“Throwing yourself in the ring to be a serial killer?” Alicia asked him, amused.
“Be poor taste to make the Arab guy the killer,” he replied conversationally. “However, I click too many demographic boxes to be offed first.”
“If anyone’s killing anyone, it’s going to be me,” Alicia said. We all stared in her direction. “I’m the one no one’s expecting.” There was a beat of silence as we processed that and wondered if we needed to run for our lives. “Anyway,” she continued. “We’re here to talk about Ryan’s sex life.”
Hey, I had one of those now. Cool. Too bad it was awful. Not cool. “That’s why you’re all here?” I asked. They nodded. “Don’t you want to say goodb—"
“Goodbye,” Lydia and Zach said impatiently. “Now, come on,” Lydia urged.
If I wanted to talk about this with them, I could. Luke and I said so. Not like it would be a secret when Joey and Zach both knew. However, the memories were still too fresh. And now that we had found each other, they were all using the light from their phones to illuminate the little square we formed with our bodies.
“It didn’t go very well,” I told them vaguely. “Whatever. It happens. We’ll have other chances.” Look at me being all mature.
There was a pause as they all considered that. “We don’t accept that,” Zach informed me, speaking for the group.
I scoffed. “You can’t not accept my feelings.”
“We know you.” I couldn’t see his haughty, assessing look clearly, but I could picture it since that’s what his face always looked like. “There’s no way you can be this calm when you’re about to leave.” Also, his know-it-all look wasn’t as hot as Luke’s. Maybe because Luke’s was rarer than his.
“I’m growing, maturing. There’s nothing to say.” That lasted a second. “OH MY GOD, it was so terrible.” I flung myself in what I thought was Alicia’s general direction and she patted me comfortingly on the back. “This is the worst thing to ever happen to anyone in the history of the universe, in the history of all the universes.”
“It can’t be that bad,” Alicia said.
“You were there,” I said to Zach. “You tell her.”
“Yeah, it was pretty bad,” he agreed with me.
“Come on,” Lydia said. “It’s okay. There were clothes off, body parts touching.” Her voice tried to be encouraging, it just didn’t quite get there. Was I dying? How come no one told me I was dying? There couldn’t be another reason Lydia was being nice.
“Why are you being an optimist, Lydia?” Zach asked her. This was a great second, where I got to think about the wrongness of Lydia being cheerful instead of other wrongness that had happened recently.
“I’m trying to look on the bright side.” Her phone illuminated her enough as she made a face. “I don’t think I’m very good at it.” She gestured to all of us. “One of my favorite things about us is that we don’t have an optimist in our group… just in this instance, I think it’s okay to focus on the positives.” I guess that made sense.
Still, it was weird. We all stared at Lydia unsurely. “Really? No one’s going to help me out here?” she asked. Not sure why Alicia wasn’t joining in, but I’m totally sure Zach and I had the same idea to just let Lydia struggle to list bright sides because that sounded fun. “You had sex,” she tried. Don’t remind me! Wait, that was supposed to be a good thing. “You’re having sex. No one died and you got to see Luke naked. Plus, you’re having sex.” Guess that was true. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. Maybe— “Or well,” Lydia continued. “You were. Now you’re leaving and you won’t be.”
Anyone who had bets on me being the murderer in this horror movie scenario was about to be rich. I was going to murder Lydia. “Don’t make things worse just for your own amusement,” I told her.
She frowned. “Wasn’t as fun as I thought it would be.”
“I’m so sorry.” How dare my pain not properly amuse you.
“It’s alright,” she told me, either not noticing or not caring about my sharp tone. “You’ve had an eventful day.” I desperately clung onto that word. Eventful. I didn’t want to attach other words. Disastrous. Doomed. Unmitigated disaster. The last one was two words. Unmitigateddisaster.
“She’s right,” Zach said. “You’re having sex. That’s what it’s all about.” There was a pause. He looked at Alicia. “For many.” Life was certainly all about sex for him. Maybe with some baseball thrown in there, but my BFF was asexual.
“Nice save,” Alicia told him, but she sounded more amused than offended.
Hard to make out but it looked like Zach was regarding her seriously. Or the blur where Zach’s voice came from turned the top of its muddled shape towards the dark Alicia was obscured by. They weren’t holding their phones up anymore. “You’re my opposite. I have nothing against you.” He sounded wise and worldly. “We must both exist in the world.”
“Is that the nicest thing you’ve ever said to anyone?” she wondered.
Zach made an affirmative noise after a moment. “Think it might be.”
“I’ll take it,” she decided. Lucky. The nicest thing Zach ever said to me was ‘look out for that’ but then he pointed in the wrong direction and so that’s where my gaze went instead of the actual place I was supposed to be avoiding. The nicest thing Zach ever said to me wasn’t very nice.
There was a dim bluish glow for a moment as Zach’s phone illuminated a small area. He found Alicia and offered her his arm and they started walking back together. Except they were heading the wrong way, so Lydia and I were in front while we headed back. We didn’t link arms, but we were side by side, wordlessly going the right way. The other two would figure it out eventually. Or they would get killed by an axe murderer. And hey, if that second thing happened, that would take the focus off Luke and me.
I prayed for an axe murderer. I didn’t want my best friend to die in a horror movie scenario, but sacrifices had to be made. By others. I had a bad night; it was someone else’s turn to suffer.
