I looked up at the kitchen window, which faced a brick wall, while the world shifted to make room for this revelation. How had Edie had a secret affair without any of us noticing? I saw her at least a few times a week; the other three lived with her, for Christ’s sake. Then again, she’d been distant as soon as that June, hanging out with the crew less, wandering off on her own more. God, how little I’d known her. I flashed back suddenly to myself in my apartment the night after my big fight with Edie, crying to my kind but distant roommate who’d had no idea what to say, bleating between hiccups that it wasn’t just the things Edie had screamed at me, it was me, my own judgment, shaken to its core. I couldn’t believe I’d trusted her; I’d befriended her with these scales fitted firmly over my eyes.
I poured some seltzer into a juice glass and drank it down. The movements made me feel purposeful: Adult Woman Recaps Bottle and Places It Back in the Fridge. Then I called Tessa and she invited me over, sending a car to pick me up. I called Damien on the way and begged him to walk the few blocks from his place to hers, and he reached her front door just as I was getting out of the car.
In Tessa’s chic, white living room, I stroked Marlon’s soft back and told them everything I’d learned. Damien sipped the rosé he’d brought over. From a leather chair, Tessa listened, making notes on a notepad and nodding, a neat row of her cool geometric letters. Something about her manual note-taking soothed me. So anachronistic, a librarian still in love with physical things, card catalogs and musty books and those checkout slips glued inside the cover, stamped with date after date after date.
“Alex is looking insanely sketchy, right?” I concluded. “Between this and that crazy shit he said out of nowhere on the tape.”
“I still haven’t watched it,” Damien announced, and Tessa rolled her eyes and brought him up to speed.
“He’s the hot one, right?” he added, after taking it all in.
I sighed. “Yes, Damien. And I thought Edie was obsessed with him. So I’m pretty shocked.”
“Seems suspect that he never told anyone, the police or anything,” Tessa said. “Not to mention the fact that he told the cops you came to the concert with him. He and Sarah can’t both be right.”
I nodded. “It’s weird, right? I need to figure out exactly how that went down. It wasn’t gonna happen on the phone.” I rubbed at the spot between my brows. The third eye. “I wonder if I can get him to meet up in person.”
“Good idea. In a public place, obviously.” Tessa tapped the pen cap against her lips. “I mean, whoever did this is probably not going to be very helpful.”
“I know.” If somebody else did this, if this wasn’t me running on a hamster wheel until I concluded it was indeed a regular old suicide, just like I’d always believed.
“Whomever she was sleeping with sounds pretty suspect, too,” she added. “Alex said it ended when he found out? Maybe someone didn’t like that.”
“Maybe. I wish he would’ve told me who it was.”
“Yeah.” She doodled on her page, a slow spiral.
“You know, I’m impressed with how much ass Edie was getting,” Damien said. It was a playful blow dart, and we all laughed. Marlon stirred, disturbed by my shaking torso.
“Right?” I said. “She conquers her building crush and then almost immediately starts sleeping with someone else on the side.”
“Didn’t you say you used to have a building crush, too?” Tessa asked.
I sighed. “No, the guy I was kind of obsessed with didn’t live in Calhoun. And it only culminated in hooking up once but still took over my brain for, like, a year.” The hurt had felt so senseless and embarrassing. This wasn’t a thing, I’d reminded myself over and over. It was like turning around after bowling a gutter ball, hoping to share an exaggerated shrug, only to discover that none of your friends were watching anyway.
“Ooh, what happened?” Damien said. He narrowed his eyes. “Was the sex bad?”
“I mean, yeah, but it wasn’t that. Oh, god. His name was Lloyd, of all things.” Confessing felt like a comfort, an abrupt hook from the horrifying thought of Alex hurting Edie. “I met him on a totally random night in the winter and then