Best Friends Forever

by Margot Hunt

  Marcia straightened in her seat, tucking her hair back over her shoulders. “She wanted me to seduce Josh.”

  “But...how?” Then, worrying she’d take offense, I added, “I mean, you’re obviously gorgeous.”

  Marcia laughed. “Don’t worry, it’s not like men just see me and divorce their wives on the spot. Hardly. I mean, hell, if I had that sort of power, I’d head to Silicon Valley and pick off a billionaire.”

  “I’m sure you could.”

  “That’s very kind, but no. That’s not what I meant. And it’s not what Kat had in mind,” Marcia said.

  “What did she have in mind? I don’t mean to pry, but this just sounds...” I was going to say crazy, but I stopped myself.

  “Crazy. I know, I told you it would.” Marcia inhaled deeply through her nose, then exhaled loudly and almost instantly looked calmer. When she saw me watching her, brow furrowed, she smiled and said, “It’s ujjayi pranayama. We use it in our yoga practice as a way to calm the body and mind.”

  “Maybe I should sign up for some classes.”

  “Maybe you should.” Marcia smiled. “Anyway, it all started because Kat was having a lot of conflict with Ashley around that time. They were planning a party for Kat’s parents’ wedding anniversary together, and Kat pretty much hated everything Ashley suggested. I remember Ashley wanted there to be a theme—I think it was Cherry Blossoms in the Spring or something like that. And Kat kept saying, ‘It’s an anniversary party, not a fucking high school prom!’”

  Marcia had an uncanny ability to mimic Kat’s fast-paced speech.

  “And then she’d say something like ‘I wish Josh had married someone like you, Marcia. Someone calm and grounded.’ She’d say that a lot. Like, if she could go through a catalog and handpick her future sister-in-law, she would have chosen someone more like me. Which, okay, I know that sounds a little odd, but I have to admit, it was flattering.”

  I nodded. “Of course.”

  “But it was also harmless. Or at least, it was at that point. Kat and Ashley were just spending too much time together, and it did seem like Ashley was going out of her way to be annoying. She’d say stupid crap, probably just to wind Kat up. I thought Kat was just venting,” Marcia said with a shrug. “The way people do.”

  “But at some point it presumably moved past venting.”

  “Yes.” Marcia looked down at her tea cupped between her hands. “This is the part where it starts to get really weird. Kat invited me to go away for a weekend. To Amelia Island. Have you ever been there?”

  I nodded. It was a resort island in northeast Florida. Todd and I had once taken the kids there for a week. “Yes, it’s beautiful.”

  “It is,” Marcia said. “And it was Kat’s treat. Which was... Well, I didn’t have much money at the time. So even though it felt weird letting her pay for everything, I was excited to get away.”

  Yet another similarity to my friendship with Kat, I realized with growing unease.

  “She booked us in at a beautiful hotel right on the beach,” Marcia continued. “And the weekend started off great. We hung out by the pool, went to dinner and then had cocktails at the hotel bar. That’s when Kat told me her brother was there.”

  “Where? At the same hotel?”

  Marcia nodded. “Yep. He was there with some of his friends for a guys’ golf weekend.”

  “Did Kat know he’d be there ahead of time?”

  “Of course. That was the whole point of our being there, although I didn’t know it at the time. Anyway, I asked if we shouldn’t go say hello or invite him to join us for a drink. She said no, it would be much more fun to play a practical joke on him.”

  “What sort of practical joke?”

  “She said, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if when he went back to his room, you were naked and waiting for him?’”

  “Jesus,” I whispered.

  “I know. That was her plan.”

  “And you went along with it?”

  “God, no! Of course not. But we were drinking a lot that night—wine at dinner, cocktails at the bar. There was something about Kat that made me...I don’t know, want to please her, I guess. She was paying for this whole weekend, after all, and I didn’t want to be a killjoy. So I laughed and pretended I thought her plan was funny.” Marcia blushed and looked down at the table. “I know how dumb that sounds. Trust me, I’ve spent a lot of time regretting that I didn’t tell her right then and there I didn’t want anything to do with it.”

  “Why? Did something happen?”

  Marcia’s laugh was a sad, broken sound that made me dread what she was about to tell me.

  “I was pretty drunk, and honestly, there’s a point when I don’t remember anything,” Marcia said. “I’ve always wondered if Kat might have drugged me. It certainly would have been easy enough for her to slip a date rape drug into my glass. I know, I know. It sounds crazy. But one minute we were in the restaurant, the next...I woke up in her brother’s hotel room. Naked.”

  I stared at her, at a loss for words. “So you went through with it?”

  “No!” Marcia said, holding up both hands. “I didn’t sleep with him.”

  “It’s actually none of my business,” I said.

  “No, it’s not, but I’m telling you anyway—I didn’t fuck him,” Marcia said. “Or maybe it would be more accurate to say he didn’t fuck me, since I was obviously not in control of the situation.”

  “So what did happen? How did you even get into his room?”

  Marcia shrugged. “I have no idea. I assume Kat got a key somehow. She has a talent for convincing people to do things for her. Or maybe she just bribed someone who was working in reception. It probably wasn’t that hard. Anyway,” she continued, “when I woke up, Josh was there. He was sleeping sitting up in an armchair. Fully clothed. When he woke up, he started crying.”

  “Josh was crying,” I repeated. I couldn’t picture it. The few times I’d met him, he’d been so smug, so self-conceited.

  “He was really upset and worried his wife would find out about it, my being there in his room overnight.” Marcia shook her head and her face softened. “I hadn’t even been attracted to him before, but I actually was a bit then, seeing how in love with his wife he was.”

  “Did you tell him that Kat had wanted to play a practical joke on him?”

  “Yes, of course. I had to explain why I was there. And he said—” Marcia stopped, waiting for an older couple to move slowly by our table. The man walked with a cane and gripped his wife’s arm to steady himself. Once they passed, Marcia twisted her head from side to side, checking over her shoulder to ensure no one could overhear, before lowering her voice to a whisper. “Josh said, ‘I should have known that fucking cunt was behind this.’”

  “He said that about his sister?”

  “He knows her better than anyone, right?”

  For some reason, this was the most chilling thing she’d told me yet. I shivered and looked down to see that the fine hairs on my arms were standing on end.

  “What did you do then?”

  “What do you think I did? I dressed and I got the hell out of there,” Marcia said. “And that’s when it got really weird.”

  “Weirder than waking up in Josh’s room?”

  “Yes, even weirder than that.” Marcia drained the rest of her tea.

  “Do you want another?” I asked, gesturing to the paper cup, but Marcia waved me off.

  “No, thanks. Anyway, I went back to the room that Kat and I were sharing. She was wide-awake and waiting for me. She’d even ordered room service. She was dying to hear what had happened.”

  “Between you and Josh,” I clarified.

  “Yes. I know, I thought it was gross, too. But she wanted every detail. And the creepiest part, the part where I said I couldn’t remember anything, seemed to excite her. Not sexually. At
least,” Marcia said with a shudder, “I hope not. But it was like the amnesia made it an even better story.”

  “I still don’t understand how this was supposed to end his marriage. Was she hoping he’d confess the infidelity to Ashley? Or that he’d want to see you again and you’d end up having an affair?”

  Marcia shrugged. “I’m not sure. Maybe it was part of a larger plan. I know she had a private detective working for her, someone she’d hired to follow her husband when she thought he was cheating on her. Maybe she was planning to hire him to follow her brother and have him take photos of Josh with me or someone else. Or maybe she just wanted to throw a grenade into their marriage to see what would happen.”

  “All this because she didn’t like Ashley?” It was hard to keep the skepticism out of my voice.

  Marcia looked at me. “All because she hated Ashley,” she corrected me. “And she wanted her out of the family. I thought you were friends with Kat. Haven’t you figured out that she always has to have her way? Always.”

  “What did she say when you told her you didn’t have sex with Josh?”

  “Oh, she was pissed off. She kept saying, ‘Well, you were really drunk, how do you know?’ And I pointed out that there weren’t any—” Marcia paused “—um, fluids. She just laughed and said he probably wore a condom. I mean, do you get how weird this is? I’m a grown woman. If I drink too much, it’s my own responsibility, but at the same time...if a man had sex with me and I wasn’t conscious while it was happening, that would be rape. Remember, this was the person who was supposed to be my best friend, and she was basically hoping that was what happened.”

  “But you weren’t raped,” I said.

  “No. I’m one hundred percent sure, thank God. But still. Isn’t it seriously screwed up that she wanted that to happen?”

  She stared at me as though waiting for an answer.

  “I don’t know what to think.” The Kat I knew would never have done such a thing. A part of me was still hoping that the entire story was bullshit. That all it would take was a few days of digging and I’d find out that Kat and Marcia had never gone on the trip or, if they had, that Josh and Ashley had been in Paris that weekend.

  I’d find out that this woman really was delusional. That Kat really wasn’t a monster.

  “You don’t believe me,” Marcia said. She shook her head again and looked disappointed. “I knew you wouldn’t.”

  “I didn’t say that,” I protested.

  “You didn’t have to.” Her blue eyes were hard, like chips of glass. “I guess it’s a good thing I saved all of her texts, isn’t it?”

  22

  Despite a looming deadline for I Think My Dad Is a Werewolf, my latest installment for Kidtastic, I didn’t get any work done that afternoon after I returned home from meeting with Marcia. Instead I sat in our home office, reading through the pages of texts Marcia had screen-capped and forwarded to me from her phone. It certainly looked like the texts she’d saved were from Kat, although I had no idea how hard it would be to fake that. If Marcia did make it up, she would’ve had to put an enormous amount of work into the forgery. There were hundreds of texts back and forth between them.

  Most of them read like the usual exchanges between two friends. Texts like,

  Kat: Free for lunch tomorrow?

  And,

  Marcia: R u coming to class tomorrow?

  And,

  Kat: What’s the name of that eye cream you were telling me about

  They were as trivial as most texts, but I found them noteworthy—and a little chilling—when I realized that here, at last, was the absolute proof Kat had lied to me. She and Marcia had been friends—close friends, even. They had lunched together frequently, had inside jokes at the expense of a few regulars at the yoga school—one who took phone calls during class, another they’d nicknamed Stinky Girl—and had spent a lot of time discussing the various men Marcia dated. For example, after a particularly disastrous date, Marcia had texted,

  Marcia: Ur lucky ur married.

  Kat: Only because extracurricular activities are SO much more fun.

  Marcia: Hahaha. You’re terrible. What if H finds out?

  Kat: He never has before ;)

  I read this exchange again. Was this Kat confessing to an affair or a series of affairs? She had never mentioned anything to me about having past affairs, but then again, she’d also told me that she’d barely known Marcia, who, Kat claimed, had gone on to stalk her. These texts, sent from Kat’s cell phone to Marcia’s, seemed to prove otherwise.

  And then I remembered our trip to Key Biscayne, when Kat had spent the night with Hudson. She’d led me to believe it was the first time she had ever been unfaithful to Howard. She had even made a compelling case that Howard deserved to be cheated on. I had thought at the time that she was awfully relaxed about the infidelity. It had been me, not Kat, who had been uncomfortable breakfasting with Hudson the morning after. Was that because Hudson hadn’t been her first extramarital dalliance?

  My stomach gave a sour twist of unease. Yet more evidence that I didn’t know Kat as well as I’d thought.

  Kat and Marcia texted about Ashley frequently, and Kat’s growing irritation at her sister-in-law became evident.

  Kat: Awful Ashley wants us to commission a portrait of all of us incl spouses and kids for my parents’ anniversary. Not a photograph, which would be bad enough, but a fucking painting.

  And,

  Kat: If Ashley suddenly disappeared off the face of the earth, would I be a suspect? Wait, don’t answer that. I’d be suspect numero uno.

  And,

  Kat: Ashley the Asshole. Wait. Ashhole? Assley? Anyway, AA just told me we need a color theme for the party. Like: MAROON. Or: HOT PINK. SMFH.

  I was clearly behind on my texting acronyms and so had to look SMFH up. It meant Shaking My Fucking Head.

  The texts after they’d returned from the disastrous Amelia Island trip, when Marcia failed to seduce Josh, seemed to signal the end of their friendship.

  Kat: I don’t know why ur so upset. It was supposed to be a joke. I told you, Josh and I have a long history of playing practical jokes on one another.

  Marcia: I was sexually assaulted when I was younger. This brought back a lot of bad memories. I’m not sleeping well.

  Kat: Jesus, you said you didn’t sleep with Josh and now suddenly he raped you?

  Marcia: No, of course not. But it’s dredged up some scary memories for me.

  Kat: You’re being way too sensitive.

  That was the last text Kat had sent Marcia. Marcia had fired off nearly a dozen more, along the lines of:

  Marcia: I thought we had lunch plans today? Where R U?

  Marcia: Did you get the messages I left you?

  Marcia: Why aren’t you returning my calls?

  Marcia: Kat? What’s going on?

  Presumably it was sometime after her last text went unanswered that Marcia had appeared on Kat’s doorstep, pie in hand, and Kat had threatened to call the police on her. Assuming that part of Kat’s story was true. Who knew what strands of truth were woven in among all the lies?

  I remembered a story I’d read in a magazine a while back about a phenomenon called ghosting. It apparently involved cutting off all contact with someone without explanation. The story had been about a famous actress ghosting her equally famous actor boyfriend, so I had assumed it was something that mainly happened among the romantically involved. But it seemed remarkably similar to Kat’s cutting off all contact with Marcia. Kat had ghosted her.

  And now Kat was ghosting me.

  I leaned back in my chair while I processed this new information. Though I didn’t want to believe it, though I looked for an alternate theory of what was going on, I kept coming back to the same conclusion.

  Kat was not the person I thought she was.

 
Suddenly I was questioning everything she had told me. Had Howard been abusive? Was her marriage troubled? Had she truly been my friend?

  I had a sudden, vivid flashback to a conversation Kat and I had the weekend we spent at Key Biscayne. It was the day of the uncomfortable breakfast with Hudson, but before Kat told me she wished Howard were dead. We were down at the beach, reclining in side-by-side lounge chairs, looking out at the ocean. The water was still, and there was a paddleboarder passing serenely by, making the exercise look far easier than it probably was.

  “I wish I could do that,” Kat said, shading her eyes as she looked out at the paddleboarder.

  “Why can’t you? You live on the water. You could launch right off your dock.”

  “I know. But it wouldn’t be the same as here, would it? She looks so peaceful,” Kat said in a dreamy voice.

  I nodded but said, “That’s because she’s all the way out there. Everything looks better from a distance. Close up, she’s probably a hot mess. In fact, she’s probably stopping every few strokes to shoot up heroin.”

  Kat burst out laughing. “She is not! Where would she keep it? She’s wearing a bikini, for God’s sake.”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea. Maybe her bikini has pockets. Junkies are resourceful.”

  “I’m glad we came,” Kat said. She closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Thank you, Alice.”

  “What are you thanking me for?”

  “For being my friend,” Kat said. “I don’t know how I ever managed without you.”

  I shaded my eyes to look at her, sensing her mood had shifted.

  “I’ll always be your friend,” I said. “You know that.”

  Kat’s lips curved up into a sad smile. “You may be the first person in my life who truly loved me for me, and not just because you had to.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true,” I protested.

  “Isn’t it?” It was Kat’s turn to shrug. She dropped the magazine she’d been paging through to one side and impatiently pushed her sunglasses up on her head. “I think it’s the story of my life.”