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“Sure did,” she said without an inkling of remorse.
“Why?”
“I needed to distract you from my special night with Lucas.” She grinned, as if knowing it would spear her in the heart and caring less. “Pete and Chuckie happened to be around to benefit from your altered state.”
“You slept with Lucas?” Birdie ignored her sister’s insinuation about her own sexual activities that night.
“I didn’t sleep with Lucas, I had sex with him. Hot, steamy, romantic sex.”
Birdie’s hand instinctively went to her chest, as if she needed to hold something before it fell and made a mess all over the floor of the bedroom.
“Why? Why would you do that? Did you hate me that much?”
“Please,” she scoffed. “Not everything’s about you, Birdie. I’ve always loved Lucas. But you were too starry-eyed, selfish, and full of yourself to see it. Well, guess what? The joke’s on you.”
“There’s nothing funny about what you did.” Birdie brought a hand to her mouth, taking it all in.
“Really? Because I think it’s hysterical.” With a smirk, she turned and walked back out the door, the noise from the living room invading the sanctity of the bedroom, before Maisie slammed it shut behind her.
For a moment, Birdie remained still, shell-shocked at some of the blurry gaps of that night being filled in by her sister’s toxic comments.
Woodenly, as if her body had solidified into another substance, one where her skin felt cold as ice and her heart granite, she pulled the suitcase back from under the bed, walked over to the rickety white dresser that came with the furnished apartment with twenty-year-old catalogs holding up one side, and emptied the contents.
From the top of the dresser, she grabbed the few toiletries she kept in her room after discovering Creed had helped himself to her Herbal Essence Shampoo. Probably the only one time a year he washed his hair, using half the bottle.
As she walked out of the bedroom, with her suitcase in one hand, she dropped the apartment keys on Maisie’s lap, but her sister didn’t bother to look at her.
The pounding bass made the walls vibrate, the lyrics saying, “…I used to love her, too bad I had to put a slug through her, dumped her body in the trash like I never knew her…”
Birdie raised her voice to be heard over the ominous lyrics and said, “What goes around comes around, Maisie.”
Her sister refused to acknowledge her, clinking her beer can with Creed’s as if in celebration with her head bopping to the beat.
Birdie walked out the door.
* * *
Checkingher watch and willing away the ghosts of the past, Birdie knocked on Errol’s door with a sigh and an eye roll Mia would have been proud of, hearing an ever so faint, “Come in.”
A grown man trying to sound like a young boy.
This was getting old.
Entering the room, and realizing she was still chewing a piece of gum from earlier, she spotted the stuffed animals on the bed. The menagerie disappeared during the day and when they weren’t in full production mode—she couldn’t help but wonder how long it took for Errol to get each animal just so. As if they were staring at whomever entered the room with a mixture of cartoonish enthusiasm with a side of judgment.
She took a moment to scan the rest of the room. The same room that used to be Marshall’s. And hoped her Marlboro Man of a husband, who was absolutely one hundred percent in Heaven, wasn’t able to see his personal space being used for such perverted antics.
What was the holdup?
Was Errol struggling with his sailor-style shirt and knickers? Where was his mother when he needed her?
Bored and impatient, she pulled her phone from her cleavage to check for messages and then ran through TikTok to see how the Pinkie Posse’s views were doing.
They were well over a million.
Smiling, she thought of how wonderful it was for these sassy women to get the attention they deserved and having been a part of making that happen.
Errol was still inside the bathroom, per the virtual script, waiting for his cue.
