the wall beside plants that looked like many of the patients beyond the double doors—barely hanging in there—made her livid. Made her feel like someone needed to wipe everything away. Just toss out the worn furniture, tear out the plants, throw the ugly paintings across the room. Just destroy it all. She thought about being the one who did that. The image of her stomping around and Godzillaing everything in her path made her giggle. She used the toe of her tasteful sandal to tap the stain. “What do you think this shape looks like?”
Tennyson looked down. “I don’t know. Jesus?”
Melanie started laughing harder. “You don’t know what Jesus looks like.”
“And you do?” Tennyson asked, arching an eyebrow. Wow. Her brows were pretty. Who had pretty eyebrows, anyway?
“I’m closer to God than you are.”
“Because you go to church? Okay. Whatever.” But Tennyson smiled through her tears. Then she moved closer to her. “You want a smoke?”
“Here?” Melanie looked at the NO SMOKING sign by the open double doors leading to the hallway. She absolutely wanted a cigarette. Like, desperately.
“No. Back at my place.” She moved closer and lowered her voice. “I have a few joints.”
“Tennyson,” Melanie said, knowing her eyes were about to pop.
“Don’t tell the cop. I actually got Marc to get them. I was going to take them to Hillary. Weed makes you crazy hungry, and I thought . . . you know.” Tennyson looked totally earnest.
“You were going to take Hillary marijuana?” she whispered.
Tennyson shrugged.
Melanie started laughing. “You’re crazy. I mean, truly bonkers, but I sort of love that about you. I’m not sure I know anyone who would procure illegal drugs to give my sister but you.”
“So? You wanna?”
“I can’t leave. My sister just died. I have to—”
Tennyson held up a hand. “Whoa, hey, this is exactly the best time to do this. Like, I think Hillary would approve. I think she’d tell everyone waiting on you to do everything responsible, dutiful, tactful, and appropriate to fuck off.”
“Hillary would never say fuck.”
Tennyson rolled her eyes. “She’d hold up her three fingers and say read between the lines.”
Exactly.
Melanie stood for a moment, glancing around at the nearly empty space around them. At the handsome police officer leaning against the wall in the hallway. Then she looked back at Tennyson, who wore the same kind of T-shirt dress she’d always loved in high school. And Tretorns. She didn’t know they still made those. This woman didn’t look like the Tennyson with the Birkin purse who had sashayed back into her life and busted it open. This woman looked like the friend she’d once loved like a sister.
Her sister.
Hilly was dead.
“Let’s go,” Melanie said.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It had been a long time since Tennyson had smoked a joint.
She forgot how weird marijuana made her feel. Like her skin was slippy and she could meld herself into the couch and live there forever. It also made her want cereal. Not the fiber kind, either. The big honeycomb ones filled with sugar that her mother used to buy her as a prize at the grocery store. She hadn’t had a big bowl of that particular sin in many years.
“We should order some cereal,” Tennyson said, taking another hit and passing it to Melanie, who wore an old T-shirt of Andrew’s and a pair of workout pants. Melanie’s dress sat folded neatly over her evening handbag, which sat on the Eames chair in the corner.
Melanie took a toke, fanning the air. “I don’t think you can order cereal like you can order pizza.”
“So why is that not a thing?”
Melanie shrugged. “Are you that high?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, maybe? It’s been a while since I’ve done drugs,” Tennyson said.
Melanie sat up and looked at her, wide eyed. “Have you done other drugs? Like real drugs?”
Tennyson made a face. “I did a lot of things I don’t want to talk about.”
“Why not?”
Because she was ashamed of much of what she’d done. Not ridiculously ashamed like Melanie’s father had obviously been, but ashamed enough to not want to admit to doing lines of coke in a club bathroom, a threesome with a B-list actor and his girlfriend, or the one summer she became a dominatrix so she could pay rent. Her memory was scarred by that particular summer, which had concluded with the affair with Rolfe. Seeing those two lines on a pregnancy test for the second time in her life had been enough to bring her crashing back to reality. She’d just turned twenty-three