“Sunset,” I tell her, before clarifying, “just before.”
The quiet tapping of brushes against each other sounds from the other side of the couch as she arranges her tools, and then a silence falls through the air. For the next ten minutes, the only noise in the room is the music, Maeve’s wet brush on the canvas, and my wistful breathing as I remember the adventure with Colin.
“What are you going to do about him?” she eventually asks, as if she’d been in my mind with me, back in the tall grass with the natural world surrounding us and the cool air pressing against our skin.
I drag myself off the cushion, leaning over the back of the couch to watch her. She’s bent forward, her brush working meticulously between her fingers on the straw-colored strands of grass. The sky stretches across the little canvas in a perfect replica of how it’d been that evening. Golden hues and orange streams of clouds blend into a mix of blues. As always, I’m amazed at the amount of detail she captures on such a small square of fabric.
“Beg. Blow him again, maybe.”
Maeve puffs out a laugh, glancing at me before sitting straight to stretch her back out. “I mean about the case. We didn’t anticipate that teacher being found, let alone so soon.”
“No,” I groan, picking at a thread on the couch cushion. “We didn’t.”
“How long do you think until he pieces everything together?” She turns her attention back to the painting, taking the pressure off me.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But hopefully he’s in love with me by then.”
She smiles at the canvas, splitting her focus between perfecting her work and comforting her best friend. “There is no world where that doesn’t happen, babe.”
***
A party. Lovely.
The last time I was around this many people at once was in the courtroom where my mother’s murder trial took place. And that was only semi-willingly.
Hanging out in crowds of people makes my heart race, especially a crowd of strangers, because someone’s bound to recognize me, and that shit just pisses me right off. All they end up wanting to know is if it was me or my mother who really did it, and if I can explain to them in vivid detail what the dead bodies looked like. Both of which I obviously have no desire to discuss.
Stella has grown up a bit since the media frenzy that put her in the spotlight, so people don’t recognize her as often anymore—which she frequently uses to her advantage. And while Maeve’s media drama has just barely died off, her hair is much darker than it used to be, so people can’t seem to place her familiar face.
My drama is fresh in everyone’s minds, especially since my mother’s successful appeal became front page news again.
So far, no one has recognized me. Or if they have, they haven’t made it obvious.
I was surprised Maeve had kept in touch with one of the guys whose asses we kicked at the bowling alley the other night. Maeve doesn’t open up easily, but she is slightly more inclined to trust than Stella and I are, which is worrying.
The tall guy with blond hair that she seems to have taken a particular interest in has his arm draped around her shoulder, the two of them standing next to the fireplace with red Solo cups in hand. I glance around the party from my spot near the kitchen, wondering if this is how all parties are these days.
There’s a beer pong game happening near where Stella’s sitting on the couch and Stone is standing next to her, chatting up a group of guys he must know somehow, his hand movements indicating he’s definitely telling a fishing story. Music blares from a bass in the corner. There’s a couple disappearing upstairs together which actually makes me laugh out loud.It’s all so stereotypically high school, and everyone here appears to be in their thirties, like me. We should be too old for this shit.
Shouldn’t we be having dinner parties with wine and sitting around a glass firepit, reminiscing about thegood ol’ days?
It’s also the middle of the week. Who throws parties on a fucking Tuesday?
I went to tons of parties in high school. I was popular because I was nice and pretty, and head captain of the cheer team. And because mommy was a millionaire. I saw Colin at a couple of parties back then, back when joining the force was just a dream of his—which I knew because he wrote a paper on it that he proudly presented in front of the whole class our senior year.
“Hey.” One of the other guys from the bowling alley appears next to me, holding a drink in my direction. I eye the drink in his hand suspiciously. His good looks don’t fool me. I don’t trust anyone.
The liquid in the cup is amber colored, a layer of foam dissipating on the surface. I do plan to have a drink at some point, seeing as how Stone is going to drive me home since my Bug is still parked at the police department because I’m utterly irresponsible. Though I have my wits about me enough to know not to take a drink from a man I don’t know and that I didn’t see being poured.
“Hey,” I say back, turning my attention back to the room.
“Max,” he says, reintroducing himself.
“I remember.”
He laughs, standing there with both of his hands occupied, not taking the hint that I’m not as interested as I might have been at the bowling alley. “You look familiar,” he muses, studying my face.
Fucking great. This party just went from awful to unbearable.
