14. Signs Your Best Friend is a Spy
SIGNS YOUR BEST FRIEND IS A SPY
REESE
My phone buzzes on the nightstand before I’ve opened my eyes enough to confirm that it is morning. I reach toward the sound, knock over a lip balm, miss the phone twice, and finally pull it beneath the covers with me, looking at it through one mostly open eye. The message is from Miles.
Miles: Can you come over tonight at seven? There’s something important I need to tell you.
I sit up much too fast for the number of seconds I’ve been awake. No sentence has ever contained more breakup vibes, and it’s coming from a man I am not technically dating. I quickly type a response.
Reese: Why? Are you moving?
Three dots appear.
Miles: No.
Reese: Dying?
Miles: No.
Reese: Getting bangs?
This response takes slightly longer.
Miles: Absolutely not.
At least there are still a few reliable things in my life.
Reese: Does an angry mob boss have your name on a list?
The dots appear. Disappear. Appear again.
Miles: Why is that your fourth guess?
Reese: Because in my awakened-alarmed state, it’s the fourth possibility that came to mind.
I hesitate before typing the next one. At Ledger and Zoe’s engagement celebration two days ago, I heard Miles say that he wanted what they had.
That he was ready to go out and find it.
At the time, horror hit me. Since then, I’ve discovered that knowing your best friend is ready to go find someone feels remarkably similar to having someone slowly lower a rhinoceros onto your chest.
What if he already found her? Miles is excellent at locating people. Apparently, it’s part of client relations. It’s a hard question to ask, but I have to know.
Reese: Did you find someone?
The three dots don’t appear this time. I wait. And wait. And keep waiting until my phone screen dims. I tap it awake.
Reese: Miles?
Miles: You’re not losing me. I have to go. We’ll talk tonight. Not over text.
That is not a no. That was not a no.
I fall back against my pillows and press the phone to my forehead.
It isn’t even seven a.m. yet, which means I have more than twelve hours to wonder whether my best friend is…
I look back at the responses… being hunted by organized crime or announcing that he has found the woman he plans to spend the rest of his life with.
Getting bangs, moving, and dying have been eliminated, at least.
I put on my glasses, drag myself from bed, and head downstairs. If I’m going to be emotionally destroyed all day long in anticipation of tonight, I’m going to need breakfast.
Charlie is already in the kitchen, fully dressed in black pants and a dark green sweater, with her hair pulled back and her work bag sitting beside her chair.
I stop in the doorway. “Why do you look ready to participate in society? It’s Saturday.”
“I have to go into work.”
“So does Miles.”
Her gaze flicks toward me before she picks up her travel mug. “Yeah. A few of us do.”
“Is it the same client who made you all work most of the night a couple of weeks ago?”
“Yes.” She gives me the answer too quickly, which is suspicious. Everything feels suspicious this morning.
“Do you know what Miles needs to tell me tonight?”
Charlie’s fingers tighten around her mug.
It’s barely a movement, but I know Charlie.
She has a face that usually announces every feeling she has before she can decide whether she wants to share it.
Right now, her expression goes blank in a way that is much more alarming than if she had gasped and dropped her coffee.
“He should be the one to read you in,” she says.
I blink. Charlie freezes.
“Read me in?”
“Fill you in.” She grabs her bag. “I meant fill you in. It’s an expression.”
“An expression used by what kinds of people?”
“The kind who need to go to work.” She steps into her shoes, then points at me with one hand while holding her mug in the other. “Don’t spiral.”
“I wasn’t spiraling until you used the word spiral.”
“I’ve got to go.” She pulls open the door.
“Is Miles secretly involved in organized crime?”
She turns back so fast that her drink sloshes through the opening in her lid. “Why would you ask that?”
That is not how an innocent person responds to that question. “You should’ve laughed,” I tell her.
“I am laughing internally.”
“You look alarmed internally.”
“He’ll talk to you tonight.”
“About the mob?”
“Goodbye, Reese.” The door closes behind her.
I stand in the kitchen, listening to the lock click. Then I open the notes app on my phone and start typing.
POSSIBLE MILES REVELATIONS
1. Moving away.
2. Dying.
3. Getting bangs.
4. Angry mob boss.
5. Found someone.
I move number five to the top. Then I move it back down because looking at it first makes my stomach hurt.
I need something to do. Something distracting.
Something that will occupy my hands and brain for several hours and leave no room for Miles, his message, or the highly suspicious vocabulary of his sister.
Thankfully, there is a box containing a frame full of honey and beeswax sitting in our laundry room.
When I brought it home from the hives, I had every intention of dealing with it immediately.
That intention lasted right up until I put the sealed box somewhere safe and stopped looking directly at it.
The comb had been built crooked enough that it couldn’t go straight back into the hive, which means I need to harvest the honey using the old-fashioned crush-and-strain method.
Perfect. There is nothing like destroying thousands of tiny wax storage compartments to keep a person from wondering whether her best friend has found someone to build a future with.
I change into an old T-shirt and overalls, pull my hair back, and cover the kitchen counter with towels. Then I retrieve the frame, a large bowl, a food-safe bucket, a mesh straining bag, and the potato masher.
When I cut the first section of comb from the frame, honey immediately begins running over my fingers.
It smells warm and like summer sunlight became edible.
For nearly three minutes, the distraction works.
I am completely absorbed in cutting the comb into the bowl, scraping wax from the wooden frame, and trying not to get honey on every surface in the kitchen.
By the time all the comb is in the bowl, I have honey on both hands, one elbow, the front of my overalls, and somehow the back of my neck.
I pick up the potato masher. “What does he need to tell me?” I ask the honeycomb.
It doesn’t answer, which puts it on the same level as Miles.
I begin crushing.
Maybe a doctor found something concerning. Except he would not make me wait twelve hours if he thought he was dying. Probably.
Maybe he found someone.
I crush harder. The comb collapses beneath the masher, releasing more honey into the bowl. At the engagement celebration, he didn’t say he was thinking about wanting this someday. He said he was ready to go find it.
What if the reason he wouldn’t answer my question over text is because the answer is yes?
What if he met someone during a late-night client-relations emergency?
A sophisticated woman who owns multiple suits and never loses her keys.
A woman who understands whatever Miles does at Lancaster Business Solutions and doesn’t need Charlie to translate his family’s weird workplace vocabulary. A woman who can have children.
The thought pops in before I can block it.
I press the masher down again, forcing it back where it belongs. Nope. We are not doing that today. Today is for honey and completely reasonable theories involving mob bosses.
I transfer the crushed comb into the mesh bag, suspend it over the bucket, and watch the first narrow stream of honey begin to drip. Slowly. Painfully slow. At approximately the same speed that Miles is moving toward telling me whatever he needs to tell me.
I wash my hands, then check my phone. No new messages. I add a few things to my list.
6. Secret billionaire.
7. International criminal.
8. Joined a cult that uses phrases like “read you in.”
I consider adding government spy, then immediately reject it because I am not a person in one of our shows. I am a middle school librarian standing in a kitchen with a bit of honey stuck to her ear.
I spend the next few hours cleaning the frame, rotating the straining bag, sterilizing jars, and checking my phone every time it makes a noise. Miles sends nothing. Charlie sends nothing.
By eleven thirty, I have filled three jars, begun a fourth, and consumed enough honey directly from a spoon that I may technically qualify as a bear. By one o’clock, the honey is still draining, and I have reached the limits of what can reasonably be accomplished by hovering over it.
I clean the kitchen, change out of my sticky clothes, take a quick shower, get dressed, and start a load of laundry. At two twenty-seven, I text Miles again.
Reese: Can you at least tell me whether I need to wear supportive shoes for this conversation?
His answer comes ten minutes later.
Miles: Really, you can wear whatever you want.
That is also not helpful.
Reese: Formal black? Casual black? Funeral black?
Miles: Reese.
Reese: That is not a dress code.
He doesn’t respond.
At three, I decide I’m done waiting. I’m going to go to his work, look him directly in the eye, and ask whether I need to emotionally prepare for him to say he has met someone.
Yes, I know his workplace requires security and isn’t open to the public.
But I can go to the gate and wait until someone sends him outside.
This is not impatience. It’s me being proactive.
And trying to keep my heart from having a medical emergency.
My phone is already in my pocket. I grab my keys from the table by the door, and I reach toward the hook where I keep my purse, but the hook is empty.
I take a quick glance around. I even look in the laundry room, though I have never once deliberately put my purse there.
I head back to the kitchen, and nothing.