Will’s lips twitch. “If I didn’t hate you so much, Lilly Benedetto, I might be trying a little bit to impress you.” He shrugs. “I used to cook for my sister sometimes, back in high school.”
“When the help was on vacation?”
Will makes a face. “Don’t act like your family doesn’t have help, too.”
They don’t, actually; not anymore, at least. She thinks of the stack of meal kit boxes listing in the pantry back at her parents’ house, and decides not to mention them. No reason to add theirdwindling fortune to the long list of reasons he thinks he’s better than her. “Come on,” she says instead, picking up a stack of plates and grabbing some napkins. It’s only her and June left by now, the tech bros off to catch a flight back to San Francisco and Anne Mulgrew home to read the encyclopedia. Lilly has no idea what happened to Sera. She hopes she didn’t drown. “Let’s get out there.”
Charlie grills some steaks to go with the salad, plus some vegetables for June, and they all sit around the long wooden table on the patio, the outdoor lights casting a warm white glow across the pool. Lilly’s been in her share of nice backyards, but she can’t help feeling a tiny bit covetous of the outdoor kitchen and capacious pergola, the lush garden teeming with native plants. The last landscape architect Cinta worked with convinced her to do some weird mood-lighting-and-vintage-lawn-furniture situation, and now their pool at home just kind of looks like the Playboy grotto.
“To new neighbors,” Caroline says, raising her wineglass and clinking it against June’s, “and old friends.” She’s had quite a lot to drink, which Lilly has to admit makes her marginally more tolerable. She’s a pretty good storyteller, spinning yarns about the bad bosses she worked with at her old agency, the time she got rear-ended by the least of the Jonas Brothers on La Cienega Boulevard, the willowy art house ingenue whose rider was just one hundred individual serving–size bags of Doritos and nothing else.
“She never ate them, as far as I know,” Caroline says, reaching for her wineglass. “I think she just liked to have them around her.”
“To swim through,” Will posits. “Like Scrooge McDuck,” Charlie agrees.
Lilly smiles, sitting back in her chair as the warm breeze whispers through the hair on the back of her neck, the smell of citrusand chlorine and salt drifting through the air. She likes watching them together, Will and Charlie: the easy way they have with one another, their familiar back-and-forth. It reminds her of being with her sisters, the rhythms of their conversations creased and softened like a photo folded up in the back of a jeans pocket.
If the playlist he queued up for dinner is any indication, Charlie’s taste in music swerves hard and unashamedly in the direction of Hall & Oates, but as they’re finishing their steaks the opening bars of an old Stevie Wonder song pipe through the outdoor speakers, and all at once Caroline jumps to her feet. “I love this one,” she announces, holding her hands out to Lilly and June and waggling her fingers. “We should dance.”
Will’s lips twist across the table. “So that Chuck and I can admire you?” he asks.
Caroline rolls her eyes at him. “I know this might come as a shock to your system, William, but not everything is about you,” she chides, which is officially the most Lilly has ever liked her. It’s possible Lilly’s had quite a lot of wine herself. Still, there’s a certain tipsy effervescence to Caroline right now that reminds Lilly of the girls she used to meet in line in club bathrooms sometimes, the ones who would drunkenly lend her a tampon or pass her a fistful of toilet paper under the stall door before disappearing back out onto the crowded dance floor.
“Sure,” she agrees, getting to her feet and sliding one hand into Caroline’s. Just for tonight, she decides, they can be friends. “Why not?”
They twirl around on the pool deck for a while, the sun sinking down over the trees to the west of them and the music changing from Stevie to Steely Dan to Fleetwood Mac. After a couple of songs Charlie gets up and joins them, his big dog-paw handson June’s waist; Lilly dances Caroline over to the other side of the patio, wanting to give them a little bit of room. If anyone deserves a big romance, it’s June, who’s so much better than all the rest of them. It’s June, who is so sincerely good.
“I don’t know, Will,” Caroline calls over to where he’s still slouched alone at the table, scrolling through Charlie’s music with a despondent look on his face. “I don’t think Lilly and I are feeling appropriately admired.”
Will glances up, but barely. “You’re admired plenty,” he assures her. “You don’t need me.”
“He’s watching,” Caroline declares, raising her eyebrows mischievously. “He’s just worried it’ll make us vain.”
“Too late for that,” Lilly says with a shrug.
“I swear to god, Charlie.” Will drops the phone on the table in defeat. “Do you have a single song on this thing that isn’t just three and a half minutes of whammy bar? I feel like I’m growing a mustache just listening to it.”
Lilly ignores him. She ignores everyone for a moment, closing her eyes as Stevie Nicks caterwauls away over the expensive sound system; when she opens them again she finds Will staring back at her across the still, dark expanse of the swimming pool, his gaze hot and steady and overt. Caroline is staring, too, sharp and canny, and the expression on her face is enough for Lilly to remember they’re not actually friends after all.
Lilly clears her throat just a little too loudly. “You could dance, too, you know,” she calls over to Will, trying to keep her voice light.
Will snorts, leaning back in his chair and stretching his long legs out in front of him. “Please believe me when I tell you that nobody here wants to experience that.”
“He’s right,” Charlie calls helpfully. “He dances like an awkward guest host at the end ofSaturday Night Live.”
Will doesn’t smile. Instead he gets up and abruptly starts clearing the table, assembling a tidy stack of plates in one arm and heading for the kitchen without further comment. Lilly moves to help him before she quite knows what she’s doing, scooping up a couple of serving dishes and ignoring Caroline’s watchful gaze from across the patio. Let her think whatever she wants to think, Lilly decides, following him into the cool, quiet house. She doesn’t know anything.
The kitchen is dark but right away Will flicks a switch on the wall with one elbow, flooding the room with bright overhead light. So much for... whatever she thought they might do in here, Lilly guesses, unless his appendix suddenly ruptures and she needs to perform a quick DIY organ removal. “You know,” she points out, setting a heavy ceramic bowl down on the granite counter, “if you want us to leave so bad, you could just say so.”
“If I wanted you to leave, you’d know it.”
“I—” Lilly breaks off. Every time she thinks she understands what’s happening between them it immediately changes, like the flea market mood ring she had when she was fourteen that she accidentally left on the edge of the sink in the restaurant bathroom at Olivia’s first communion dinner. Lilly loved that ring. She wishes she still had it, so that maybe she could name whatever it is she feels. “Okay,” she says finally, turning on the tap and reaching for a handful of silverware. “Well, could have fooled me. Are you just that sensitive about your dance moves, then?”
“You think I give a shit about my—” Will blows a breath out, like she’s the one who’s being difficult. “I’ll do that,” he tells her, motioning to the plates.
Lilly shakes her head. She feels irritated and itchy, and she doesn’t know why. She doesn’t even like him, she reminds herself firmly. He’s the actual, literal worst, except for the part where she can’t stop looking at him, stealing quick hungry glances out of the corner of her eye. He has three tiny freckles on the side of his neck, like a constellation. His eyelashes are long as a girl’s. “I got it,” she says.
“No, really.”
