52. Chapter Fifty-Two
Percy
The back door hits the wall hard enough to rattle the spice rack.
“Pers.”
I don’t look up. I’ve lived with Stanley Ermington long enough to learn that it’s best to not give him any attention.
“Pers. Percival. Percy —”
“That’s not my name.”
Plastic bags crash down onto the table in front of me, six or seven of them, one tipping sideways so a rotisserie chicken in a plastic dome rolls out and comes to a stop against my forearm.
“Move your book.”
I move my book and push the chicken towards the bag it fell out of.
He’s still got his coat on, snow melting in his hair, cheeks red.
“Exams are coming up,” he says, looking at the bags like he’s trying to decide which one to get to first.
“They are,” I reply.
“I need to study.” He grabs my shoulders and shakes me. My chair legs skid. “One more semester and I never get to see you sitting in that fucking chair again. I’m going to be devastated, man. I’m going to have to buy the chair off the landlord.”
“Not if I buy it first,” I say, thinking it’s not a bad idea.
Rowan comes in from the living room with his hair still wet from the shower. “I don’t think anybody would notice if you replaced it. There’s no housing police marking down everything in here.”
Blue says, “Pretty sure the furniture are hand-me-downs from the guys before us.”
“Probably,” Stanley says, already elbow-deep in the first bag. “Too bad I can’t buy this house. I’d buy it and put all of us in it once a year. We could come back here every year with our girls.” He pauses and points at Rowan. “Except for that sorry son of a bitch.”
“My mom’s a saint,” Rowan scoffs.
“Rowan’s going to always be the third wheel.”
Blue is in the seat beside me, scraping the plate of steak and the last of his mountain of mashed potatoes. He eyes the bags for a second.
“Sterm.” He chews his last bite, lifting his hand. “What is this?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“That’s a lot of bags to not worry about.” He looks at me, but I keep my eyes on the bags.
Benson comes in and takes one look at the table. “Stanley. This is your worst idea.”
“This,” Stanley says, “is my best idea.”
I finally ask, “What’s in the bags?”
He looks at me like I’ve yelled at him, and he says, “You told me you’d trust me.”
“I never said that.”
“You said, and I quote, ‘Do whatever you want, Stan, just leave me out of it.’ In my professional opinion, that’s trust.”
“I was talking about Christmas break.”
Stanley and I stare at each other because he knows I’m right.
Rowan opens the fridge and glances at me. “You sure you want him in charge of this?”
I’m not. I never said he could be in charge of this. He’s supposed to be planning the vacation, not whatever this is.
Stanley pulls out wine glasses from the plastic bag. Four of them, boxed, the cheap kind with the thick stems.
Blue looks at them. Looks at me. Looks back at him. “What are those for?”
“These, gentlemen, are for the lady who likes wine.”
“How do you know she likes wine?”
Stanley jerks his head back hard. “Do you not listen to a single word your girlfriend says? Not one? Last night, at the table, in front of your face, she said Penelope loves wine. Said she’s been drinking it every night.”
Benson rubs his mouth. I shake my head. Blue keeps staring at the glasses.
“Don’t you think,” Blue says slowly, “that maybe it’s a bad thing that she’s drinking every night, and we shouldn’t be encouraging it?”
The kitchen goes quiet.
She’s been drinking every night.
Stanley shrugs, and he doesn’t look at me when he does it. “The girl likes wine. Relax.” He drops a bag of something onto the table that shifts and sparkles when it lands—rhinestones, hundreds of them, in about nine colors. “G’s bedazzling them.”
He sets a glue gun next to the rhinestones. Then he throws the empty bag on the floor, which is how Stanley always handles groceries.
“Fuck. What’s this now?” Blue says, leaning back so far his chair creaks.
A pile of white T-shirts hits the table. Plain. Cheap. A dozen at least.
“No,” I say, because I have to lay a line somewhere. “That’s too much.”
He ignores me as he pulls out something in a flat cardboard sleeve, and I snatch it out of his hand before he can hide it. Heat Transfer Paper. Print something, iron it onto a shirt.
“My girl’s on that one,” he says, plucking it back out of my fingers and setting it aside. He peers into the next bag and grins. “And this one’s Lucy’s.”
“What’s Lucy’s?”
He ties the handles of the bag together. “Don’t worry about it.”
There’s one bag that is bigger than the others.
It’s black, doubled up so you can’t see through it, and the top’s twisted and knotted twice.
He picks it up off the table without opening it, carries it across the kitchen, and sets it down in the corner behind the trash can, and then — I swear to God — he moves the trash can eight inches to the left, so it blocks the bag.
Four of us watch him do this.
“What’s in the bag, Stanley?” Benson asks.
“What bag?”
“The bag you just tucked over there.”
I look at the corner. I look at him.
“Pers.” Stanley leans forward. “You’re gonna love it. It’s the centerpiece. If I tell you now, you’ll hate it, but in twenty years when you’re married to the girl, you’ll be smiling about this moment.”
Married?
I scoff, “Fuck off.”
“Can’t,” he says, throwing his hands. “That’d require me not to care.”
I look around. “How much did you spend on this?”
“Nothing is worth more than love, Pers.”
“I’ll pay you ba—”
“Ah. Ah. Shh.” He puts his hand up. “We’re focusing on the task at hand.”
“I’m serious. Let me—”
“Shhhh. Shhh shh shh.” His finger comes closer to my face. “Do you hear that? That’s the sound of the task at hand.”
I sit back.
He knows what he’s doing. I can hate or love him for it. Right now, I’m just annoyed and in debt to him. I hate being in debt to people.
“She’s going to know it’s not me,” I say because it’s worth mentioning.
Stanley’s hands come down off the chair.
The rest of the guys go quiet.
He looks at the table for a second. At the shirts, and the rhinestones, and the glue.
“I can take all of it back,” he says. “Every bit. It’s all returnable. If this makes you feel worse instead of better, I’ll load it in the car right now, and it’s gone, and we never talk about it again.” He shrugs one shoulder. “But don’t feel bad that we’re helping. It’s a community thing.”
“It’s not a community thing,” Blue says. “It’s personal.”
Stanley snaps his eyes to Blue. “It’s a community thing. We want our brother to be happy.”
“I’m saying be careful.” Blue sets his fork down.
“She’s not a girl who wants a scene. You do all this—” he tips his head at the bags “—in front of her friends, and it goes wrong, you don’t just lose her.
You embarrass her. In front of everyone.
” He looks at me, not Stanley. “She’d hate that more than she hates what you already did. ”
The table sits with that for a second.
“Yeah, and did we even ask if he wants to get back with her?” Rowan says, closing the fridge.
Stanley whips around and points at him. “Of course, he wants to. You’re not in a relationship, so you don’t get a vote. That’s the rule. A solid one. You’ve never had a girlfriend.”
Rowan laughs and waves him off.
Benson tips his chin at me. “Why don’t you just reach out to her? See if she’s willing to talk. Before any of ––” He gestures at the entire table and Stanley. “This.”
Blue nods.
I scratch at my jaw. My face feels hot. “Maybe. Yeah. Just — put a pause on all of it.”
“Pause,” Stanley agrees, nodding, leaning back on the chair. “Absolutely. Pausing. Although, timeline-wise, I’ve got thirty days on the returns, but we’ve got six days till we leave for the ski lodge, so realistically the pause window is—”
He stops.
His whole face changes.
“Excuse me,” he says.
He’s out of the chair so fast it tips over and the legs crash back on the ground. He hits the doorframe with his shoulder and is gone down the hall at a dead sprint.
Blue says, “What the hell was—”
The sound that comes back through the house is not a sound a person should be able to make. It goes through the drywall. It has reverb. It didn’t matter how far he ran, that fart was felt.
Rowan puts his forehead on the counter.
“That was through two doors,” Benson comments.
“That was through two doors and the laundry room,” Blue says.
“He was holding that one in this whole time,” Rowan says, laughing into the counter.
Stanley comes back down the hall at a stroll, hands spread, chin up. “Gentlemen.”
“You are disgusting,” Benson tells him.
He claps once. “Alright. Where were we? Oh. The trip. And listen, I know you said no, and I’ve considered your no, and I’ve decided against it. We’re all going. All of us. I’ll put Penelope in the car myself if I have to.”
“I don’t think the girls are into snowboarding,” Benson announces.
“G was all for it. And Aspen is named after a ski lodge, Reeve. Little Lucy and Melly will be fine. If they don’t want to hit the slopes, they can sit in the jacuzzi and drink out of the bedazzled wine glasses like queens.”
I look at the wine glasses on the table. I try to picture it. Her, up there, in a lodge with her friends. Snow on the windows. Her laughing at something Melly said, keeping her composure, and her eyes finding mine across the room the way they always do.
I can see it so clearly it makes me feel sick.
But I don’t think she’ll forgive me.
“I can’t afford to go,” I say. I don’t dress it up.
Stanley doesn’t blink. “I’m paying for it.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yeah, I am.”
I look around the table. “You guys are letting him pay for everything?”
Benson shakes his head. Rowan shakes his head.
“No—” Stanley waves both hands. “No, listen, the hotel’s already paid for. Two rooms, four beds, and I got them on points.”
“Points?” I question.