I thought for a sec that maybe it was me. But I was wrong, I guess.
It’s a few minutes before his response comes in. I stare at the phone the entire time.
You GUESS? he finally asks. Do you want me to call you? I’ve got an appointment in five, but I can try to talk you down first.
My fingers skitter across the keys. No, I’m fine now. I just panicked because the memoir says the witness was a girl and I had this dream and I’ve been seeing a man’s arm around Astrid’s waist. It turns out the witness was someone named Lily, though, so I guess the dream was just a dream and the man’s arm is… part of the spiral.
I reread the last two sentences, and even I can see how ridiculous they sound. I press the backspace button, send only No, I’m fine now. Then I add, Let’s talk later. Love you!
When the door to Rusty’s jingles behind me, I turn around expecting to see Ted, but it’s somebody else. I spin back to face the street, but a hand touches my arm. I stiffen against it, right as the person says my maiden name.
“Brierley?”
I look at the man beside me and take an instinctive step back.
“Cooper,” I say. Cooper Kelley. The brother of my childhood best friend, Kyla.
He’s bulked up since the last time I saw him, five years ago at Kyla’s wedding. His biceps stretch the sleeves of his T-shirt, and I can see the outline of his chest beneath the cotton. But the tattoo on his forearm—that hasn’t changed at all.
Cooper leans forward to hug me, a move I couldn’t have predicted, and I stand taut in his embrace, arms pinned to my sides, heart already racing. My knees go rubbery, instantly unstable, and I can’t catch my breath in his constricting grip. When he finally releases me, his grin crinkles the skin around his eyes.
“Wow, it’s good to see you, Brierley.”
I can’t bring myself to meet his gaze, so I look at his teeth instead. The bottom ones are still crooked, pointing toward and away from each other like old gravestones in a cemetery. They’re yellow, too, and his voice is raspier than I remember. He’s still a smoker.
“It’s Douglas now,” I correct him.
He cocks his head for a moment, then nods. “Right,” he says. “Kyla told me you got married. Congrats.”
“Thanks.” I shrug. “It’s been a few years, but—”
“Have you seen Kyla’s kids lately? Thomas is only two months, so he’s still, like, a sack of potatoes. But Leland? The three-year-old? She’s fuckin’ reading already.” He takes a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket, taps it against his palm. “But you probably know all that. I’m sure you visit all the time.”
I nod, even though he’s wrong. I’ve seen pictures of Leland, but that’s it. I only know about Thomas through Facebook. Kyla told me she was pregnant with Leland at my wedding, and I tried so hard to give her the reaction she deserved—a squeal of delight, a promise to visit her in Maine for baby clothes shopping—but panic shot through me. Kyla and Jeff had only been married for a year. Would I, too, be expected to start having babies so soon? I wanted to pull her aside, yell over the DJ’s music to ask if she knew what she was doing. I wanted to tell her how fragile children are, how easily broken and bruised. I wanted to crouch down on the floor in my wedding dress, rocking back and forth like a kid myself.
That’s why I’ve distanced myself from Kyla, whose childhood home I used to sleep at more often than my own. I haven’t trusted myself to be as warm about her new family as I should be. I don’t want to seem indifferent to the children she loves more than anyone. Mostly, though, I’ve been afraid of the anxiety that swirls in my stomach whenever I see photos of her kids. Last week, right after sex with Eric, I unfollowed her on Facebook. I muted her stories on Instagram.
Cooper lights his cigarette and blows the smoke away from my face. I’m grateful for this. When Kyla and I were kids, he’d exhale so close to us that our throats often burned—secondhand smoke, lung cancer that lurks in cells and bides its time—and when he drove us around in the summer, he’d ash on our bare legs. He was always trying to torture us. Me,