You Love Me(You #3)(46)

“Oh honey, I love fried chicken!”

I hand her the tray and she tears skin off the chicken and pops it into her mouth. “Scrumptious,” she coos, as she licks her fucking fingers. I know what she’s doing, Mary Kay. She’s playing me. As if she thinks this is the first time I’ve been cornered into quarantining a dangerous, unstable person in my fucking personal space. I play right back. “Well, you seem happy.”

“You know what? I actually am happy. And omigod, I really did forget how much I loooove The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.”

“Oh yeah?”

She eats more skin. She licks her fingers. “It does make me kind of sad though…”

“Oh yeah?”

She tears the lid off the ice cream and digs her fork into the gallon. This is part of her game. “Yeah,” she says. “I feel like you think Mary Kay is the Bridget Fonda, the Annabella Sciorra. You buy her barn jacket demeanor and the whole holier-than-thou good woman thing…” You are a good woman and Melanda smacks her gums. “Sweetie, you should know that Mary Kay is just… Well, she’s not what you think.”

Poor Melanda. If only she knew that you and I had a banner day. I tell her to hold that thought and I go upstairs and make us two mugs of hot cocoa and by this time next year, I’ll be doing the same thing, making cocoa for you.

Melanda claps when I return to the Whisper Room. “Ooh, yes. I miss carbs so much.”

You’re allowed to have this one last nuclear holiday with your unchosen family, same way Melanda is allowed to have a sugar high. The steam turns her skin red and she purrs like one of my cats. “Mmmm,” she says. “Yummy.”

“So you were saying…”

She puts her mug on the end table and she picks up the remote and pauses Anything Else and it’s just me, Melanda, and Jason Fucking Biggs. She picks at the GUN on her shirt. “So I got pregnant in high school.”

I remain calm. I am the fucking key master. “Is this another lie? Because I know that Mary Kay never said I’m a bad kisser.”

She bats her eyelashes, what’s left of them. “I know,” she says. “I said some really icky things when I was detoxing…” Always with an excuse. “But you were right…” Stop trying to mind-fuck me, Melanda. I’m too happy to be stupid. “And you should know why I was really in the woods the other night.”

I sit in the chair and sip my cocoa. “Well, go ahead.”

“So I was fifteen and I barely knew the guy and I took care of it.”

“Okay.”

“And Mary Kay was amazing, totally there for me, real hard-core best friend stuff.”

“Well, that’s no surprise.”

She dips a finger into the melted vanilla. “True,” she says. “And I was there a few years later for her. When she got pregnant.”

“And…”

Melanda flaps her wings. “And she was older. It wasn’t dramatic…” You’re not a drama queen. A drama queen wouldn’t have been so responsive to all my good doings in the library today. “And I go to the hospital the day she goes into labor. I’m in the room with her holding her hand because Phil… well, I mean, he wasn’t that kind of guy…” There’s one true thing. “So Nomi arrives and she’s beautiful. Perfect. This feels like our baby, you know? And MK looks at me and goes, ‘Thank you, Melanda. If you hadn’t showed me how hard it was to give up a pregnancy, I might not have my baby.’?”

Very well played, because as a man, I can’t say anything. “That’s a lot to take in.”

“So she put Nomi in my arms. I held that little girl and I was fine with my decision. I have no regrets. I did the right thing at the right time…” I know the feeling. “See, I was in the woods that night because Nomi is part mine. Mary Kay knew what she was doing when she put Nomi in my arms, when she found a flaw in every guy I ever even tried to date. Yes, I’ve had my moments. Maybe I’m not the best friend at times…” Ha! “But Mary Kay uses me, Joe. I’ve been the one looking out for Nomi. In The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Annabella Sciorra practically lives in that barn jacket. Like Mary Kay in her tights. But that’s the male director’s gaze for you. In reality, no woman wears that barn jacket every day. You should know that you’ve put yourself in jeopardy for a woman who only exists in your head.” She looks at the TV. And then she looks at me. “You look like him, you know? Jason Biggs. A handsome version, obviously.”

I don’t look like Jason Biggs and she licks her fingers and goes back to watching her fucking movie and I do not wish her a Merry Christmas. She was supposed to see what’s wrong with her but instead she’s trying to make me think there’s something wrong with you.

I go upstairs and I am fuming, trapped, fucked. Ho Fucking Ho and everyone on this rock is asleep except me and Melanda. I read my stupid horoscope on one of her astrology apps—no, Joe, no—and I go to Love’s Instagram and watch Forty open his fucking presents again—no, Joe, no—and I miss my son, my son I never met and right now the bitch is right.

You really aren’t here with me. You only exist in my head.

But then my phone buzzes. It’s you: Merry Christmas Eve, Joe. Just thinking of you.