56. Sage
FIFTY-SIX
SAGE
“Check this out.” Amy upends a grocery bag onto the counter and starts sorting.
By the looks of it, she’s bought enough snacks to survive a nuclear winter.
“Cosmic Brownies, obviously. Swiss Rolls—the good ones, not the off-brand. Nutter Butters for Jamie’s weird ranking thing.
Gummy bears for you, because I know Milo’s got you hooked.
Flamin’ Hot Cheetos because I’m a grown woman who makes her own choices.
And—” She pulls out the final item with the reverence of a priest presenting communion. “Dunkaroos.”
“They still make Dunkaroos?”
“They brought them back. The internet demanded it. We live in a golden age, Sage.”
I pick up the Dunkaroos and turn them over in my hands. The kangaroo on the packaging grins at me with the unearned confidence of a mascot who’s survived extinction. “I haven’t eaten these since I was eleven.”
“Exactly. That’s the point. Tonight we regress.
Tonight we are children who don’t pay taxes or have complicated sexual arrangements with multiple men.
” She shows me the face masks—three of them, individually wrapped, with a picture of a koi fish on the front.
“These are the ones. Korean collagen. The reviews say we’ll either glow like angels or break out in hives. Either way, we need music.”
I laugh as she dances away to whatever she’s got playing in her head.
Then I start sorting the snacks into what size bowl I’ll need, because I am a woman who puts things in bowls now.
That’s where I am in life. I have serving bowls, a room in an apartment I barely sleep at, five boyfriends, and a fish called Frank who lives in a vase.
If you’d told me a few months ago that this is where I’d end up, I would have asked what drugs you were on and then probably asked for some.
“I think we need the big salad bowl for the Cheetos,” I say, rummaging through the kitchen cabinets. “The orange dust deserves a vessel.”
“Respect the dust!” Amy calls out, already fiddling with the Bluetooth speaker.
While she’s occupied with the playlist, I glance through the kitchen window.
Holden’s car is in the far corner of the lot, tucked between a minivan and a pickup truck, positioned for a clear view of both the building entrance and the street.
He’s doing something on his phone—probably reading case files or composing a strongly worded email about building code violations.
The man never stops working, even when his work is sitting in a car watching my apartment.
I pull out my phone and text him.
Me:
We’re fine. Amy’s here. Relax and read a book.
Holden:
I am reading.
Me:
For work or for fun?
Holden:
I find work fun.
Rolling my eyes, I pocket my phone and grab the salad bowl. Amy’s got SZA playing and she’s already cross-legged on the floor, laying the face masks on the coffee table like ritual objects.
“I also bought some card games,” she says, digging around in her bag. “This one involves drinking. This one involves spilling secrets. And this one is all about gratitude.”
“Wow. A full spectrum from alcoholism to radical vulnerability.”
Amy drops a deck onto the table. “Jamie says the gratitude one is cringe, but I think that’s just because he can’t handle real emotions.”
“Well, at the end of the day, he is a man. So . . . ”
She smirks. “Exactly. But at least Jamie’s doing his best impression of an emotionally available human—unlike some people we used to know.”
She says it lightly. A throwaway. But I catch it.
“Have you heard from Tyler at all?” I ask casually.
Amy concentrates very hard on peeling back the cellophane. “Not since I blocked his number.”
“I knew you ended things, but I never asked what happened after.”
“You had enough of your own shit going on.” She lifts one shoulder. “He kept calling. Texting. Apologizing, then somehow making everything my fault again.” She finally gets the cellophane off in one clean strip. “I think he thought I’d start begging or something. And when I didn’t, it got ugly.”
“Ugly how?”
“Someone jumped him. He told anyone who’d listen that it was your boyfriends.” She looks at me sideways. “Even showed up here trying to convince me I was in danger. That you were the devil.” She shrugs. “But there was some guy parked across the street and he got all spooked and ran.”
My throat goes tight. “Who was across the street?”
“No idea. I think it was just a random person parked there. It was super weird.”
“I wonder why he didn’t go to the cops if he thought my guys hurt him,” I say.
“Who cares, really? I figured if it was them, they probably had a reason and he deserved it. I mean, I’d be lying if I didn’t suspect it was him that night.
” She studies me for a beat, her eyes dropping to my throat and the cameo choker surrounding it.
“I still don’t understand why you didn’t tell the police.
Someone attacked you and tried to hang you, Sage. They could’ve looked for him.”
Because the last thing any of us needed was the police looking too closely at my life.
My fingers close around the eyelash extension kit.
“I was scared they’d blame the guys.”
Amy’s forehead creases. “Why would they?”
“Look at us from the outside. Five older men in a relationship with one woman. You just said yourself Tyler was telling anyone who’d listen that they were dangerous.
” I make myself meet her eyes. “If I told the cops someone attacked me, they would’ve started with the men closest to me.
I didn’t want them deciding unconventional meant abusive and tearing apart our lives while they chased the wrong person. ”
It’s a good lie because most of it is true.
The cops would have looked at my men. They just would’ve been looking for the wrong crime.
Amy’s expression softens. “Yeah. Okay. I can understand that.”
Guilt twists beneath my ribs. Amy is the only person outside my guys who knows there was an attack, and I’m repaying her loyalty by lying to her face.
But the whole truth isn’t only mine to tell.
I pass her the eyelash extension kit. “Are you planning to glue these to your face or use them as some kind of weapon?”
“Both,” she deadpans, but she doesn’t let me escape completely. “Do you ever get the feeling there’s still . . . like, some unfinished business with all that?”
I snort. “Which part? The man who attacked me is still out there, or the fact that you and my guys are the only people who even know there was an attack?”
Amy cracks the box and pulls out an individual lash strip, setting it gently on top of the Nutter Butters like she’s crowning them.
“I mean the whole story.” She won’t look at me, like the consequences of asking are heavier than the fun we were supposed to be having.
“You haven’t talked about it in months. Your guys don’t talk about it, either.
Jamie says you never mention how you’re coping.
And I just—” She shrugs again, smaller this time.
“I don’t know, Sage. I guess I want to know you’re okay.
Not just, like, baseline okay, but actually okay.
Because I think you deserve an incredible life. ”
My mouth tastes like old metal. The words get stuck sliding past each other in my head. I stare at the snacks, at the ridiculously long eyelash extensions, and then back at Amy’s careful face. “I’m good. Great, actually. Promise.”
She looks at me for a long moment, like she’s searching for the lie. But when she doesn’t see it, she blinks away the moment. “Okay. Enough about the bad shit.” She picks up the eyelashes. “We’re going full glam, Sage.”
I laugh. “You know I can’t apply individual lashes. I can barely apply mascara without poking myself in the eye.”
“That’s why we have wine and each other. Also, YouTube tutorials, which I’ve bookmarked seven of.” She moves the lash kits beside the face masks and stands back to admire the spread. “Oh! Wait. Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Because I have a surprise and I need you to not see it until the full effect hits.”
I close my eyes. I hear her drag something out of her bedroom, followed by a whoosh and several bursts of swearing.
“Okay,” she says. “Open.”
I open my eyes. Amy is standing beside a portable spray tan booth. It’s essentially a pop-up tent made of shiny silver material with a little platform inside and a hose attachment that connects to a compressor the size of a shoebox.
“You bought a spray tan booth.”
“I rented a spray tan booth. From a woman named Darlene on Facebook Marketplace. She also offered to do our nails, but her page had some questionable reviews, so I drew the line at the tent.”
“Where is the overspray going to go?”
“I brought plastic sheeting. And towels. There’s a YouTube tutorial for that too.” She pats the compressor lovingly. “We’re going to be bronze goddesses, Sage. Just accept it.”
“We’re going to look like Oompa Loompas.”
“Bronze. Goddesses.” She points at me. “Jamie’s going first, though. It’s his punishment for being late.”
“He’s not even late yet.”
“He will be. He’s always late.”
She picks up her phone and types:
AMY:
ETA? The Dunkaroos are looking tasty and your share is under threat.
JAMIE:
On my way! Traffic is a nightmare. Save me a Swiss Roll or I’m disowning both of you.
AMY:
No promises. Hurry up.
JAMIE:
10 mins. Pour my wine. And DON’T start the face masks without me. I need the full koi fish experience.
“Ten minutes,” Amy announces. “So we’ve got time for nails and lashes before he gets here. Face masks when he arrives.”
“You think we can do lashes and nails in ten minutes?”
“No way!” She laughs. “But Jamie’s ten minutes is everyone else’s forty-five. So we definitely have time for at least one. I vote lashes.”
“Lashes it is.”
Amy pulls up the lash tutorial on her phone, propping it against the Nutter Butters box. “Okay. I’ll do yours first. Tilt your head back.”
I tilt. Amy leans in with the glue and the tweezers and the intense focus of a woman performing surgery. She places the first lash, presses it down, blows on it.
“Don’t blink.”
“I’m not blinking.”
“You’re blinking.”
“That’s involuntary, Amy. It’s a biological function.”
“Well, biologically stop it.”
By the time she’s done, my right eye looks like it belongs on a magazine cover and my left eye looks like a spider had a seizure on it.
“It’s a learning curve,” Amy says, tilting my face toward the lamp. “The right one is stunning though. You look like a sexy pirate.”
“Sexy pirate is not the vibe I was going for.”
“It’s the vibe you’ve achieved. Own it.”
I do her lashes next, and they come out surprisingly even, mostly because Amy can sit still like a statue and I’m working with the desperate focus of a woman who refuses to be out-lashed by her best friend.
“Gorgeous,” I say, holding up the mirror. “You look like a Bratz doll.”
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
We admire ourselves, turning our heads, batting our new lashes at each other, taking a selfie that Amy posts to her Instagram story with the caption “Fear us.”
“More wine!” Amy says, jumping up and heading into the kitchen for the bottle. “Jamie should be here any minute now. So I think it’s safe to pick our colors and cue up the first movie.”
Amy pours the wine while I set the polish bottles out on the coffee table. Six colors, ranging from sensible nude to a shade called Homewrecker Red that I’m immediately claiming.
“This one’s mine,” I say, picking it up.
“Of course that’s the one you want,” Amy says, sitting on the couch beside me. She grabs a soft pink called Sunday Morning. “I’m going wholesome. One of us has to.”
“If you must,” I say, picking up my wine and holding it up to her before I drink.
“What movie should we watch?” Amy asks, taking a generous sip while simultaneously shaking her polish bottle.
“Something terrible. Nineties horror.”
“The one with the mask and the corn maze?”
“Obviously.”
I queue it up and we settle into the couch—cotton balls, remover, polish, and the quiet focus of two women painting their nails while teenagers make terrible decisions on screen.
Amy does my left hand because I’m useless with my non-dominant, and I do hers.
We put our drying toes on the coffee table and argue about top coat during the boring parts.
“Top coat is mandatory,” Amy says. “Nonnegotiable. A nail without top coat is a nail living in sin.”
“I’ve gone my whole adult life without top coat.”
“And it shows, Sage. It shows.”
This is what I missed. Not the snacks or the movies or the nail polish. This. A person beside me who doesn’t need me to explain why I’m quiet sometimes. Amy asks once, listens, and then lets me be. She sits with me and eats garbage food without scanning my face for signs of crisis.
Tonight, I’m okay—and she believes me.
My phone buzzes on the coffee table. I pick it up and glance at it, and the name stops my heart for a quarter-beat.
brOCK.
I stare at it long enough that Amy leans over, squinting. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I say, but my fingers have gone bone-white around the wine stem. “Spam text.”
But it’s not spam.
Brock:
Miss me? Hope your friends like nooses too. Wouldn’t want them to miss the fun.
I exhale through my nose, slow and quiet.
It’s nothing—just whoever it is amping up the threats because they’re not getting a reaction.
Milo said the more I ignored it, the more creative they’d get.
But Amy is watching me, and I don’t want her to worry.
More importantly, I don’t want to ruin pajama night.
I set my phone down, knowing the guys will handle it. Then I turn toward Amy and muster my most casual tone. “Can we talk about the acting in this? Like, please tell me you remember the part where the killer says ‘It’s harvest time, bitch’ and then, like, slips on a corn husk and face-plants?”
She snorts. “I’m waiting for that scene. That’s the best scene. You can see his entire villain arc collapse in real time. It’s better than therapy.”
“Not a high bar, considering how many therapy sessions this movie undid for the nation,” I say, and then we’re arguing about whether the original scream queen deserved to die three times in the same movie.
A knock sounds at the door.
“Finally,” Amy groans, throwing the blanket off. “If he brought kale chips, I’m revoking his spray tan privileges.”
“I’ll get it.” I’m already up, waddling across the floor so I don’t ruin my nails. I look a mess with only one decent set of lashes. But I’m grinning now because Jamie’s here and the face masks are next and the spray tan booth is waiting and tonight is going to be perfect. I grab the door handle.
“Jamie!” I holler as I pull it open.
My smile dies. My blood turns cold.
“Wh-what are you doing here?”