built him up in my mind as this Adonis for a few months. Then one night we were at the same party and ended up hooking up. Cue months of me pining over him as he didn’t return my texts, and then cue me waking up on Edie’s couch one morning and her saying, ‘Umm…you gave Lloyd a black eye.’ ” I was blushing, I could feel it, even all these years later. “Apparently I wandered into a party where Lloyd was, presumably made a fool of myself hanging all over him as he, like, casually tried to get rid of me, and then—just as Edie found me, lucky-slash-unlucky me—I guess I tried to playfully hit him with a pillow and somehow my elbow clocked him in the eye.”
A new thought, opening like an umbrella: Had it gone down that way? I’d seen his black eye later, as I refreshed his Facebook profile obsessively. He and I hadn’t spoken again, and I’d avoided the topic with Edie. Maybe she’d lied for my benefit. Maybe I’d confronted him, screamed in his face, thrown an object or an elbow or a punch.
“Serves him right,” Damien announced.
The front door jangled and Will walked in, clearly surprised to see Damien and me. He looked exhausted, and I promised, without prompting, that we’d be leaving soon.
“No, no, you’re always welcome here. I’m going straight to the gym, anyway.” He headed into the hallway.
“Lindsay, you’re welcome to stay in the guest room if you don’t feel like schlepping,” Tessa said once he’d left. “Use it now, before we turn it into a nursery.”
“I’m not invited?” Damien teased.
“Oh, please, you live five minutes away,” she replied.
I laughed. “Nah, I’ll leave you guys alone. Oh, but one other thing: I looked up Calhoun’s landlord,” I said. “Major creeper who had a weird crush on Edie.”
Damien lifted his pointer finger. “Pedophilic slumlord? I know the type.”
“Exactly. Apparently he died in a fire the winter before last.”
“Whoa. Like, arson?” Tessa asked.
“Unclear.”
Damien leaned forward. “Maybe he killed Edie and then God struck him down for it! That would explain everything.”
Tessa played along. “You’re right! Case closed. Let’s go celebrate.”
We raised our water glasses, and Damien downed his rosé.
“Oh, I almost forgot, I have something for you,” Damien said to Tessa. He rushed off to the foyer and I fought down a flicker of hurt, that Damien was already done with this topic. A moment later, he returned with a little bag from the neighborhood’s most bourgeois baby shop.
Tessa reached inside and pulled out a gray onesie with the words FUCKING ADORABLE splashed across the front.
“I love it!” She rose to kiss his cheek. “Although I’m not sure how Will is gonna feel about our kid having fucking on his or her chest.”
“Well, the store also had adorable pink and blue things, but until you do a highly Instagrammed gender reveal, I—”
“Sex!” I corrected.
Damien turned to me. “What?”
“It’s a biological sex reveal—we won’t know the gender until they’re old enough to have a gender identity.”
He lifted his palms. “Linds, you can’t be yelling ‘Sex!’ while I’m speaking and expect me to keep my train of thought. On that note, I gotta go—I have a date tonight. Lindsay, keep us posted on the murderous hottie, ’kay?”
He and Will left at the same time, an odd couple with Will’s skinny legs popping out of his gym shorts and Damien’s muscled body encased in well-tailored resort wear. Tessa set her feet on the coffee table and leaned back.
“You doing okay, Linds?”
“I don’t know. I think so. I just…that video. Christ. I’d give anything to just go back in time and be a fly on the wall, see what happened next. Fuck, I’d give anything to make the camera keep recording. Literally.”
“We’ll figure it out. It’ll be okay.”
I nodded. “I hate that she was cheating on Alex,” I blurted out.
Tessa raised her eyebrows, waiting.
“I mean, I guess it makes me mad. That she was doing that. And then I’m mad at myself for judging her because, c’mon, she’s dead.” Something that’s always bothered me about cheating: It seems so greedy. I would gladly take just one partner. You need two?
Tessa nodded. “I mean, cheating sucks, but it happens. Either way, you’re not wrong for feeling your feelings.”
“Have you ever been cheated on?” I asked.
She kind of laugh-sighed. “Okay, I’m going to tell you something,” she said. “Years ago, I became totally convinced that Will was cheating on me. We had kind of a rough first