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“And the best part of that relationship. Besides you and me,” Evie added.
So, “We’re talking about him.” I knew the details of the idiot who thought he could fuck both Alys and Evie and lie to everyone about it, but it was rare for anyone bring him up, and they never laughed when they were doing so.
“Not quite.” Aubrey unpacked the contents of the sack and laid them out on the coffee table.
I set the pizza in the middle of it all and opened the lid. Extra-large for four people, because Alys and Aubrey would only want a couple slices each, but Evie would eat as much as I did.
Evie grabbed the first slice, and struggled with how much stringy, gooey cheese there was until I severed the strand with a plastic knife. “We had a we hate boys party,” she said. “Which consisted of a lot of drinking—”
“The underage kind for me, and the first time I’d ever been drunk.” Alys cut in.
Aubrey looked amused. “The underage kind for both of us. Evie was a criminal, buying us beer.”
“Cheap beer.” Alys was emphatic.
Evie shook her head. “You can’t start with the good stuff. It sets unrealistic expectations. It’s like having incredible sex your first time.”
“Oh yeah, no one would want that.” I was playfully sarcastic. “Wouldn’t want to set a bar or anything.”
“Anyway.” Evie talked over all of us. “We decided the best way to celebrate how much we hated cheating, lying, underhanded, gaslighting assholes, we played darts with some pictures we had of him.”
“And we added in some photos from a stack of teen magazines,” Alys said.
Aubrey sniffled, as if she was sad, and picked a piece of green pepper from her pizza to nibble on it. “Those may have been vintage one day.”
Alys smacked her with a paper napkin.
I felt like I was missing something. “Even drunk, Evie’s a good shot at darts. And you two aren’t bad either. Where do the holes in the walls come in?”
They all exchanged looks, and dissolved into a sea of giggles.
Alys got herself together first. “We didn’t have a dart board, so we pinned the photos to the wall in Evie’s back room.”
“We threw a lot of darts.” Evie looked smug.
The story was fun, and it was wonderful to see Alys smiling again, but what Onyx did wasn’t exactly a throw-darts-at-his-picture-until-it’s-confetti level offense.
The light mood kept up as we decided what to watch. Which apparently was Star Trek Two, Four, and Six, with the emphatic reminder to me that Chris Pine was not their Captain Kirk, no matter how sexy Karl Urban was.
My brain kept shifting back to the Onyx topic though.
Onyx was our friend. Whatever decisions he’d made about selling, about leaving, it couldn’t be the end of our friendship. If that was what he wanted, he could’ve cut us off at any time. Told us he was going. Stopped talking to us.
He hadn’t been acting like he hated us or wanted us gone. Gorgeous guy like him? He wasn’t sticking around for the sex.
Though, with Alys…
Sex with Alys, with either of them, was worth a lot of sacrifices.
Unless he didn’t like us. Then what was the point?
If he was some stranger on the street, it wouldn’t be worth it to give him the time of day, but he was our friend. One third of The Wonderland Crew, and we owed him the chance to explain.
I got why Alys was upset, and didn’t want to take that from her. Even though I didn’t personally know them during the Don incident, I could still see today how much that asshole left scars.
I didn’t—couldn’t—believe that was Onyx.
When the whales were safe and The Voyage Home was complete, I pulled Alys into Aubrey’s kitchen, to talk.
