The Arrangement

God, if I hadn’t been so drunk I would’ve driven over there myself. Which was a good thing, because it would’ve come to blows.

“Well, my father’s under the impression we’re the assholes,” I said.

Burke raised an eyebrow. Chase raised both.

“Are you fucking kidding?”

“I wish I was. Apparently Jay called him first, before you guys had even gotten home.”

Burke frowned and shook his head. “Of course he did. To do damage control.”

“Oh,” I snorted, “he did way more than that.”

The tone my father had taken with me last night had destroyed something between us. It had chipped away an important piece of our already-fragile relationship. One I wasn’t sure we could ever get back.

“Jay told him Kayleen showed up late last night, out of the clear blue sky,” I said. “That he had no idea who she was. Or initially, what the hell she wanted.”

“He’s a fucking liar,” Chase snarled unnecessarily. I nodded before going on.

“He told my father he tried to reason with her, but she was drunk and crazy. Borderline violent. She wanted very badly to be a character in our story, and so she’d… she’d been…” I paused to see if there were a better way to word this. There really wasn’t.

“What?”

“Jay told my father she admitted to screwing all three of us, to get herself in the books.”

Chase’s face contorted into a look of fury I hadn’t seen since some asshole had gotten handsy with one of his sisters in the eleventh grade. Burke’s expression was just the opposite. His eyes were cold and crystal clear. Deadly calm.

I didn’t know which was scarier.

“He said what?”

“He said Kayleen met with him to make sure he wasn’t going to cut her out in the edits. That she showed up preemptively, knowing we had a meeting the next day.” I squeezed my coffee mug hard in both hands. “He said she told him everything about us. All of it.” I lowered my voice. “And then he said something else…”

Chase’s whole body was shaking with rage. Calmly, Burke closed his laptop.

“And what’s that?”

“Jay told him Kayleen had come on to him.”

There was a resounding bang, as Chase kicked the nearest kitchen cabinet. Pots and pans rattled around noisily inside. Burke however, hadn’t even flinched.

“So what did you tell him?”

“I told him the truth of course. That Kayleen had gone there to talk about the story, but only because he’d approached her once before.”

That part had been surprising — that our girlfriend had actually met Jay before last night. I was a little troubled she hadn’t told us about their first meeting. I think we all were.

“And what did you tell him about—”

“I told him the truth about that too,” I said. “That yes, I’m with her. That we’re all with her, but that us being with her had nothing to do with the story, or why she was even there last night, or—”

“Oh I think it has something to do with the story…”

I whirled and there was she was, standing in another one of my T-shirts. Listening to us from the doorway, squinting into the bright morning sun. I wondered how long she’d been standing there, how much she’d heard.

I didn’t have to wonder long.

“So what else did you tell your father?” Kayleen asked innocently.