Page 5 of The Party Plot

Chip said nothing, radiating silent disapproval. Of the three of them, he was the only one who hadn’t grown up in town. Maybe that was why he wasn’t stuck in perpetual arrested development. Laurel and Melody’s brand of chaos was becoming less cute now that they were all in their early thirties, he thought, with a sinking sensation.

He squeezed the bridge of his nose. The headache that had been threatening all day had finally rolled in like a thunderstorm, and he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open. A road sign for Bonard, SC (“The Sleeping Beauty Beneath the Oaks”) flashed by, and he heard Chip’s blinker go on as he started merging toward the exit.

“Chip, we need to stop at the arch.” Melody was tapping at the back of the driver’s seat. “I have a sharpie in my purse, I’m gonna go fucking deface it.”

“Melody, it’s broad daylight,” Laurel groaned. Not that he hadn’t maybe discreetly pissed on the Bonard arch once or twice upon a drunken night, but this was different. People would see.

“Who gives a shit. No one here likes me anyway.”

Bonard, SC, was a tooth-achingly picturesque town of manicured lawns and tree-lined avenues and gleaming neocolonial facades. Smaller and lesser-known than its cousin, Summerville (the birthplace of sweet tea!), it was a bright little sugary-sweet pastry with a rotten filling. Centuries of dark history lurked under the creamy exterior, and it was named after Howie Bonard’s family: local politicians, civil war generals, good old boys and girls who probably kept one of Robert E. Lee’s fingernails somewhere in their ancestral mansion like the relic of a saint.

Laurel didn’t know how she could stand to live here, withhisname stamped all over everything. It must feel like Howie Bonard was looking over her shoulder at every moment, sticking his fingers into her life and muddling it up at a whim.

“I’m taking you both straight to Melody’s,” Chip said.

“We should go out tonight,” Melody said, putting a hand on his arm, but Laurel was fading, his vision going gray and fizzly at the edges. A lyric from an old Crosby, Stills, and Nash song fluttered through his head:It’s getting to the point where I’m no fun anymore. Who had been super into them? Someone from his fraternity, years ago. His thoughts were spinning like a record on a turntable, and he barely remembered getting up the steps to Melody’s townhouse and into the merciful embrace of the AC before his cheek was resting against the plush velvet of her sofa. In his head he saw the dusty moss hanging from the trees, the balloons infesting his mother’s lawn, and Casey’s slim, white-clad figure against the sunlight, and then he passed out.

*

He woke to the sound of purring. Melody’s cat, a beautiful, soot-black animal with sapphires for eyes, was sitting inches from his face, staring into his soul and letting out wave after wave of contented rumbles.

“Oh my God,” Laurel mumbled. His face felt glued to the couch, and his mouth was sticky and tasted like artificial sweetener and something worse.

The cat, apparently content that it had unlocked the inner workings of his psyche, blinked at him once before yawning fish-breath into his face and jumping to the floor with a pleased littlemeep.

Laurel sat up, rubbing a hand over his face and through his hair. It was dusk, muted light coming in through the shades. He could see Melody outside, through the sliding-glass door to her balcony, still in the dress from that morning, her shoulder blades sticking out sharply, a cloud of vapor around her head.

Melody’s apartment was tastefully decorated in what he assumed were beachy colors. It was clean, too, the fast food from last night put away, every surface scrubbed and vacuumed and lint-rolled within an inch of its life. She’d said once that she was a nervous cleaner, and Laurel knew that she would often start the morning with a mimosa or two—or five—and scour away all the chaos of the night previous.

It was sad to picture Melody waking early in the morning, stumbling around, muttering to herself as she scooped the litter box and stuffed takeout containers into the trash. Laurel swallowed. His nose was stuffed up, and the back of his throat still tasted vaguely like chemicals.

God, what was he doing here? He couldn’t fix anything for Melody and he couldn’t make his mom happy. He’d lived most of his adult life as an itinerant wastrel, so no one would be surprised if he just flitted off again. Laurel reached for his phone, meaning to start researching flights, but instead, his thumb landed on the Instagram icon and he was scrolling through pictures of the dog wedding, trying to see if Casey Bright had been tagged.

He had, and his Instagram wasn’t private, and suddenly Laurel was down the rabbit hole.

Casey’s Instagram was sun-soaked and pristine, as carefully curated as the man himself. Here he was at multiple events, posing, his hair slicked back and his expression friendly, unreadable. There he was on the boardwalk at Folly Beach, in pressed linen, the sky behind him scalloped with clouds. Casey at the Atlanta symphony orchestra—did he like music? He must like to travel, at least, because he showed up in New York City, Marseille, Venice, Ibiza. (Nothing from Vegas. Had it not fit the aesthetic?) Casey on a yacht. Casey’s long legs in a beach chair. A photo tagged in downtown Charleston showed his tan, well-manicured, (skillful, Laurel’s brain whispered), fingers draped around a martini glass, some kind of frozen cocktail with a whimsical garnish.Brunch with the girls, the caption read. What girls? And what brunch, either? Casey didn’t drink much, at least not from what Laurel knew.

No family. No pets. A lot of friends, but none recurring. So, a lot of people that he posed with, maybe, and no one close.

God, where have you been all my life?Laurel remembered groaning into the pillow. He’d been in a particularly compromising position, the silk of his own tie rough around his wrists.

Shh,Casey had said, kissing his spine.You talk too much. And he’d twisted his fingers in a way that had made Laurel forget words even existed.

There was the hiss of the porch door opening, and Laurel nearly threw his phone across the room, face hot.

“You’re awake,” Melody said.

“Yeah. Melody, I don’t think I can go out tonight, I—”

“It’s fine. I don’t want to either.” She’d taken off her makeup at some point, and she looked achingly young. The same face that had been in teen magazines and Deliah’s ads, but harder, now, behind the eyes. “Will you come outside with me?”

He didn’t want to leave the hermetically-sealed capsule of air conditioning inside the condo, but Laurel acquiesced, getting up. His phone was still in his hand, and he stuffed it into his pocket, skin feeling itchy.

Melody’s housing development backed up to marshland, light from the setting sun glimmering on patches of water, choked with grass. It was a pretty location, and Laurel knew she had bought the condo with her own money, whatever she’d managed to keep from her days as a child model. (Whatever her parents hadn’t managed to sponge off of her.) A band of syrupy color lingered on the horizon like the dregs at the bottom of an Aperol spritz. Laurel tapped his fist against the balcony railing while Melody vaped, the day’s events tumbling through his head. He’d flirted too much with Casey, probably made an idiot of himself, and he tried to remember if Casey had seemed charmed, or at least amused. But the whole day was a blur of heat and desperation, and he couldn’t get a handle on it. Laurel ran his tongue over his teeth. The smell of Casey’s cologne haunted his sinuses, something cottony and crisp.

He’d brushed Casey’s arm, reaching into the cabinet. Had he imagined the way Casey had caught his breath, the subtle movement of his throat? Had he—

“You haven’t heard a single thing I said, have you?”

---