Page 69 of Play Nice

“Please. If anything, I’m jealous,” I say, shifting to fabricated exasperation. “I want to find someone. I just get bored so easily. No one can hold my interest. I envy you. Not everyone meets their soul mate at nineteen.”

“I was twenty-two!” she shrieks, spilling her drink onto her lap. “Shit.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, playing dumb. “Need a napkin?”

“I…I got it,” she says, flustered. “Sorry.”

She gets up to go inside, and I do some quick math.

Dad is sixteen years older than Amy. He was forty-one when they got married, meaning she was twenty-five. I can’t remember how long she was around before the wedding, or when Dad sat us down and told us about them being together. Was she already living in the house when we moved in full-time?

Would she have gotten upset just now if she wasn’t guilty?

“Where is everyone?”

It’s Leda, the sun behind her like a fiery halo.

“Inside,” I say, adjusting my hat again.

She sits down on the sofa and immediately gets up. “Ew! Why is it sticky?”

“There’s no good answer to that question, is there?”

“What are you drinking?”

“Vodka lemonade,” I say. “Want a sip?”

“No,” she says. “What’s going on? Something’s wrong.”

“Nothing is wrong,” I say, tipping my hat back so she can see me smile. “Everything is perfect. Life is a dream.”

She scoffs.

Then Tommy comes out with chips and salsa, followed by Dad and Amy with a veggie tray, and then Bob and Lara Costigan from down the street, and it seems like there’s real potential here for a pleasant afternoon.

But as I sit with this smile plastered on my face, accepting compliments from Lara Costigan on my dress, chatting with Bob about what the rental market is like in New York, I keep Dad and Amy at the corner of my eye.

I don’t smell summer anymore. Not the chlorine or the charcoal or the sweet, citrusy lemonade. I smell burning. Fire—the hot annihilation of what was, of a belief I once held about something in my family history being good and pure.

Is there anything good for me to believe in? Or are the demons all that’s left?

I inhale.

Only smoke.

—

The afternoon smolders on. The sun burns itself out eventually. More neighbors arrive for red meat and beers and small talk. No amount of vodka lemonade makes it more tolerable.

I miss Daphne. I go upstairs and call her from my bedroom, but she doesn’t pick up.

Listening to the soundtrack of chitchat and Bruce Springsteen through my window, I decide that I prefer it up here. That I’m done for the day.

My body is tired, but my mind is awake and needs occupying.

I undress and take a picture of myself. I send it to Austin.

He responds within five minutes, which is both too slow and too fast. “You’re trying to kill me.”