Page 27 of Licks

“He must want to torture me, slowly and painfully. It’s his form of retribution.” It was probably why he’d agreed to come out. To humiliate me. Make me look bad in front of my friends. Our friends. Whatever.

Ainsley’s eyebrows finally descended from her hairline. “I can’t weigh in on what went down until you fill me in.”

I contemplated putting her off, not reliving my teenage stupidity again, but there was no point. It was easier this time. The confession still shamed me, but the more often I spoke about it—to Rachel, with August, now Ainsley—the easier it got. “Do you think that’s why he aired our dirty laundry?”

Ainsley cocked her head. “What’s why? I don’t follow.”

“When he showed up, that ambush of his seemed—”

“Technically,” Rachel cut in, “it wasn’t an ambush. He was answering Ainsley’s question.”

I glowered at Ainsley. “Remind me to thank you for that later.”

She plucked a sunflower from a sink vase and offered it to me. “A token for my peccadillo.”

I accepted her gift and spun the massive flower. “Have you been playing crosswords again?”

“Yes, but I cheated for that word, which means a small transgression. Like August’s fumble now. But isn’t everything better out in the open?”

“Which brings me to the point I was trying to make.” This conversation was tangling as quickly as my thoughts. “I hadn’t spoken with anyone about that night for nine years, and I get the impression August hadn’t either. Even thinking about it before made me feel like I’d eaten one of Ainsley’s vegan desserts.” I mimed an upset stomach. Served her right for the accidental ambush.

She rolled her eyes. “You guys love my baking.”

We did not, but we ate the horrible efforts anyway.

“What about now?” Rachel asked me, avoiding the vegan discussion like the good friend she was. “Do you feel less pukey about the whole thing?”

“If I stop and relive the fiasco, I start to spiral, but it’s easier. So either August wants to torment me in front of you guys, or he’s trying to lighten our history, make it less of a big deal.”

Option A meant this reunion of ours would end shortly, no friendship maintained. Option B meant he might truly want to put our past to bed. He might want me in that bed with him.

The possibility excited and terrified me in equal measure.

Ainsley looked over my head, at the mirror behind me. Her purple wrap dress hugged her generous curves, her small stature elevated by matching stilettos. She adjusted the tie that hung at her side. “Judging by the way he looked at you, I’d say the only tormenting he wants to do involves ropes, hot wax, and silk sheets.”

That visual had heat flooding my neck. “How was he looking at me?” I fanned my face with the massive flower.

“Like you’re a supermodel, and he’s had your picture on his wall forever, like the skimpy bikini kind, and he just realized he gets to sex you up.”

I choked on air. “That was specific.”

Ainsley gestured toward the door, as though August was there. “So was his extensive eye-fucking. He wants bikini-poster sex.”

Too frazzled to compute that, I stroked the sunflower’s petals. “I’m in deep water here. The shark-infested kind. I mean, August is, without a doubt, the one who got away. If I had another chance with him, I’d jump at it.” Pole vault, to be precise. “But there’s been another development.”

More drama to unload, because I was living in soap opera central. Once I finished outlining the arrival of my mother’s lost luggage, the time gap between its contents and it going missing, the journal, and the first clue I’d found, the girls had sat on either side of me, scooched close in a love sandwich.

Rachel gathered my hand in hers. “Are you nervous about searching for your dad?”

Terrified. Nauseated. Overwhelmed. “Definitely.” I tried dissecting the million and one thoughts boxing my brain. “I believe we get what we get in the family department. We don’t choose our parents or siblings or relatives. I got short-strawed and made it through, but I spent a lot of years resenting my mother, and resenting myself in the process. It’s part of the reason I pushed August away back then—my shitty self-worth. And I’m worried searching for my father now could take me back to that place, but I also see finding him as a brand new chance, my last-ditch effort to have family. I have so many questions for him.”

Did he seek adrenaline rushes, too?

Had he chosen to leave me, or had Mary never told him I existed?

Did he hate mayonnaise?

Was he afraid of spiders?