Page 13 of Reckless
Kelly usually entered rooms like she owned at least half the jokes she was about to tell in them.She was warm, loud when she wanted to be, sharper than most people expected, and filthy-mouthed enough that Charlie had once nearly proposed to her on principle.She made men laugh.Made women relax.Made children climb all over her.And somehow managed to do all of that without ever feeling easy.
That was the thing about her.
She looked easy from across a room, but then you got close to notice the edges.And tonight they were there.
She greeted my mother, smiled at my father, let Hope steer her to the table, and for one second, one small, unguarded second, I saw it.
The awareness.
The strain under the jokes.
Five women in her friend group.Five women folded into this family by love, luck, chaos, or some combination of all three.Kelly was the only one left unattached, and she knew what that looked like from the outside.
I did not enjoy that I noticed.
“Kelly.”
She looked at me.“Xerses.”
I asked if she was running late.She told me she liked to make an entrance.I told her she had.
That was mostly true.
The rest of it wasn’t something I was going to explain to a room full of people.
She sat across from me, reached for water too quickly, and started pretending she wasn’t aware of me.It was almost charming.
Almost.
Dinner moved around us in its usual rhythm.My mother fed everyone like it was a moral command.Charlie talked too much.Miley wore the expression she always wore right before saying something surgically vicious.Isabel managed to look elegant even while correcting Roman.Avril watched everyone else’s plates more than her own.Jeff and Michael had drifted into some practical conversation about business and law and the general burden of competence.
And Kelly made the table laugh.
It started with Hope pushing her into one of her disastrous dating stories.Batman.A vigilante voice.A Renaissance man “between eras.”Kelly told it exactly the way she should have, fast, deadpan, filthy enough to make it good, charming enough to keep it from sounding bitter.
But the thing under it.
She was pretending not to be tired that came from being expected to treat your own disappointment like a running joke because everyone preferred funny to sad.
I watched her while everyone else laughed.
Watched the flush that kept rising under her skin every time the conversation angled too close to the obvious.
Then I made the mistake of smiling at her and she found my face like I’d done something to her.
My mother noticed too.
Kelly joked.Charlie howled.Hope nearly cried laughing.My father looked scandalized in the fond way he reserved for women he found amusing and boys he’d failed to civilize completely.And all through it, my mother kept glancing between Kelly and me with the expression of a woman looking at two pieces she was already certain would fit.
I should have cut it off earlier.
Instead I let myself play.
Asked Kelly if there had been one normal date in the parade of horrors.Listened while she dismantled another man with admirable efficiency.Told her I was conducting quality control.Took the hit when she called me smug.
Easy and harmless.
Until it wasn’t.
