuffled over to the back aisle of antacids. She set her Pepcid Complete on the counter in front of Ernie with her head held low.
“Will that be all?”
Her eyes fell to the peeling Formica countertop. “I was never going to rat you out to Barb. You know that.”
Ernie stared back with cool detachment.
“Come on. You can’t let a Groffie get between us.” Groffies were what some locals called the rich tourists who stayed at the upscale Groff retreat. Lainey knew he wasn’t staying there, but the sentiment remained.
“Come on, Ernie. What do I have to do to make this right?”
Apparently, free manual labor was enough to get Ernie back on her side.
One rewired backroom outlet (and a minor electrocution incident) later, Lainey was headed home with the same number of enemies she left with that morning.
She drove to her house, with its busted porch light and family of noisy foxes hanging out under the stoop, and stepped inside.
After shucking off her boots and dropping her coat on the hook, she flopped onto the bed, her prescription rattling in her hand.
Despite its design pedigree, the floor of her cabin got cold at night and changing into her pajamas on the hard, freezing stone was an activity she always had to work herself up to, like stepping out of a warm shower into the frigid winter air.
She turned on the TV to distract herself and buy a few extra minutes to rot in bed before she gathered the strength to change into a T-shirt and boxers for a more permanent vegetative state.
The Real Housewives of Atlanta faded into the background as she grabbed her laptop, which was covered in stickers, both structural and decorative.
It didn’t take long to find Elliot Hodges’s Instagram.
There were a handful of photos of him in large groups.
Mostly weddings. The occasional Christmas-y post. A photo of him surrounded by a group of men at a Yankees game.
No gym selfies, no bio, nothing expressing more than a passing interest in being on the platform at all.
Near the bottom of the grid, there was a group photo at a destination wedding in some tropical locale.
The bride and groom in the center were gripping a bottle of Veuve, gamely embracing the geyser of champagne shooting out the top.
The group’s expressions ranged from shocked to amused.
Every expression apart from Elliot’s, whose eyes were too busy shining on the pretty blond girl beside him to care.
Lainey scrutinized that particular photo for longer than she cared to admit.
Careful not to “like” anything, she closed the browser tab and opened the banking app on her phone.
The transfer was no longer pending. She was free to do what she wanted with that $950 for her live-edge table.
She could pay the electric bill or the water bill.
She could pay for the care and medication management Gran believed to be included in her rent but most certainly was not.
She would have to deal with those expenses eventually, but for now, she opened up her Venmo app.
She found him almost immediately. He’d left his transaction history public. Scrolling the log felt a bit like snooping through the underwear drawer of his life before Timber Creek. Eleven dollars to Sebastian for “Taco night!” and twenty-three dollars to Paul for his share of an Uber.
More benign transactions filled the screen until she scrolled far enough down to see one name repeat over and over.
Caroline. Dozens of transfers to and from Caroline.
These weren’t split Ubers and shares of takeout.
These were the intimate couple transfers of a shared life.
Memo lines like “Electric,” “Comcast,” and blue plane emojis.
All round numbers. The kind you use with a partner you trust enough not to argue over a few dimes.
A perfect Venmo history of a perfect relationship with a woman named Caroline who was probably a publicist with good skin and looked perfectly poised in a pair of sky-high heels.
That is, until ten months ago, when his run of perfection ended with a series of large transactions that stunk of a nasty breakup. Amounts down to the penny for “Security deposit,” “Couch—half,” and “Cancun cancellation.”
Something a bit like shame rolled over Lainey’s skin as she snooped. She slunk deeper into her covers and scrolled up to the top of Elliot’s Venmo profile to tap Pay.
Lainey Davis paid Elliot Hodges $870
Memo: For my migraine medication. My forehead thanks you.
Twenty minutes later, once Lainey was finally in her pajamas and back in bed for the night, she saw he’d left a comment on the transaction.
Elliot Hodges: Tell your forehead I said you’re welcome.