“Well, that’s bullshit,” Lilly says immediately.
Will blinks, caught up short by the baldness of it. “Excuse me?”
“I said,” she repeats, hopping down off the counter and splashing more wine into both their glasses, “it’s bullshit. I hate when people say things like that, like the way you act as a human is some binary thing you’re born with or not. You want to be a good brother, just... be a good brother.” She shrugs, gesturing in his direction with her wineglass as she walks backward in the direction of the living room. “Call her up and ask her how she’s doing. Invite her out here. Reassure her that she doesn’t need to have her buccal fat remediated by a professional.”
“It’s not like that for me, though,” Will protests. “Also, I don’t know what that last thing is.”
Lilly ignores him. “You don’t know how to use the telephone?” she asks, sweeping an armful of throw pillows off the sofa before curling up at one end of it. “You have way too many of those, PS.”
“I didn’t buy them,” he says, following her into the living room. “They came with the—whatever. The point is, I’m not thekind of person people trust with their secrets. And I don’t always know how to trust people with mine.”
Lilly shakes her head. “I don’t think that’s true,” she insists, tucking her long legs underneath her. “You told me about what happened back in New York, right?”
“Yeah, well.” Will watches her for a moment, feeling the back of his neck get warm. He likes seeing her here, is the truth—likes how comfortable she looks, the way she has of making herself at home wherever she goes. His heart has been thrumming since the moment he saw her outside, a feeling like a curtain rising. “You’re a special case.”
“Because it doesn’t actually matter what I think of you?”
“That’s not what I—” Will shakes his head as he sits down beside her, his knee just bumping hers. “Can I ask you a question? Why do you always have to immediately jump to the most dickish possible interpretation of whatever it is I’m saying?”
“Habit,” Lilly says immediately, mouth curving as she turns to face him. “Experience.”
“Rude.”
“Yeah, well.” She knocks her knee against his one more time, not quite gentle. “I’m rude.” She grins. “Is that what happened with you and Nick, in the end?” she teases. “He wanted you to bare your soul to him, and you were too emotionally unavailable?”
“Me and Nick?” That surprises him, and not in a good way; all at once, Will’s whole body goes tense. “What does Nick have to do with anything?”
“No,” Lilly says quickly, “nothing. I’m curious, that’s all. You’re saying you’re not good in relationships, and you guys obviously had some kind of”—she waves her hand—“intense relational malfunction, so—”
“Why is that something you care about?”
Lilly lifts an eyebrow. “Easy,” she says, laughing a little. “It’s not, particularly.”
“It sounds like it is.” At the very back of his head he knows he’s probably overreacting, that the very mention of Nick’s name turns him hotheaded and irrational; still, he can’t quite turn it around. “Like, is that why you came over here? To pump me for information about Nick? Because that’s cheap, Lilly. Even for—” He breaks off.
“Watch yourself.” Lilly’s eyes narrow, her own temper flaring. “I’m just saying, if you’re going to go around making vague insinuations that someone is a dirtbag—particularly if you’re going to get him fired from his job—at the very least you ought to be able to back it up with some data.”
“Fired from his—” Will has no fucking idea what she’s talking about. “Are you sleeping with him?” he blurts, then immediately wishes he hadn’t. “Is that what’s going on here?”
“Wow.” Lilly barks a laugh. “That is emphatically none of your business.”
“You make it my business when you show up at my house in the middle of the night to grill me—”
“It’s like nine thirty p.m., Will!” Lilly throws her hands up. “How old are you, a hundred?”
“That’s not the point. The point is—” Fuck, he can’t think. He can never think, when it’s her. “The point is—”
“The point is you talk a big game about who I might or might not be sleeping with when you’re hooking up with your literal best friend’s sister,” Lilly interrupts. “And I’ll tell you, Will: I’m not really interested in hearing it.”
All the blood drains out of Will’s face at once. “How didyou—how do you know about that?” he asks, then realizes half a second too late that she didn’t; she was fishing, that’s all, and there he was openmouthed at the other end of the line. “There’s not—I mean, we aren’t—” He winces. “I ended it.”
Lilly rolls her eyes. “Uh-huh,” she says primly. “I’m sure you did.” She sets her wineglass down on the coffee table, then stands up and brushes her hands off on the seat of her jeans. “I should get going,” she announces. He can’t decide whether or not she looks hurt. “I’m leaving for Palm Springs tomorrow, so. I won’t see you.”
“No,” he agrees, which isn’t what he means to say at all. “I guess you won’t.”
Lilly sighs. “You know what, Will?” she starts, then seems to think better of it. The door slams shut behind her as she goes.
Once he’s alone again Will forces himself to finish what he was doing before he saw her out there in the darkness: loading the dishwasher, making his coffee for tomorrow morning. Finally he picks up the phone.You had no idea what you were talking about, he starts, then deletes it.
