LIAM
–
Emilia snorts against my shoulder but pulls away gently, nudging me with a quiet smile before moving to sit next to Lacey. She doesn’t say anything neither of them do
but they fall into a kind of easy silence, the kind that doesn’t need permission or apology.
—
They drink. Slowly. Quietly. Shoulder to shoulder, not facing each other, but not alone either.
By 3:47 PM, I’ve got two women sunk into their own exhaustion, tipsy on cheap beer and heavier thoughts. Lacey’s cup is on the ground, empty. Emilia’s head rests lightly on her friend’s shoulder. Neither of them is crying, but it’s the kind of silence that comes after you’ve felt everything all at once..
I sit with them. I don’t speak. Just stay close and keep an eye out, in case either of them needs a refill – or a reason to keep going.
It’s peaceful. For maybe five minutes.
Then Emilia hiccups.
“But… but…” she starts, blinking slowly at Lacey like her brain’s buffering. “If whales are mammals… does that mean they have belly buttons?” (1
Lacey gasps, fully scandalised. “Wait. Do they?”
Emilia turns to me. “Liam, do whales have belly buttons?”
“I’m not doing this,” I mutter, already regretting not cutting them off earlier. They’ve been at this for a while. First it was Santa, then some legend of some belly dancer, now it’s whales, apparently.
“Wait, no, I’m serious,” Emilia insists, pointing at me with the grace of a falling tree. It’s adorable. I pinch her cheeks and she tries biting my hand, but fails. “This is important, Liam. Listen to me.”
“They do,” I sigh. “All mammals have navels.”
Lacey throws her arms up in triumph. “I knew I felt a spiritual connection to dolphins.”
“Because of their belly buttons?” I ask.
1/3
Chapter 144
She ignores me.
Emilia sways slightly and tugs on Lacey’s sleeve. “Do you think… if I became a whale, I could just float forever and not deal with taxes?”
“I don’t pay taxes!” Lacey declares proudly.
I stare at her. “The punishment for tax evasion is literally prison.”
She blinks. Shrugs. “Well, yeah. I mean… not on purpose.”
Emilia snorts so hard she nearly spills her drink. “She thinks TurboTax is a dating app.”
Lacey flips her off without looking. “At least I’m not trying to marry a dolphin again.”
“I was seven!”
“Age is not an excuse for aquatic infidelity.”
At that, Emilia bursts into laughter so loud it startles the couple across the pool. I press my palms into my eyes, counting backward from ten. It doesn’t help.
“Okay,” I say, standing. “Time to wrap this up.”
“Nooo,” they groan in unison, Emilia dramatically collapsing onto Lacey’s lap and Lacey stroking her hair then bursting into giggles when her fingers get tangled in the curls.
“We’re having a moment,” Lacey mumbles. “You can’t rush a moment.”
“You’ve been having this moment for forty–three minutes.”
“But it’s peaking now,” Emilia argues. “We were just getting to the good part. I was going to tell Lacey about the time Zane thought my hair removal cream was shampoo-”
I take their empty cups and toss them, then return with water bottles. Neither of them
wants it, of course.
“I want beer,” Lacey whines.
‘I want chocolate milk,” Emilia adds.
“You’re getting water. That’s what’s happening,”
Getting them moving is a slow, chaotic mess. Emilia keeps pausing to stare at her feet like
213
Chapter 144
they’ve just sprouted overnight. “Why are they so far away?” she asks, genuinely baffled. Lacey demands a piggyback ride on the grounds of “emotional injury and general cuteness,” arms already outstretched like she’s expecting a ride at a theme park.
I somehow wrangle them down the hallway, one under each arm. Emilia hums the Friends theme, barely hitting the notes. Lacey tries to chime in and ends up coughing like she’s been poisoned.
Chapter Comments
