Page 43 of The Party Plot

“Uh huh. Youlikehim. Why not give it a try?”

Laurel cast a desperate look at Chip, but he just held his hands up. “Could be worth it. Just saying.”

“Ugh, you two are the worst.” He stood up, running his hands through his hair, a panicked, hopeful little feeling fluttering in his throat. His fingers were trembling. “Okay. Okay fine, I’ll call my mom.”

He went out onto the balcony to do it, but he could feel Melody’s eyes on him through the glass. Denise answered on the first ring, and Laurel’s mind went blank, anything he had planned to say bleached white and scrubbed out of his head.

“Laurel?” Her voice was oddly cold. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I—” Laurel licked his lips, trying to find words. He thought of Casey’s hand on his shoulder at the Belmont Inn, how his touch had infused calmness into him. “I um—I borrowed something from Casey.”Borrowed something? How stupid could an excuse get? “I haven’t been able to get in touch with him to give it back. I was wondering if you’d seen him?”

“Honey, Casey didn’t work out.” She said it with the same unbothered tone she’d had when she had told him she had sold his horse. “I had to let him go.”

Laurel felt himself sway a little against the balcony railing. “Let him go?”

“Yes. But don’t worry, the ball is still on. Lavinia Bonard has been kind enough to connect me with an agency in Charleston, and they’re justfabulous.”

As if he gave a single shit about the ball! Laurel could hear his voice rising in pitch as he said, “Well, where is he? What—”

“Well, I certainly don’t know.” He could practically feel her shrugging down the line. “I’m surprised he hasn’t been in touch. Since you two are such good friends now.”

Laurel hung up in disgust, stomach churning, a cold sweat breaking out on his lower back. Casey was gone. He must be; his car hadn’t been there. Why hadn’t he said anything? Why hadn’t he told Laurel that Denise had let him go? Did he think that Laurel wouldn’t want him anymore without the ball? Did he think this was purely transactional and now that he wasn’t getting money out of it there was no reason to stay? Laurel didn’t even know Casey’s real name, let alone where he would have gone. He knew that his eyes got soft when he talked about his grandma, and that he liked sugar but didn’t allow himself much of it, and that he could rattle off flower names and varieties with ease and delight. He knew that he took his coffee black and his tea unsweetened, and that when he smiled, really smiled, it was gorgeous enough to rival the sun. And now Laurel might never get to see him smile again. He had fucked up, hadn’t he; he should have said something, he should have been clear about his feelings instead of just dancing around them. He didn’t want it to end this way, whateveritwas. Casey showing up in town had felt like a second chance, and Laurel couldn’t just sit back and let it slip through his fingers.

Melody was tapping on the glass, a worried expression on her face.Everything ok?She mouthed.

Laurel shook his head.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, opening the screen door.

“Denise fired him.” Laurel ran a hand over his face. “And now he’s gone. I don’t know where.”

“So you’re just going to let him disappear?” She crossed her arms.

Laurel felt woozy, his stomach weak. “I have to take care of you. I don’t have time to go looking for him, even if he did want to see me again.”

Melody sighed. “Laurel, no you don’t. I know you feel guilty about not always being here. I feel guilty, too. I haven’t been a great friend to you, either. But I would feel even worse if you missed out on something good out of some misguided sense of obligation.” She put a hand on his arm, squeezing gently. “You don’t need to save me. That’s not your job. And I guess I have more support here than I thought.” She nodded at Chip, back through the glass.

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.” She smiled. “Maybe we both need to give ourselves a chance, yeah?”

*

“So what’s your plan?” Jamie asked. They were deep into a Mario Kart tournament, and he tossed it out casually as he steered Princess Daisy around an obstacle, but Casey could hear the edge in his voice.

“Still thinking.”

“Hmm.” He didn’t look pleased by the answer. It had been nice at first, sinking back into the friendship like a warm bath, each of them following their comfortable patterns, giving each other affectionate shit. Now it was starting to pinch, the two of them getting in each other’s way.

He had been there for about a week. Jamie made his own hours, so when he wasn’t working, they played video games, like they had as kids, or drank kombucha and looked out over the swamp. They’d gone on a Walmart run earlier that week to get Casey rubber boots, a toothbrush, fresh produce (Jamie insisted he was going to get scurvy if he kept living on Diet Coke and instant noodles), and pimple patches (he’d been breaking out like crazy without his snail mucin and royal jelly eye cream and other K-beauty products). He had been skeptical about the boots, but they had come in handy when they fed the babies, squelching through the wooded edge of the marsh and watching their eyes light up like lanterns out in the trees. It smoothed something out in Casey’s heart to hear the snuffly smacking noises the raccoons made as they demolished what seemed like truckloads of cat food and hot dogs and grapes.

On days when Jaime was plugged into his work laptop, Casey tried to stay out of his way, reading Jamie’s collection of dogeared vampire novels, trying to fill his head with anything that wasn’t Laurel or Melody or the shitty memories of his dad that had started coming back without his permission. When the restlessness became too much, he picked at his face in the bathroom, or paced around on the dock, the bugs and humidity feeling like some kind of penance. But the houseboat was small, and it was hard to have any privacy.

“You’re going to have to do something.” Jamie glanced at him through his thick glasses, fingers working automatically on the controller. “You know I love you, but I can’t put up with your ass for much longer.”

“I know, I know. You need your space.”

“I’m a solitary creature,” Jamie agreed. When he spoke again, there was a faraway softness in his voice that Casey hardly ever heard. “I thought about it, you know. Well, not really, not a traditional relationship. You know I’m asexual as fuck. But I thought about how nice it would be to have someone to watch the sunset with. Someone’s hand to hold. But then I thought about them being in my space all the time, and I just couldn’t do it.”

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