Page 33 of Vicarious

“Yeah. I asked Dele about it, and she rightly said I should talk to you. But I never got around to it. I think it goes without saying that there have been other women. Since you thought I was dead.”

“Yes,” I admit.

She gives a resigned smile. “I thought so. And I don’t blame you. Your life didn’t end on account of me being dead. I would be worried if there weren’t. Were any of them serious?”

Only one. With the woman upstairs and who fucked me before sending me downstairs on date with my wife, of which I’m definitely going to have to punish said woman for. But for some reason, I have a feeling that Phae wouldn’t be as understanding about the idea that Dele was and still is the one serious person I’ve been with. Not like she would with some faceless stranger she doesn’t know.

So I only answer vaguely, “Yes.”

“Then we don’t have to rush into anything like that again. It’s going to take time.”

With that, Phae settles for pressing a kiss to my cheek and saying, “Good night,” before heading upstairs.

15

Viper

Turns out Dele did have an idea about what the romantic story of how I proposed to Cres should be.

The trip I told her Cres was planning for us just hours before Wyan retrieved us and took us to Phae.

If I’m being honest with myself, I’d forgotten about the entire damn trip in the chaos of dealing with the fact that my wife is back from the dead. I’d thought it was a trip we’d have to cancel in light of things. But not only did Dele think it was the perfect place to go to stage a fake romantic proposal, she also thought we should take Phae with us.

“The whole point of this trip,” Dele says when we argue about the entire thing, “was so you could spend time with the twins away from Pray’s prying eyes and clutches. If it was safe enough for us to all be together in public, why wouldn’t it be safe for Phae now that she looks so different?”

“That was before we knew Pray kept my dead wife alive in an underground facility and threatened her with her children’s lives to keep her in line. Before we knew that Pray, at the very least, knows they survived the birth and that you whisked them away,” I argue back.

“Pray has no presence or influence in Florida. Disney World and the beach should be safe. Besides, me and Phae being there will help sell the story because you knew Cres wouldn’t want to get engaged without her closest friends being there.”

That’s actually not a lie. Despite their rocky initial meeting, their public relationship starting under the false pretense of both being two socialites who hang in the same circles, and the two having actual personalities as different as night as day, the two are actually friends. But even if it wasn’t true, I suppose the point isn’t whether or not it’s true as much as it is whether people believe it. And so long as it isn’t other men besides me, Cres’s father and Pray wouldn’t know or care about Cres’s inner circle of actual friends from the fucking first lady of United States.

“Really, Dele,” Phae says, cutting in for the first time since Dele and I began going back and forth about all this. “It’s not necessary that I go.” Then she turns to me and says, “And it’s not necessary that you cancel the trip completely when it was so you could spend time with the twins. I’ll be fine here.”

“Nonsense,” Dele says. “You deserve to spend time with the twins too. We’re not going to leave you here by yourself.”

Never mind the fact that we can’t leave Phae to her own devices without anyone to supervise her, anyway And the only one that can supervise her is me, Dele, or… or Eileen. I haven’t told her about Phae yet. Only because I haven’t figured out a way how.

Well.

Not just that.

But also, Eileen was Phae’s friend before she was ever my estate manager and eventually caring in her own way, if extremely reserved, sister that I’d never wanted or thought I needed. If anyone is going to take Phae’s side in all this and tell her what’s going on, it’s her.

But also, in all the time that I’ve known Eileen, I’ve never known her to be underhanded. Strange as that is considering she’s former CIA. If she’s going to take Phae’s side and tell her everything, she’s going to warn me and give me a chance to come clean first. So for this, I can trust her.

“She won’t be by herself,” I say, decision made. “Eileen will be with her.”

Phae instantly brightens at the mention of her old friend.

“Eileen,” she says.

“She’s my estate manager,” I say vaguely. But Phae knows enough about how all this works to know that Eileen is much more than that.

I see the gleam in Phae’s eyes, and that’s when I know that Phae is going to choose to stay. Because as much as she wants to spend time with her children, she’s not going to pass up the opportunity to talk to someone who has been in the thick of everything going on. Someone who might be more willing to allow her to get involved than Dele and I because Phae didn’t get this far being a fool. She knows very well there are things Dele and I aren’t telling her.

Besides, Phae also isn’t oblivious to the danger she poses to the children by spending time with them. She’s going to choose not being with them over risking their safety every time. Just like I always have.

Dele pretends to be more disappointed about that than I know she actually is. But her apparent conflict and disdain about the fact that Phae is here isn’t something I’m going to call her out on yet. It’s not something I have any desire to call her out on yet because, to be honest, I like it. I like that her kindness is only surface level and that just underneath, she’s seething. I like that instead of resigning herself to Phae’s presence, she’s chasing what she wants. I like that she’s not keeping herself at a distance from me or keeping her feelings about all this so reserved, even if I’m the only one that can tell she’s acting that way.

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