The Social Affair: A Psychological Thriller

by Britney King

  “Whatcha lookin’ at there?” he asks. I can see that he’s trying to lighten the mood, but I’m not interested in talking. He passes the joint. I feel the burn on my fingertips. Sometimes pain is necessary. He stares at the screen, and then he looks up at me and smiles. “Friends of yours?”

  “Not yet,” I say, taking a long pull. He sticks his bottom lip out. I hold my breath. I let the smoke fill my lungs and overtake my soul.

  “They seem uppity,” he says, studying their faces. “Almost too happy, ya know?”

  I don’t know. I don’t say this though. Maybe it’s because we’re both high, both in the safe zone, but I think I probably don’t have to. And yet, I feel a bit of rage. Who is he to insult something so pure?

  When I’m sufficiently high, I turn to him. “Fancy a fuck?”

  He grins. “That’s what I’ve come for.”

  Afterward, I bring my laptop to bed. I shuffle through photos of Grant and Josie Dunn. At some point, I look over at a sleeping Tyler, and I realize it’s time to up my game.

  Chapter Eleven

  Josie

  After I pick up Avery from dance, I decide to stop by that sandwich shop Grant and I visited. I know Avery won’t turn down an afternoon snack, and I can’t stop thinking about that Americano. The truth is, I hate Americano. What I really want, more than anything, is that sandwich I saw on the menu. Maybe it’ll give me some pep; maybe it’ll settle my stomach. Also, I haven’t been able to put it out of my mind. It goes against my diet plan, for sure, but it costs roughly the same amount as an Americano, and that’s what really matters. Plus, on the off chance I get busted, I can always say it was for Avery. I doubt Grant would check. He doesn’t like to involve the kids in these things.

  Either he’d believe me, or he wouldn’t.

  Currently, the repercussions seem too distant to think about. I’m still a bit hung over from the party and the sleeping pill Grant made me take. I knew I slipped up. I shouldn’t have mentioned that I haven’t been sleeping. It was a poor choice for a lie, clearly. Usually I sleep like a baby. Now, I’m groggy. Sleeping pills and alcohol don’t mix. Neither do lies and my husband, but maybe that was the point. Speaking of which, I woke up to a ton of direct messages—most pictures of people consuming shellfish. The church has a way of reminding you what’s important, and obviously, I’ve committed some sort of infraction I have yet to pay full price for.

  When I pull into the parking lot, it’s packed; it seems everyone on the southwest side and their mother had the same idea about coming here. I drive around in circles, and I’m about to give up when I see a sign that says there’s additional parking in the back. When I pull around into the alleyway, it’s mostly empty. I put the car in park and glance over at my daughter. It’s probably better this way, parking back here. It’s slightly less conspicuous. This is a busy shopping area, and at least back here, it lessens the chance I’ll run into anyone we know. This way they won’t say they saw my car. My husband’s patients are everywhere, especially on this side of town, and you never know who you’ll see from church. It’s my job to be social. But it would be nice not to have to explain myself for once. Not to have to worry about doing or saying the wrong thing. It’s a blessing and a curse, all the rules I have to remember. Like traffic laws—or any law, for that matter. What keeps you safe also limits your personal liberty.

  In this case, I have a plan. It was a rough day, given everything. I spent hours scrubbing the clubhouse to perfection, my just punishment for—I’m not even sure what. Disobedience, I think. But more likely a reminder that no one is above service. No one is above God. Anyway, I did my duty, I showed that I’m willing to be put in my place when necessary, and for this my husband might let the minor infraction of slipping from my diet plan slide— if I played it just right. Checks and balances, that’s what this is.

  “What are we doing?” Avery asks, glancing up from her phone. She meets my eye, but her fingers never stop moving across the screen.

  “Your dad and I found this coffee shop the other day,” I tell her, and I have to stop and think. How long ago was that now? It seems that hours turn to days, and days bleed into months. I can’t stop it. No one can. We wanted a slower pace of life, but I’m not sure if that’s what we ended up with. I watch my daughter as she turns her attention back to her phone, texting or snapping or doing whatever it is the kids are doing these days. What have we done?

  “Coming in?” I ask.

  She doesn’t glance up. “I’ll wait here.”

  This is perfect; I won’t have to involve her in my little deception. Plus, it makes sense, given her phone is glued to her face. I imagine it would be hard to walk anywhere that way. That reminds me. I pick up my phone, open my camera app, call her name, and when she looks up, she knows exactly what I’m after. She smiles. Big and wide, happily. I click and capture the moment, posting the photo to Instalook with the hashtags #qualitytimewithmygirl #howluckyamI #theygrowupsofast. Then I shove the phone in my pocket and ask her what she wants.

  “Surprise me,” she mutters without looking up. I tell her to lock the door, but I don’t think she hears me.

  “Avery!” I yell, and she looks at me then, eyes wide. She knows I do not yell. “Lock the door.”

  “Okayyyyy.” She rolls her eyes. I shake my head and stand there outside the door for a moment until I hear the click. She’s turned the speakers all the way up; She knows I hate it when she does that.

  I take out my phone and check the number of likes Avery’s photo has gotten. Eighty-nine so far. I shove it back in my pocket, wondering if the hashtags I used were good enough. That’s when I see the girl from the coffee shop standing there, back against the wall, staring at me. She takes a drag on her cigarette and tilts her head. She’s watching me. It isn’t until I get a little closer that I can smell it isn’t nicotine she’s inhaling. She’s already stubbed it out, but a scent like that lingers.

  “It’s you,” she says, and I look behind me even though I know she couldn’t possibly be speaking to anyone else.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Sorry,” she scrambles, and I can see that she’s clearly flustered. I’ve busted her smoking pot, and she’s only just now realized her infraction. “Excuse me. I’m…I’m… so sorry. I don’t usually do this—I just—I just—”

  “Don’t be,” I tell her, and then because I can’t think of anything better to say, I add, “There wasn’t any parking out front.”

  “Everyone comes at this time. The 3:00 p.m. crash.”

  “Crash?”

  “Blood sugar. Or whatever it—it’s a dip. People need their fix.”

  “Right,” I say, glancing back at my SUV, wondering whether or not I’m going to have to walk around the building or whether or not there’s an entrance back here.

  “Tell you what,” she says, reading my mind. “I’ll bring your order out to your car…if you promise to keep this between us.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I tell her, even though it’s a great idea. Leaving Avery alone in an alley clearly isn’t the smartest plan, seeing that I’ve already run into at least one person doing drugs here. I can just hear Grant now. No doubt, Avery would mention it, if she’s seen. She likes to hear her father speak of the lesser people. Already, it makes her feel important. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Also, it’s a deflection, and already she’s good at those, too.

  The girl clears her throat, that or she coughs. It’s hard to tell. “It’s no trouble, really.”

  I look over my shoulder to see if my daughter is looking my way. Of course, her head is down. Grant tells her all the time she needs to watch her posture. Maybe we should glue that phone to your face.

  “So what’ll it be? Another Americano?”

  I cock my head. I’m impressed. I thought stoners were naturally forgetful. “Do you remember everyone’s order?”

  She shrugs.

  “No,” I say. “I want the Lucky’s Special. And a latte. Almond milk
, please.”

  “Okay,” she nods. “But just so you know, those two don’t pair so well together.”

  I think she’s joking, but I’m not so sure.

  “The latte’s for my daughter.”

  She glances toward the car.

  “But I’ll have a water.”

  “San Pellegrino?”

  I raise my brow. “How’d you know?”

  She shrugs. “Just a hunch,” she says and then she holds out her hand. I think she’s asking for payment, so I fish a twenty from my pocket. “No,” she says. “You have to shake on it.”

  “What am I shaking on? A hunch?”

  She motions between the two of us. “To keeping secrets.”

  I consider her expression for a moment before eventually sliding my hand in hers. “To keeping secrets,” I say.

  We shake, and it seems weird but I’m in an alleyway ordering food I’m not supposed to be eating from a girl smoking pot, so weird is subjective at this point.

  While I wait for her to return with my order, I scroll through and like a few dozen posts on Instalook. When she returns and hands me the bag, I carefully remove the sandwich from its wrapper. It’s like unwrapping a gift marked fragile. I devour it within mere seconds. She leans against the wall and crosses her arms. She watches me carefully, but I’m too involved with my sandwich to care much. When I finish, I go to stuff the evidence in the bag, and see that she’s added chips to my order even though I hadn’t asked for them. I frown.

  “It tastes better with chips,” she confesses, and who am I to tell her any different?

  “I haven’t had potato chips in almost twenty years,” I tell her. I’m pretty sure I look like a crazy person, the way I rip the bag open and gorge on them like someone who hasn’t eaten in days. I know because she’s still standing there watching me, although I’m not sure why. I’ve paid her already, and she’s mentioned the shop is busy.

  “Sorry,” she says, as though she’s read my mind. “I just wanted to see what you thought.”

  “It’s amazing,” I manage, my mouth full.

  “Well then—” she half-turns. “I’d better get back.”

  I nod, and I keep chewing.

  She turns back. “I’m Izzy, by the way.”

  “Josie,” I say, in between fistfuls of potato chips.

  “Well, Josie,” she says, “It was a pleasure to meet you.”

  “Umhumm.” I agree, but mostly I’m thinking about how I might get back here and get another of these sandwiches.

  She turns and takes several steps toward the back door before she stops and turns abruptly. “I don’t do this often, you know.”

  I swallow my mouthful. “Make women in alleyways sandwiches?”

  “No,” she tells me, glancing back over her shoulder. “Smoke dope.”

  I raise my brow. I’d already forgotten. I’m too preoccupied with this new vice of my own to consider any sins she might be harboring. “Oh,” I say, waving her off. “It’s our secret, remember?”

  She narrows her gaze. “Funny. You know…I only smoke because it makes me hungry. Now— all I can think of is having what you’re having.”

  “Lucky you,” I say. “You work here. You get to have this anytime.”

  “Yes.” She smiles, and it’s one of Grant’s. The reassuring kind. The lying kind.

  Chapter Twelve

  Izzy

  Sometimes you have to lure the fish in, and sometimes you get lucky and they come to you. I couldn’t believe my eyes or my luck when I see Josie Dunn walking toward me in the alley. At first I think maybe I’m imagining it, which is why I don’t immediately put out my joint. I’m not usually much of a smoker. It’s Tyler. Call it peer pressure. Also, I haven’t eaten in three days, and pot seems to be the only thing that helps.

  I take a long pull off the joint, suck the musty smoke deep down into my lungs, into the core of me. I hold it there. She’s every bit as beautiful, even though she’s not wearing a dress. She looks more casual, almost relaxed. She doesn’t look like the kind of woman who received hundreds of photos of shellfish—something she’s highly allergic to and would mean certain death if ingested. I know, I read up on food allergies.

  No, she looks like someone who has it all together. Like someone who has her emotions in check, which is one reason I don’t instantly recognize it’s her. This time she has on jeans and a blouse with heels, and I wonder what it must feel like to be so flawless. Scanning her Instalook again this morning, realizing more of her likes and dislikes, it finally sunk in. This time it has to be different. I realized I can’t be stupid about this. I can’t send immature jabs when I’m lonely or when I’ve had one too many. I have to be strategic. I don’t want to watch from afar. Less like last time. That wasn’t real. That’s why it didn’t last.

  I want it to be like this. Up close and personal. I want her to come to me. And just like that, she has.

  Already, I feel like I know her. I know she likes dinner parties and hates traffic. She doesn’t hate a lot. She’s not one of ‘those women.’ Her positive to negative ratio is roughly eleven to one.

  It probably doesn’t hurt that she’s married to Dr. Grant Dunn, plastic surgeon extraordinaire. That part kind of surprised me; she doesn’t strike me as the type who’s had work done. But maybe he’s just that good. They have two kids. One boy, one girl. The perfect family. She’s into flowers, salads, and spin class. Typical. But there’s something different there, too. For one, she doesn’t try too hard. She isn’t trying to get people to like her.

  I can tell.

  They just do.

  They vacation at least twice a year: once in the winter and once in the summer. She’s proud of her children, and her husband clearly adores her. It’s evident in the photographs he takes. In fact, I would argue that he takes just as many as she does. An involved family man. The kind I know Josh would have been. Sure, we might not have had their money, but we could have been that happy. We were that happy. Once.

  I can have that again. I just have to dig deep. That’s what @liveyourbestlife224 says. Sometimes you have to dig deep. And I am. I have.

  “Izzzzzy,” Stacey calls out the back door. The sound of her voice makes me jump. She likes to do that, draw my name out as long as she can. I don’t like the way it sounds coming from her lips, but I can’t exactly tell her as much—not now. Not now that @Josie_Dunn loved my sandwich. Not now that I really need this job. Not now that I know she’ll be back.

  “Izzy,” Stacey says. “There you are.” She finds me in the back, washing the last of the dishes. We have a dish washer but her kid had a thing at school tonight, some performance or something, so I said I’d finish up. I’m not supposed to be back here—I’m supposed to be off the clock, and I assume that’s why Stacey’s saying my name in that manner. She may have money, but that’s the thing about rich people. They like to hold on to what they have.

  “Where’s Maria?” she asks, her eyes searching the kitchen, taking note of the fact that I am elbow-deep in dish water.

  “Her kid had a thing…”

  She squints as though she has no idea what I could possibly be talking about. “A thing?”

  “Like a performance.”

  “Oh.”

  I don’t stop washing. Maria’s job isn’t as easy as mine. But Stacey wouldn’t know that. She wouldn’t know hard labor if it struck her in the face. I know I’m considering testing my theory.

  “You’d think she’d need the money.”

  She did need the money. She’d even said as much, when I’d suggested covering for her. I told her not to worry, and I slipped her a twenty. It was more than she would’ve made in the two hours she had left here, but Grant Dunn had left it in the tip jar, and I figured Maria needed it more than me. I only had one mouth to feed, and lately, barely had that.

  “I don’t think she was feeling well,” I lie. I’m careful about it, though. It’s not an outright lie. It’s just my opinion, which can’t be used against yo
u the same way a real lie can.

  “Oh—that’s too bad. Say— I was going to ask if you wouldn’t mind placing the dairy order again this week?”

  I tilt my head and set the plate on the drying rack. “It’s due in the morning.”

  She frowns. “I know. It’s just that I have a date.”

  I want to tell her this is her problem. This is her business, not mine, and that the order is due at the same time every week. I want to tell her this will mean staying an hour even after I close up. But that’s not what I say at all. I could use the money, anyhow. “Sure,” I tell her, and with that she smiles sweetly. Then I watch as she turns on her heels and walks out.

  “Thanks again,” she calls when she reaches the counter. I listen as she gathers her things. She’s happier than usual. She has the shot at the one thing money can’t buy in earnest— love. For this reason alone, I know better than to engage her. I hate hearing about her dating life. It’s above and beyond my pay grade. Not that she understands that. People like Stacey—rich people—hardly know boundaries.

  Finally, when I’ve had enough pretending to busy myself in the back, when I can tell that she’s heading out, I make my way to the front.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she says, slinging her purse over her shoulder. “You’re a lifesaver, I swear.”

  “Not really,” I say. But she’s already gone.

  I clean up, and then I place the order for the dairy, which was an even bigger pain in the ass than I thought it would be. Stacey hadn’t figured in that we release the pumpkin spice latte next week, and that calls for double the whip we normally order. Thankfully we aren’t busy, or it would have taken me even longer, and I have to make it to the bus stop by 9:30, otherwise I have to wait a full hour for the final bus of the night to make its way back around. I’m just finishing up counting the till when I hear the doorbell chime. I look up, and I see him. Grant Dunn. He looks almost confused as he steps through the doorway, as though he’s misplaced something, and he isn’t sure this is where he’ll find it.