My mouth snaps open. She’s wrong. We do tell each other every—well, maybe not everything. And, in reality, I don’t want her to know everything. I think about her and Hannah and her closed bedroom door. Nope. I definitely don’t want to know everything.
“Fine,” I say, even though it is very much not fine. Nothing about this is fine! “But this is an awfully big thing to leave out. I just . . . I thought we’d live together until we got married and then we’d be next-door neighbors and then our spouses would die before us and then we’d both die watching our favorite TV shows and then we’d all be buried in the Brewer family plot until we became one giant clump of dirt.”
Grammy laughs. “Well, as lovely as that sounds . . . I don’t think you’re really taking into account what’s best for Clem. Or for you!”
“Can we please talk about literally anything else?” I ask.
Cleo pops up from between the flower beds. “Oh my goodness, I watched the first few episodes of that television show you and Clem are always talking about? The one where winter is coming or what have you?”
“Game of Thrones!” I say. I’m on my third rewatch and am still reeling from the last season. “Well, you’re, like, way late to the party, but welcome to the game of thrones! When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die,” I quote back to her.
But her only response is her forehead wrinkling in confusion.
Bernadette steps out onto the porch, still in her lavender housecoat with a fresh cup of coffee in hand. “Are y’all talking about that throne game show?” She sits in the rocker next to Grammy. “You know, Peter tried getting me into that show when we were seeing each other and I couldn’t get past the incest.”
Grammy huffs. “There she goes again. You dated a thirty-eight-year-old man once. Once! And now you’ll never stop talking about it! Peter this. Peter that. Someone mentions any little thing and somehow it’s related to Peter.”
I groan. “No, you’ve got to stick with it. You haven’t even gotten to the mother of dragons. You haven’t even seen Cersei in all of her awful glory!”
Bernadette rolls her eyes. “Peter and I were a brief flickering flame, but we left each other scorched. Forever changed, really.”
“I really didn’t need to know that,” I tell her, but it feels good to come here and find these three women being their regular selves. My life might be upside down, but things are still normal somewhere.
“Well,” says Cleo as she dives back into the bushes. “I found the show quite riveting, so I’ll be watching and I don’t want any spoilings.”
“Spoilers,” I tell her.
We spend the rest of the morning outside, talking shit about their neighbors and hearing about their next great big adventure, a trip to Palm Springs this summer. I try not to think too much about how nearly all my favorite people are three to four times my age.
“I’m so close to figuring it out,” I say. On the floor, surrounding me in a semicircle, are the pieces of Grammy’s old doorbell and her new doorbell. “I don’t get how it didn’t work.”
“Does it have something to do with the password I set up on my iPad?” asks Grammy. “Or maybe if I restart my phone?”
I shake my head, not bothering to explain that the problem is the video doorbell and not her many devices it should link to.
The front door creaks open and Clem tiptoes through the doorway.
“Grammy called me,” she immediately says in defense.
I look over to Grammy as she walks past me with a basket of laundry. “Traitor.”
“I need a doorbell,” she calls over her shoulder. “And you two need to come to a truce.”
I turn to Clem as she sits down beside me. “I’ve installed and uninstalled it twice. Your problem now.”
“Here. Let me see.” She slides her glasses up her nose and takes a look at the instructions.
“Give me those,” I say, motioning to her glasses.
She does and I clean them off with the hem of my shirt. “I don’t know how you can see out of these things. They’re so gross.”
“Does this mean you’re not mad at me?” she asks.
“Oh, I’m still plenty mad. Your glasses were just making it worse.”
“I know you probably don’t want to talk about it,” she says quietly, “but not everyone at school had the same reaction as Patrick Thomas. In fact, a lot of people even thought it was pretty cool.”
“I can’t believe you shared that video to begin with. It was private!”
“I’m sorrrrrrry,” she says. “I was really proud of you, and it’s really nice to see you do something for yourself.”
For myself? So that I’ll have something to occupy my time with once she’s gone and maybe she won’t feel as guilty? “And how did Kyle even get it?” My words are venomous.
“Well.” She clears her throat. “That is sort of my fault. He kept asking me to send it so he could show Alex, and so I did. I really didn’t think he would share it so wide—”
“What were you thinking? How stupid can you be, Clem?”
Her cheeks flare red, an angry trait we share. “I was proud of you!” she says, her voice boiling over as she stands with the pieces for the new doorbell and the instructions.
I follow her to the doorway with my arms crossed.
“It’s not like you’re the shy type,” she says, a screw between her teeth while she holds the doorbell plate in place. “And Kyle loved it! He was so excited for you.”
“Kyle isn’t the person you think he is.”
“He only meant to post it to the Prism group, and he didn’t do it maliciously. You’ve got to stop acting like he’s always out to get you. Kyle is a good guy and I think y’all could be really good friends again if you could get over yourself.”
“Oh, that’s nice. Pour some salt in my open wound.”
She shakes her head and looks directly at me. “I need to talk to you about Georgia. I have to make a decision soon.”
“Not right now. My brain is too full and I’m . . . I’m angry with you. Can it please wait?” It takes all my self-control to not completely turn on her and say all the vicious things running through my head.
She bites down on her lip. Clem hates indecision, and even though I’m sure she’s already made up her mind about next year, it’s still technically an uncertainty. “Sure. Of course.”
I plop down on the couch with Grammy when she returns with a fresh basket of laundry to fold. We watch Hollywood Squares while Clem connects the doorbell to Grammy’s, Cleo’s, and Bernadette’s phones.
I know I need to hear Clem out, but right now I’ve got too much on my mind. And maybe if I never hear her out, nothing has to change.
Ten
That night, I sit down at home with Mom and Dad and show them Monica Lewinsky’s TED Talk about her scandal and explain to them that I need to disappear for two days.
“I need to wait out the news cycle,” I say.
Mom side-eyes me over her shoulder as she stirs her spaghetti sauce.