Chapter 18
In the end, Sylvia and the boys reached an agreement: she and Aster would be staying in the apartment indefinitely, and Sylvia would consult on the decoration of their next two properties.
They all concurred that it was a very fair and reasonable situation, certainly nothing requiring police intervention—Tony couldn’t even remember why they’d gone to the precinct in the first place—and, by the end, they all went out for lunch martinis.
“You are seriously evil,” Aster chuckled as she sipped a daiquiri through a straw. The boys were in the bathroom, leaving them alone with six empty glasses and a full bowl of Pad Thai.
It was happy hour at Thai-lai, and Andrew and Tony had been happy to pay for all four of them. “Celebrating our new interior designer,” Tony had said, and they all clinked glasses.
Aster had been trying her best not to laugh in their faces.
Sylvia batted her eyelashes up at her. “Oh, I’m evil because I’m doing what a girl needs to do to survive? How reductionist.”
“To survive?” Aster laughed. “You mean three shots of watermelon vodka, two daiquiris, three entrees, two bowls of popcorn shrimp—”
“Can I get anything else for your ladies?”
A waiter had snuck up behind them with a bright, shining smile that said, Thank you for spending way too much money at our restaurant, would you like to spend even more?
Sylvia was as quick as a whip. “Two more daiquiris, please.”
The waiter nodded while Aster’s mouth hung open. “Of course.”
He puttered away, and Aster snorted in disbelief.
“Unbelievable.”
“The shrimp? I know.”
Sylvia popped another of the crustaceans in her mouth, crunching down on the crunchy batter as she grinned up at Aster. Sylvia was smiling at her in that way that made Aster feel like she could spend the rest of her life just like this, drinking watered down alcohol and not paying for it.
And for a flicker of a moment—it almost looked like Sylvia was thinking the same thing, her smile turning soft, the barely-there wrinkles around her eyes bunching together.
Aster forgot herself in the feeling, and lifted her hand to Sylvia’s face, tucking a hair behind her ear, and saying nothing.
The dimly lit restaurant was covered in these stupid RGB lights—blinking red, green, blue, red, green, blue—and they danced on Sylvia’s lips like a Christmas tree.
Aster so badly wanted to kiss the holiday sheen off that pretty mouth.
“You’re gorgeous,” Aster whispered, without really meaning to.
Sylvia’s cheeks colored this unbelievably pretty pink. She had never Sylvia blush, not before they started doing all of… this. Whatever this was. But she was addicted to it now. She loved the rush that came with knowing she was responsible for making Sylvia feel that way.
“And you’re drunk,” Sylvia replied, setting down her snack. She didn’t move away, though—her eyes still pinned to Aster’s own, that easy smile still on her lips. “Aster…”
“What?” Aster frowned. Because she felt like she was about to get chastised. Then she added petulantly, and yes, drunkenly, “I can’t call you gorgeous now?” Is that another rule?
Listening to the words come out of her mouth, it occurred to her how many times over the years she had called Sylvia gorgeous.
But how many of those times had she meant it like she did now?
It was so strange—it was almost like the memories had a veil over them.
She could remember the instances—Sylvia looking pretty for a Venetian ball, Sylvia shuffling across a beach at dusk—but she couldn’t remember the emotion she’d felt each time. Like a photo without color.
Sylvia laughed coldly, and she picked Aster’s fingers up where they lay, still, on the side of her temple, placing them back onto the table.
Which was obviously a rejection, Aster wasn’t so dense that she couldn’t see that, but the strange thing is that Sylvia didn’t let go of her hand when she set it down.
She just laid her own palm over Aster’s, and pretended like she didn’t.
“Sure you can,” Sylvia said coolly. Her effortless front had returned. Then, below the table, she slipped her heeled foot around Aster’s ankle. “But don’t do it somewhere where I can’t do anything about it.”
And oh—Aster’s mind was suddenly as blank as a sheet of paper.
She really wasn’t proud of how much obvious evasiveness she was letting Sylvia get away with, but she couldn’t help it.
A quiet, desperate feeling in her chest told her that she only had so many of these opportunities left.
That there was a window to all this, and if she didn’t jump at every offered bone now—
So she sprung out of her seat like a dog who’d heard the treat jar shake, and towered over Sylvia, who looked up at her with dark pupils.
“Let’s go,” Aster said breathlessly.
Sylvia laughed in surprise. “Really? I mean—just leave them here, with the bill? While we bite each other silly back at their apartment?”
Aster was already getting light headed thinking about it. “Pretty much.”
Sylvia grinned at her fondly. It made Aster’s heart clench.
“You really do spend too much time with me.”
She took Aster’s hand, and let her help her up.
It sounded light and meaningless when Aster replied, “Every moment I can get.”
***
They didn’t even make it through the apartment door before Aster had Sylvia pressed up against the cold hallway wall, her hand clutching at the waistline of the other woman’s pants.
Sylvia tasted like strawberry alcohol—sweet, too sweet, the kind of sweetness that hides something sharp and dangerous—and Aster’s swollen mind could only think, repeatedly, I love you, I love you, I love you, as she pressed open-mouth kisses to the other woman’s throat.
“Don’t tease me,” Sylvia whined. “I want to feel your teeth.”
Aster groaned out some obscene mix of syllables, because what else was she supposed to do when Sylvia said things like that. She let her fangs fall forward, graze on alabaster skin—
“Wow. Wow. I mean, I want to say I’m surprised, but I totally called that.”
A voice that belonged to neither of them echoed from a few feet away.
Surprise hit Aster and Sylvia like a whip and they bolted apart.
Aster immediately rescinded her fangs, grateful that she hadn’t drawn any blood when she saw just who was waiting for them, standing like an awkward pin needle with his hands shoved nervously in his pockets.
“Wallace?” Aster mumbled.
“Jesus,” Sylvia groaned. “Does our apartment have some kind of twink bat signal I don’t know about?”
Wallace grumbled. “You can’t just call people twinks, Selene. I don’t go by any label—”
Sylvia waved her hand, and turned toward the apartment door, searching her pockets for the keys. “This argument hasn’t even started and I’m already over it. Goodbye, teenager.”
“Wait. Stop. Also, I’m twenty three—”
Then, like the third train to smash into this mess of a conversation, Aster mumbled, “Wait, you called what?” She was still blinking stupidly as she processed the first thing he’d said.
Wallace narrowed his eyes as Sylvia pushed the door open and waltzed inside.
“You and Selene? Being… a thing?” he said, gesturing to the wall that Aster had pressed Sylvia against moments before.
“I mean, you literally dug a peephole into the fabric of our shared cubicle with a pencil, like some kind of mole rat, so you could spy on her in the meeting room across the hall.”
“Oh my god. You did what?” Sylvia laughed cruelly from inside the apartment. Aster burned red, and followed the other woman’s lead into the living room. Wallace looked strangely at the now empty doorway before sighing and following them in, closing it firmly behind himself.
“Oh, yes, just make yourself at home,” Sylvia muttered, rolling her eyes and putting on the coffee machine. Her movements were still drunk and clumsy, and she missed the button several times while trying to press it. It made Aster smile despite herself.
“Gosh, you really are a goner,” Wallace said as he took a single glance at Aster’s face.
He then neatly removed his shoes, and instead of doing something normal, like sitting on the couch, he continued to stand in place and play with the ring on his finger.
But his awkwardness did not prevent him from playing private investigator.
“So, how long have the two of you been married?”
“Married?” Aster said hoarsely.
“Ten years,” said Sylvia, without missing a beat. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Ten years?” Aster said, more hoarsely.
What the fuck was Sylvia talking about? What the fuck was going on?
Hot coffee burbled out of their Keurig machine and into Sylvia’s beloved mug—a bright pink ceramic that said If you can’t beat them, eat them—and Sylvia whisked it away and wandered over to the couch, where she dragged Aster down next to her, basically onto her lap.
Aster gawked at her. But Sylvia didn’t give her an inch, her face turned to Wallace.
Is this about the funeral? It had to be about the funeral. She knew Sylvia had been preparing some kind of character for them to play that involved them being married, but the roles were only supposed to extend as far as getting through the gates and inside the venue.
Wallace wasn’t even supposed to know about their aliases.
They were planning on avoiding him during as much of the service as possible, and if he did approach them with any questions, they’d just Suggest them away from his mousey little brain.
But apparently some part of that plan had changed.
Maybe it had changed just now, inside Sylvia’s mind. Aster had no idea.
To help relieve some of that cluelessness, she looked up at Wallace and asked, “Um, no offense, but what are you doing in our apartment?”
“Oh,” he frowned. “I thought that was obvious.”
Aster gave him a look that said It absolutely is not.
“I think I figured out who killed Tommy.”