main headquarters—a burger-and-beer place two miles inland.
The room was loud and boisterous, but the volume dropped as soon as the door shut behind us. It was a reaction to Parker. They hadn’t seen him here all summer, and now they came to pay their respects, one by one. Girls in jeans and fitted tops. Guys in khaki shorts and polos. Each of them blending in with the next. Hands on his shoulder, fingers curled around his upper arm. A sympathetic smile. A caress.
I’m all right.
Thanks for thinking of us.
Yeah, I’m here for the memorial.
In the silence that followed, one of the men raised a shot glass and said, “To Sadie.”
Parker was pulled into a group at the corner table. He peered over his shoulder at me, raised two fingers, and I made my way to the bar.
The bartender raised his eyes briefly to meet mine, then went back to wiping down the countertop. “What’ll it be,” he said absently, as if he knew I didn’t belong.
A man took the seat beside me as I ordered—a bourbon on the rocks for Parker, a light beer on tap for me—and I could feel him staring at the side of my face. I wasn’t in the mood for small talk, but he knocked on the bar top to get my attention. “Knock knock,” he said, just in case I hadn’t noticed, and then he added, “Hi there,” when I finally faced him. Greg Randolph, who had taken such delight in telling me about Sadie and Connor at the party last year. “Remember me?”
I nodded hello, smiling tightly.
He asked it as if he hadn’t seen me around for the last seven years. As if he hadn’t met me beside the Lomans’ pool many summers ago, at a fund-raising party hosted by Bianca when I’d been dressed up in Sadie’s clothes, tugging at the bottom of the dress, which suddenly had felt two inches too short, when Greg Randolph had stepped between the two of us, telling Sadie some trivial gossip that she seemed wholly disinterested in. He paused to politely address every adult who walked by.
Don’t let the nice-guy act fool you, she’d said when he turned away. Underneath, he’s a mean drunk, like his father.
She had not lowered her voice, and my eyes widened, thinking someone might’ve heard. Greg’s dad, maybe, who was probably one of the adults in the group behind us—if not Greg himself. But Sadie had smiled at my expression. No one listens that hard, Avie. Only you. She’d waved her hand around in that airy way, as if it were all so inconsequential. All this. This nothingness.
I never knew what happened between Sadie and Greg.
The bartender placed the drinks on the counter, and I left my card to keep the tab open.
“That for me?” Greg asked, jutting his chin toward Parker’s glass.
“Nope,” I said, turning away.
He grabbed my arm, liquid spilling over onto my thumb as he did. “Wait, wait. Don’t go so soon. I haven’t seen you around all summer. Not like we used to.”
I could sense the bartender watching, but when I looked over my shoulder, he had moved on, wiping down the far end of the bar.
I stared at Greg’s hand on my arm and placed the drinks back on the counter, so as not to make a scene. “I’m sorry, do you even know my name?”
He laughed then, loud and overconfident. “Of course I do. You’re Sadie’s monster.”
Everything prickled. From the way he used her name, to the leer of his whisper. “What did you just say?”
He grinned, didn’t answer right away. I could tell he was enjoying this. “She created you. A mini-Sadie. A monster in her likeness. And now she’s gone, but here you are. Still out here, living her life.”
Parker was standing just a few feet away. I lowered my voice. “Fuck off,” I said.
But Greg laughed as I picked up the drinks again. “That drink for Parker?” he said as I turned to leave. “Ah, I see how it is. From one Loman to the next, then.”
I kept moving, pretending he’d said nothing at all.
Parker smiled as I set the drinks on the high table where he was standing. “This was a good idea,” he said. “Thank you.”
I sipped and shivered, trying to shake off the conversation at the bar.
Parker had barely raised his glass to his lips when three women approached us from the side. “Parker, so good to see you here.”
Ellie Arnold. Last I’d seen her was the party