Page 17 of Unmanageable

I crack one eye open—just a miserable sliver—and immediately regret the decision. The light pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows is aggressive, unforgiving, and apparently personal.

Dean is slumped in the leather chair across from me, looking like a man who has lost a fight with his own life choices. He’s still wearing that tiny, glittery pink cowboy hat.

The blue lipstick Jenna aggressively smashed onto his face last night is smeared across his cheek and jawline, leaving him looking like a very depressed Smurf.

“Don’t talk,” I whisper. “Sound waves are violence. Keep your mouth shut.”

“I have a meeting on Monday,” Dean mutters, staring blankly at his own hands, entirely ignoring my plea. “I am a senior partner at a top-tier firm. I have a mortgage. Why is my face blue, Scottie? Why is there glitter on my soul?”

“Because Jenna is a domestic terrorist.”

I slowly—so slowly—push myself into a sitting position.

The movement tears my jacket out of Cash’s loose grip. He lets out a low, protesting grunt in his sleep, his hand twitching against the fabric of his jeans as he turns his head away from the light.

The room tilts. My stomach does a slow, nauseous roll. I reach up to rub my eyes, and that’s when I feel it.

A crinkle.

A weird, smooth, plastic sensation against my left wrist.

I freeze. My heart does a frantic, uneven stutter.

I look down.

My left wrist is neatly wrapped in medical-grade plastic film. Beneath the clear, sticky wrap, the skin is red, angry, and stained with a dark, blurred smudge of ink that definitely wasn’t there when I went out last night.

“Oh, fuck,” I breathe. “No. No, no, no. Tell me that’s a temporary tattoo. Tell me it’s a sticker.”

“What?” Dean asks, his bloodshot eyes tracking my arm. He drops his gaze to his own hip, his expression shifting from confusion to pure horror. He pales, tugging at the waistband of his trousers. “Oh, you have got to be kidding me. I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck, and apparently, I’ve been branded.”

“What are you guys whimpering about?” Jenna groans. She rolls over, rubs her lower back, winces, and then blinks at us. “Wait. Hold on. My back feels like it’s been flayed.”

Ivy’s head pops up from the floorboards next to Callahan. “We actually did it? I thought that was a fever dream. I thought I hallucinated a needle.”

“I remember us standing in front of the wall,” I say, trying to force my brain to reassemble the jagged pieces of the night. “I remember looking at the stencils. I remember telling the guy with the neck tattoo that we were making a binding historical pact of friendship. I remember being very, very passionate about it.”

“Okay, but what are they?” Ivy shrieks, which is a massive error, because she immediately clutches her temples and drops her head back onto Callahan’s chest. “What did we tattoo?”

“I don’t know!”

“I remember giving a very articulate, very drunk lecture on the Sixth Amendment while the needle was going in,” Dean groans, closing his eyes again. “Scottie, you told me it was an honor. You said that this was the ultimate test of our soulmateship. You made me look you in the eye and promise to never regret it.”

“It is a test,” I mutter, holding my head. “We’re just failing it.”

“You were humming the Succession theme song, Dean,” Jenna says, her memory clearly returning. “And you kept asking the artist if he had a ‘lawyer-friendly’ font. I remember that much. He told you to shut up and pick a design.”

Before we can continue, a massive shadow falls over the living room doorway.

Brick is standing there, looking like an absolute giant in the morning light. He’s in a pair of gray sweatpants, his dark hair sticking up in a chaotic cowlick, and he’s holding a half-empty gallon of chocolate milk like a lifeline.

He looks down at the floor, his brow furrowing into a deep, intense line of confusion.

“Where’s Noah?”

Callahan stirs at the sound of Brick’s voice, blinking heavily as he sits up, his arm sliding off Ivy. “What do you mean? He’s on the couch.”

“He’s not on the couch,” Brick says, sounding genuinely distressed. “He was right here. He was so comfy. He’s not there anymore.”