A Little Night Magic (4 page)

Peach turned her focus to Stacy. “You don’t mind, do you? I mean, it’s kind of cool, right? We’re going to be sisters!”

Stacy pulled the file away from her index finger, blew on her nail, tossed the emery board on the end table, then sat back, her eyes on Millie even as she spoke to Peach. “Welcome to the family. Mazel tov.”

Peach put her hand over her heart. “Oh, thank
god
! I was so worried you’d be mad.” She grinned at Millie. “It’s such a relief to get it out!” Then she looked at me and said, “Now, what is this crap about not coming back from Europe?”

“Excuse me,” Millie said, and hopped up from the love seat, rushing out of the room. Peach and I stared after her.

“What’s up with Millie?” Peach asked.

“Seriously?” Stacy looked from me to Peach, then back again. “Really, you guys don’t know?”

Peach’s brow furrowed. “She hasn’t had a boyfriend in ages. Do you think she’s jealous that I’m getting married?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “That’s not like Millie.”

“She’s in love with Nick, idiots,” Stacy said, her voice low. “Has been since high school.”

Peach and I went silent, and then I said, “Not possible,” just as Peach said, “Oh, come
on.
”

Stacy sat forward, keeping her voice down as she spoke. “With her grades and the money her grandmother left her, Millie should have gone back to the Ivy League mother ship from whence she sprang and made it with some guy who wears corduroy and reads Foucault. Really, do you think being the secretary at Nick’s landscaping business is the best she could have done?”

Stacy had a point, but I still couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of Millie being in love with Nick Easter. Honestly, it was a little tough to imagine Peach with Nick. He was gruff, bald, and a little schlubby, and he used to shoot at us with his BB gun when we were kids. He’d grown up okay, was basically a good guy, but I wasn’t the kind of girl who forgot welts.

“No,” Peach said, shaking her head emphatically. “She would have told us.”

“Oh?” Stacy said, eyeing Peach. “Just like you?”

I exchanged looks with Peach, and then Millie came back into the room. She had a hard smile etched into her face, and while her eyes were a bit red, she was obviously trying to hide it. She sat down, reached for her margarita, and took a gentle sip, then said, “Liv, these are really good.”

I glanced from woman to woman, examining the faces, each more tense than the other. So, I did what needed doing—I jammed my elbow into the eight-hundred-pound gorilla sitting between us, and tried to shove it under the carpet.

“Oh my god, guys, the weirdest thing happened last night at work. This woman came in with a stinky gym sock and she threw it at me and I fell and got knocked out.”

“Speaking of work,” Stacy said, talking over the last part, “how did Tobias take the news about you leaving?”

I reached into the bowl for some chips, and dipped one in the pico. “Fine. He’s happy for me.”

Peach put her margarita glass down on the coffee table. “Wait,
Tobias
knows? You told Tobias before you told us?” She turned to Millie. “Can you believe that, Mill?”

Millie shrugged, not meeting Peach’s eye. Peach picked up her margarita glass and took another drink.

“Of
course
she told Tobias first,” Stacy said.

I looked at her. “You say that like you mean something by it.”

She raised one brow at me, and those eyes that knew everything dared me to challenge her.

I looked away. “I’ve told you a thousand times, there’s nothing between me and Tobias.”

Stacy shrugged. “Right.”

Peach made a thoughtful sound and said, “Do you think he might be gay?”

I choked on the chip, and had to down half my margarita to dislodge it.

“He’s not gay,” Stacy said.

“Well, has he dated anyone since coming to town? A man like that doesn’t come to a town like this without getting it regular, and I don’t think he has since he got here.” She reached out and gave the arm of the love seat a tentative touch. “What do you think, Mill?”

Millie didn’t respond, just stared down at her shoes.

“He’s not gay,” Stacy said.

Peach pulled her attention from Millie. “No, I think I might be on to something here. I mean, he hangs out with Liv all the time. But he’s never tried to sleep with her. Right, Liv?”

That one hit me in the gut, but I couldn’t bear telling Peach and Stacy about Tobias and my unrequited love. Not right now. It had been hard enough admitting it to Millie.

“Nope,” I said, feeling a little sick. “But … you know … just because he doesn’t find me attractive doesn’t mean…”

“It’s not about being attracted to you or not,” Peach said, getting into her argument. “A guy spends that much time hanging out with a woman, horniness and opportunity are going to overlap eventually. Has he ever even
tried
to get in your pants?”

“No,” I said, swallowing hard. “But I may not be his type of woman. Maybe he likes them prettier, or thinner—”

“Shut up, you’re gorgeous. Any man in the world would have to be gay not to want you.” She grabbed a chip and pointed at me with it, accentuating her argument. “I’m telling you, I think he’s gay.”

“He’s
not
gay,” Stacy said again.

Peach threw her hands up in the air. “How do you know?”

“Because I slept with him, and I’ve slept with gay men before. Trust me, I know gay. He’s not gay.” Stacy looked at me. “Sorry, Liv.”

The thing about shock is that it hits in a flash, and even as you’re laughing and saying, “What are you sorry about? I think that’s
great
!” you know you’re full of shit and that it’s gonna hurt like hell later. My hands, which had finally stopped tingling earlier, started up again, and I shook them out, then turned to Peach.

“See, I told you he wasn’t gay. He’s been sleeping with
Stacy
!” My laugh sounded tinny even to my own ears, and I reached for my margarita, hoping the drink would keep me from making noise of any kind.

“He hasn’t
been
sleeping with me,” Stacy said. “We
have slept
together. Totally different.”

And then a thick blanket of awkwardness fell over us. The three of us went quiet, and Millie, who had been quiet all along, continued to stare into her empty margarita glass.

“Okay,” I said, slapping my hands down on my knees a little too hard, making the tingly sensation in them even worse. “How about a game of Apples to Apples?”

Millie stood up. “I think I’m going to go home.”

Peach stood up, too, her smile extra-sunny, and too tense to be real. “Let me drive you, honey.”

“It’s just a few blocks. I’ll walk.” And then Millie hurried out, without a single word to the rest of us. We sat there in silence for a while, then Peach picked up her margarita glass, downed the last of it, and refilled it.

“I’ll bring this back later,” Peach said, and walked out. Thirty seconds later, I heard the front door to her house slam behind her.

Stacy and I sat stiffly next to each other in silence for a while, and then finally she said, “Well, it’s probably about time for me to go.” She got up from the couch and headed to the door. “I have to go prepare to collect and reassemble Mom’s brains once she hears that Nick’s marrying a Barbie doll.”

I followed her toward the door, still feeling a little numb. “Okay.”

She turned to me. “It was a long time ago, Liv. He’d just gotten here, it was before I knew how you felt about him. That’s why I never told you. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, no, I don’t…” I smiled at her, took a deep breath, and said, “There’s nothing between me and Tobias. Really.”

She gave me a dubious look, then turned and left. I shut the door behind her, leaned back against it, and stared at the ceiling, trying to stop the visuals of Stacy and Tobias, naked and writhing, from running on an endless loop in my head.

I was unsuccessful.

So I finished off the plate of Peach’s chili brownies and went to bed.

*   *   *

“Oh, Livvy, thank god you’re here!” Betty pulled her glasses down to the tip of her nose, and looked at me over the frames. “I can’t read this goddamn thing.”

The place was dead, as I knew it would be between the Sunday lunch and dinner shifts. I sat down at the counter and glanced at the number at the bottom of the invoice. “One thousand, two hundred seventy-nine dollars and forty-eight cents,” I read. I watched as she scribbled the number down in her ledger, then said, “You know, they have computers for that sort of thing now.”

“I’m seventy-three years old,” she said. “You want to teach me how to use a computer?”

I handed the invoice back to her. “Game, set, match.”

She smiled, shut the book, and stuck it under the counter, then leaned over the counter with a glint of glee in her eye. “You’ll never guess who Frankie Biggs is screwing now.”

“You know what I love about you, Betty? Your complete lack of shame.” I grabbed a menu and glanced at it. I hadn’t come in to eat, and even if I had, I already knew that damn thing by heart, but I was feeling nervous, and it gave me something to do with my hands.

“I don’t need shame,” Betty said. “I’ve got the goods. But if you don’t want to hear it…”

“No, I really don’t.” I put the menu down and drummed on it with my fingertips, then shook out my hands, which were still feeling tingly. The sensation kept coming and going, and I figured eventually it would go altogether, but it wasn’t making me feel any better. “Hey, have you ever pinched a nerve? Is it normal for your hands to tingle for a few days afterward?”

Betty slammed her hand down on the counter. “Dixie Connors!” And then she laughed maniacally.

“Dixie Connors? My high school English teacher, Dixie Connors?”

She gave me an exasperated look. “Do we have two? Isn’t that just the best?”

“It’s unlikely, is what it is,” I said, and shook out my hands. “Who’s your source?”

Betty straightened up a bit. “I don’t reveal my sources.”

“You reveal everything,” I said. “Which means it’s Addie Hooper-Higgins, who was also the one who told you Henry Dinks got abducted by aliens. Just because Addie runs a bed-and-breakfast does not make her reliable, you know.” I put the menu back in the holder next to the register and pushed up from the stool, my arms and legs feeling like jelly as the nerves set in. I tried to make my voice casual as I said, “Is Tobias in?”

She shrugged. “Should be, although he might be taking a break.”

“I’m gonna go talk to him.” I kept my eye on the door to the kitchen, then pointed a finger at her. “And you stop spreading gossip.”

“I’m going to hell anyway,” she said as I passed by. “I might as well have fun on the way down.”

I took a deep breath and pushed through the big metal door into the kitchen. Kenny, the stoner community college kid who did prep during the days, was hulling strawberries at the industrial metal island, his head bopping in rhythm with whatever was playing on his iPod. Tobias stood at the grill, cleaning it off meticulously as he always did during the dead zone between shifts. I stared at the back of his head for a bit, the image of Stacy’s fingers running through his hair zooming through my head. I shook my hands out again as the tingling got worse, and when I looked up, Tobias was standing with his back to the grill, mild surprise on his face.

“Hey,” he said. “How’d the Confessional go?”

“Great,” I said, my voice sounding a little squeaky in my ears. “So, you and Stacy, then?”

I hadn’t intended on bringing up Stacy. Well, okay, I
had,
but in my head on the way over, I’d imagined smoothly maneuvering it into the conversation so that it was him who brought it up, in a natural way. And then he would tell me that the sex with her wasn’t any good and he was drunk when it happened, and maybe that she drooled when she slept, and then I would feel better and be able to go to Europe without that stupid hole eating away at my gut the way it had since Stacy dropped the bomb.

“Me and Stacy?” he said, wariness in his voice. “What about me and Stacy?”

I shot him a dark look, and he lowered his eyes, then nodded as if coming to some internal decision. He took me by the elbow and led me out through the back hallway to the unadorned cement patio where the deliveries came in. He grabbed the two foldable nylon chairs we kept out there for people on their break and set them out, motioning for me to sit down. I took one seat and he took the other, resting his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward.

“All right, let’s have this out,” he said.

I sat up straight, trying not to be mad, because I had no right to be mad, but my words came out clipped anyway. “You should have told me.”

“It wasn’t your business,” he said, his tone simple, but the cut of it hurt too much, and I pushed up from the chair.

“Okay, then,” I said. “Sorry to have wasted your time.”

He shot up and grabbed my arm before I could leave. I stood where I was, lacking the energy to wrench myself away, but I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t.

“It’s not your business any more than it’s my business who you sleep with,” he said.

I met his eye. “Yeah, but I haven’t been sleeping with your best friend.”

He lowered his eyes. “It was a long time ago. Pretty much, right after I came to town. I bumped into her at Happy Larry’s one night, and we played a little pool—”

“Lalalalalala!” I said, putting my hands over my ears. “No details! There isn’t enough brain bleach in the world for details!”

He gently pulled my hands down from my ears, and it took him a moment to release them entirely. I could see that there was pain on his face, and I hated it. He could either love me entirely, or not at all, but this in-between, just-as-a-friend stuff was going to kill me dead. It probably wasn’t doing him much good, either.

“I figured you already knew,” he said. “I thought she had told you.”

“Well, she didn’t.” I took a step back from him; the mere proximity of him hurt. “Not until yesterday, and it’s been driving me nuts ever since.”

He grabbed my hand suddenly, but not in a romantic way; he quickly examined the palm, then looked up at me. “What’s the matter with your hands?”