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She tossed her arms in the air like they were boneless noodles before pointing at Row.
“Stop this right now.” Row stepped between us, bunching Dylan’s wrists behind her back and pulling her away from me. “You can’t kill her,” he said dryly.
“Give me one good reason!” She kicked the air manically, trying to break free and throw punches my way.
“We can always hide her body,” she spat out, wiggling ferally in his arms. She had no idea how much her words triggered me. A scream clogged my throat.
Row was leaving for Paris next week; I was leaving for New York tomorrow, and I had just thrown away fourteen years of friendship for the dubious pleasure of being railed by a man with a rolling pin instead of a penis.
Dude was built like a Marvel superhero. “She’s a selfish, mean, heartless bitch who betrayed me!”
“I’m a selfish, mean, heartless asshole who did the same.” His lips barely moved, but a muscle in his chiseled jaw jumped. “Yet I don’t see you plotting my murder.”
Row was magnificent. Spectacular. Self-assured, talented, and formidably hot. He’d always been bigger than life. Even as a kid, he had known he was destined to be a great chef.
When I was ten, I had taught myself how to laminate my eyebrows using a glue stick and an eraser.
Finally, the words that were bunched in my throat rushed out like a river. “Dylan, I’m so, so sorry.”
“Stop. I’ll fucking blush.” Row rolled his tongue over his inner cheek, propping his unlaced army boot against the hood of his car. I ignored him. He wasn’t really offended. Sarcasm was his native tongue.
“Did you swallow a whole-ass dictionary?”
“Also, you can say it felt like shit until you’re blue in the face, but your body told me a different story when you dripped all over the hood of my car.”
“Argh! Blasphemy.” Dylan pressed her palms to her ears, squeezing her eyes shut. “The mental image is now burned into my retinas, and I have no ...
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“All I hear is me, me, me.” Dylan’s tear-rimmed eyes rolled in their sockets, and she tipped her head back, chuckling humorlessly. “It’s all about you, isn’t it? You were drunk. You made a mistake. You feel disgusted. You have anxiety. What about me? Did you ever stop to think how much I hate it when my friends hit on my brother? How everyone wants to befriend Dylan Casablancas because her brother is hot?”
My crush on Ambrose Casablancas was akin to my crush on Chris Pine. Just because it was there, didn’t mean I ever had any plans to act on it. He was the least attainable person on planet Earth, with his mood, hair, and allure all darker than the pit of his own soul.
him. I didn’t do boyfriends. And I definitely didn’t do relationships. Relationships were for other humans who could “people” normally and not topple over like a fainting goat at the slightest social interaction.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
I was in complete agreement with her. Row was the entire deal. Hot, smart, and talented as hell. Not only was he not in my league, we weren’t even playing the same sport. He was football and I was…cheese rolling. Or something equally as eccentric.
“Huge,” I corrected, my head so hot I felt like it was going to explode. “Thick too. Better?” I shot him a dirty look.
“You know, Cal, I’ve always looked up to you. You’re gorgeous, funny, smart, a kaleidoscope of colors and facts about the nineties; I mean, damn, you’re a walking Wikipedia about serial killers and ghost stories, and still have the most sunshine personality I’ve ever known. It’s tempting to stick around, to let those Calla Litvin sunrays kiss your skin. But when you strip it all off…the playlists, the outfits, the good times…when you look inside and examine what kind of friend she is…she sucks.” Dylan shook her head, her arms dropping to the sides of her body. “Grow up, Dot. And do it far away
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Chills draped across my shoulders like an oversized cloak.
He was stone-faced. The same standoffish version of himself he gave anyone who wasn’t Dylan and his mom. And, sometimes, me.
I tried to see myself through his eyes. This pitiful, crumpled creature. Mangled and stained, like a discarded supermarket list at the bottom of a cart. A beautiful girl, the townsfolk all agreed behind my back, but so very odd, just like her father.
“You’re not broken, Dot.” He stuck the cigarette in his mouth, patting my thigh offhandedly. “A little cut, sure. All diamonds are.” Not me, I thought. Underneath my sunshine personality, all you’ll find is darkness.
Row’s eyes, blank and hollow as a Greek statue’s, were still trained on the road ahead.
“So, where did y’all bury Artem?” Melinda Fitch, our middle-aged neighbor, clutched her pearls in my parents’ living room, rearranging them across her heavy cleavage.
Melinda barked out a high-pitched laugh.
Verbal diarrhea—one. My flimsy reputation—minus thirty.
Melinda looked ready to bolt through our wall like a cartoon character. Her eyes were the size of derby hats. Most people weren’t accustomed to my zero-filter train of thoughts. Over the years, my coworkers and peers had learned how to ignore my foot-in-mouth, nervous blabbering. Mostly, anyway.
I could tell my words flew right over Melinda’s hair-sprayed do. I had lost her at ecosystem. She probably thought it was our AC brand.
My dad had stood out in the quaint, small town of Staindrop, Maine, like a dildo in a church.
I was her mini-me.
I’d sung his favorite song, “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas and the Papas.
This woman changed your diapers. Band-Aided your boo-boos. Paid for your utterly useless degree. You are not going to bail on her just because you are frightened of Dylan Casablancas.
He became a world-famous bad-boy chef: restauranteur, reality TV judge, and Michelin-starred prince. Over the years, he had graced my television screen in frightening quantities. Smiling his dimpled smirk during morning shows before Thanksgiving to teach viewers how to make the perfect, moist stuffed turkey. Opening a new restaurant in a trendy European location on E! News, a Victoria’s Secret model draped on his arm, or as a grumpy judge in a low-stakes Netflix reality TV show, scowling at fancy dishes and barking obscenities at hopeful chefs. An entertainment columnist had once written,
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Staindrop, and God knew the answer wasn’t going to be through my pipe dream, my unrecorded true crime podcast, Hot Girl Bummer.
Didn’t he have a reality TV contestant to yell at about their stew tasting like a diarrhea puddle? Because that had actually happened. I remembered watching that episode in horror and thinking, I had this man’s salami stuck in my canal.
“She’s pregnant.” I gestured to my ex–best friend, as though this fact couldn’t be detected from Neptune.
She’d had ripped Vogue pages folded neatly inside her underwear drawer with flower decoration inspiration, like Pinterest didn’t exist.
Evidence suggested he no longer unpinned the Goosebumps pinback buttons from Dylan’s JanSport and “accidentally” sneezed into the food on her tray at the cafeteria.
Forever a responsible, sensible adult, I decided now was a good time to swivel toward the person behind me and launch into an avalanche of incoherent words to appear busy and unaffected.
I heard Row say in his bottomless baritone that licked at my skin like fire.
“…all I’m saying is Meat Loaf shouldn’t have called it ‘I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)’ because what’s even the point?” I rambled. Oh God. Someone shut me up. Immediately. “Well, Mr. Meat Loaf, clearly, you won’t do anything for love. There’s no exception to the word anything. Everything is kind of baked into the cake, you know? The song should’ve been called ‘I Would Do Most Things for Love.’ But I guess that would have been less catchy. It’s all about the marketing.”
“Ya know, I was never a big Meat Loaf fan.” Lyle took a pull of his Coors, his eyes searching for an escape route from the conversation. “The dish? Sure. Not so much the artist. Springsteen fan, myself.”
Her face alone made me want to cry again. She was so…Dylan. Her skin smooth to the point she looked like an AI figure. Every feature perfectly proportioned and Apollo-like. With a wide, dimpled Julia Roberts smile and the long, spidery legs of a runway model. She had that Eva Mendes glow that made her look sexy doing anything, including staring me down like I had just battered a baby panda with its own bamboo stick.
She gave me a crush-your-bones hug full of reassurance. It felt like she’d put an oxygen mask to my face, breathing life into me.
“Yes,” I choked out, the memories flooding me like a river. “We weren’t even that young anymore. Thirteen, right? Totally past the cute stage.” “The man could rock a blue winged eyeliner like nobody’s business.”
The waterworks officially began. I’m talking Bellagio fountain show.
My eyeballs were leaking as she rubbed circles on my back. She smelled like old Dylan: Libre by YSL, bubblegum, and that scent that always lingered at the Casablancas’ household of hearty Italian food.
