Chapter 29 #2
After my shower, I settle onto the couch with a bowl of soup Marcus made, creamy, pumpkin and ginger, mind-blowingly good, and someone's draped a blanket over my knees.
Marcus and Zachary are practising their best impressions of helicopter dads, bringing me things I don't need.
Rhys is at the other end of the couch with a laptop because apparently he “was already in here working.” Every few minutes he glances over at me like he's checking I haven't quietly expired between spoonfuls of soup.
I'm almost finished and seriously considering asking for another bowl when the doorbell goes.
I sit up too fast, and the room tilts a little in protest. My stomach drops at the thought that it might be Craig, back to finish the conversation from this morning.
“Hey, it's okay. I'll get it.” Rhys is already up, jaw tight, something in the set of his shoulders suggesting whoever's on the other side of that door is about to have a significantly worse morning than the one they were expecting.
Zachary drops onto the couch beside me and slings an arm loosely around my shoulders. “Relax,” he says, low. “Whoever it is, they're not getting past the door.”
I hear it open. I hear Rhys's voice, low, and then—
“Help!”
Marcus is off the recliner and in the hallway in about four strides, and I sit there frozen with the spoon halfway to my mouth, bracing for the absolute worst.
Rhys comes back into view first, and he does not look like a man calling for backup. He looks, if anything, faintly amused, which is such an unfamiliar expression on him it takes me a second to read it.
“I think,” he says, “you'll be okay with these visitors.”
Then Marcus reappears, except it's not really Marcus anymore, it's a giant, wobbling, slightly confused-looking plushie bear with Marcus's legs, one arm buried under a basket overloaded with snacks and get-well paraphernalia and a bunch of flowers that looks like the botanic garden was pilfered to create it.
“I don't know what half of this is,” comes Marcus's muffled voice from somewhere behind the bear's left ear, “but they say it's all essential.”
Aria comes around the corner after him, laughing, looking entirely too delighted with herself, and then Betty's head pops around the doorframe at approximately waist height, whisper-shouting at a volume that is not, in any sense, a whisper.
“CAN WE COME IN AND VISIT?”
The boys clear out not long after, on the pretence that Rhys needs something very important from the grocery store and Marcus and Zachary need to go with him to help carry it.
Which leaves the women here on strict instructions to make sure I don't lift anything heavy or spin around on a desk chair. The two of them join me on the couch, while the bear takes up the entire armchair, acting as a silent judge over the visit.
Betty spends the first fifteen minutes of the visit apologising profusely about what happened, detailing all the ways she's going to make it up to me and the guys for being the cause of the incident at the bar.
And then, while Aria and I try to comfort her and reassure her it's not her fault, she does something even Aria must've rarely seen: she bursts into tears.
“I'm fine,” she sobs into her sleeve, before either of us can ask. “I don't know why I'm crying about it, it's stupid.”
“It's not stupid.” Aria reaches over and squeezes her shoulder.
Betty scrubs at her face and lets out a shaky laugh.
“We only saw each other for like a month.
It wasn't even a real thing, just totally casual. And then I ended it because he was suddenly getting way too intense, way too fast. But I just thought—” She shakes her head.
“I thought he was harmless. Annoying, sure.
Persistent. But harmless. He'd never done anything violent before Friday night.
I would've reported him if I thought he was a threat. I would never have put anyone in danger like that.”
“You didn't do anything wrong,” I tell her, and I mean it. “None of this is on you.”
She looks up at me, eyes red-rimmed, and something in her expression softens into gratitude. She's quiet for a second, then visibly rallies, dragging herself up onto her elbows to look between me and Aria with the beginnings of her usual spark returning.
“Okay, anyway, enough about my stalker ex. What's actually going on with you and those hunkahunks?” Her eyes narrow on me. “And don't say nothing, Alexia, I have known you for all of three hours and even I can tell there's a whole situation happening in this house.”
I glance at Aria, who's watching me with an all-knowing look, waiting to see if I'll actually say it out loud.
“You know what? Fuck it. I've been with Zachary,” I say. “And Marcus. At the same time.”
The sound Betty makes is not human, in tone nor volume. Aria has her hand clapped over Betty's mouth within about half a second, hissing, “Alexia has a head injury, shush, shush—”
“Sorry, sorry,” Betty says, muffled, from behind Aria's palm, eyes still enormous.
Aria releases her, and she continues at the same volume. “Both of them? At the same time? Like — together together?”
I laugh despite myself, pressing a hand to my temple. “Shh. Look, I told you guys because I knew you wouldn't judge me.”
“Judge you?” Betty presses both hands to her chest like she's been mortally wounded. “I hero worship you. Both of them, at once!” She turns to her friend. “I hero worship the both of you. And have severe FOMO.”
“Also, Rhys doesn't know,” I add quickly, before this can spiral any further. “About any of it. Things are complicated.”
“What's going on with Rhys?” Aria asks.
I tell them about our conversation in the bath, which means telling them what happened six years ago. Betty makes another noise, muffled successfully behind her own hand before Aria even has to intervene, and I love her a little for the effort.
“And then there's my brother,” I say, and both of them go quiet. “That's honestly been the root of most of this, from the start. All three of them tiptoeing around him, around what he'd think, around whether wanting me is some kind of betrayal.”
Aria's expression turns serious, all the teasing gone out of it.
“You need to talk to him,” she says. “To Leon. And to all three of them, together, not separately. I mean it, Alexia — trust me on this one.” Something crosses her face, something that tells me she really does understand.
“If you're not all on the same page, it can get really messy.”
“Yeah, and she should know,” Betty says from the spot on the floor where she's flopped from exhaustion. “You should see their bed.”
There's a beat of silence, and then all three of us are laughing, and it makes me feel like maybe things might just be okay.