“A huge thank-you for keeping your spinning shorts on,” I joked. He looked like a Greek god.
“I aim to please.”
“Do you need food?” Tessa broke in, already heading down the hall to make him a plate. Standing around her kitchen island, Tessa shared her big news again and Damien responded like the bro I sometimes forget he is: He smiled and said, “Hey, that’s fun!” and then, after a question or two, changed the subject. Once, at the office, I’d witnessed a copy editor proudly showing him her engagement ring, which he’d barely glanced at before chirping, “It’s cute!” Yet he’ll lose his mind over a puppy on the street.
When Damien had finished eating, Tessa herded us back into the office.
“So we’re playing detectives?” Damien asked as he dragged in an extra chair. “Because I’m a regular Sherlock Homo. Just call me Fancy Drew. I’m like a…Hardy Boy?”
“Too far,” I said, smiling.
“The real mystery is why Lindsay wants to look through her old inbox,” Tessa said.
I couldn’t quite articulate it myself. To figure out why Edie killed herself? To check how I’d overlooked Sarah’s hysterical breakdown afterward? To confirm, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that I’d been up at that concert when the unthinkable happened?
“To remind myself how far I’ve come since I was twenty-three and a hot mess,” I said lightly.
Damien raised his beer. “Never change.”
Tessa began to type. “You’re sure you don’t remember your old password?”
“Absolutely not. I can barely remember my current one.” I pulled out my phone and sent my music to the speakers set high in the walls. Classical guitar filled the room—intricate flamenco music to score whatever calisthenics Tessa was doing online. I watched over her shoulder: codes being entered, archives unlocking.
Tessa and I had become friends six years ago when I approached her, tipsy on bad wine, at a bookstore following a reading that sounded interesting but wasn’t. Whoever was supposed to come with me hadn’t shown up, and I’d felt embarrassed about the seat I’d reserved with a scarf and then guarded jealously, turning people away until the event began and I became a rude person next to an empty chair. Afterward I’d swigged a big plastic cup of free wine and headed for the door, pausing just as the alcohol hit me to ask Tessa if I knew her from somewhere—her face, it was tickling my sense of déjà vu. She hadn’t seemed to remember me, but we played the maybe-from game for a while, spitting out our biographies in quick, successive questions, then gave up and started chatting and totally hit it off. Eventually I introduced her to Damien, and to my delight, they got along famously, too. I’d felt so pleased, the creator of a happy elective family after a long period of loneliness. Tessa’s a good yin to my yang. If only she’d been a man.
The front door slammed, and for a second time, Marlon yelped and sped off. Will drifted in, tall and waifish and drowning in a suit. He smiled and dropped his palms onto Tessa’s shoulders.
“Hey, hon,” she murmured without looking up.
“Hi, Will!” I called out, half standing to give him a hug. “Congratulations on fathering my new niece or nephew!”
“Mazel!” Damien added.
Will beamed. “Thanks, guys. We can hardly believe it.”
“How was your day?” Tessa asked, still typing.
“Not bad. They accepted the plea bargain on that case I was telling you about. What are you guys up to?”
“Tessa’s hacking me!” I announced.
“Is that so?” He grinned and leaned on the credenza. I like Will, who had been Tessa’s husband of only a few months when she and I became friends. The two of them had met on Match at a time when people still believed both that one could find a soul mate online and that that belief was worth paying for. (Tinder has since disabused me of both notions.) At first I wasn’t sure what to make of his soft-spoken manner, the way he’d just smile at Tessa’s jokes and grow calmer and muter the funnier she got, but now I know it’s their introvert-extrovert pas de deux. He’s a card-carrying good guy, the kind I myself haven’t encountered on dating apps in years.
“She’s helping me bust into my old email account. Because I’m an idiot and I can’t remember my old password.”
“You know, Tessa, the unauthorized access of an email account is a felony,” he said, nudging a wheel of her chair with his toe. “Additional civil liabilities, too.”