Page 34 of Brenna, Brat

“He was a good hockey player,” she offered.

I knew that. “And?” I prompted, a lot less casual now.

“And he seems fine,” Sophie answered. “Normal.”

What? This wasn’t like my sister at all. She had always compiled files on all our boyfriends and even potential ones, and the information she’d handed over to us had been unflinching and meticulous. She’d never shied away from anything, even when the results were embarrassing and what Addie called mean. Sophie had discovered that Nicola’s prom date had a bed-wetting problem, for example, and Juliet’s college boyfriend enjoyed folk music concerts. “You can’t bring that into our family,” Soph had written in her cover letter, which JuJu had angrily shared with the rest of us.

“Campbell seems fine?” I echoed. “That’s it? What’s going on? What aren’t you saying?”

“Sugar, Brenna! Don’t jump down my throat,” she snipped back, which sounded a lot more like my sister. “I’m just saying that there wasn’t a whole lot to impugn his character. He doesn’t have any arrests, just a speeding ticket. One ticket, and it wasn’t for going that much over the limit, and it wasn’t near a school or anything like that. He got his college hockey team involved in a big charity drive for a children’s hospital and he does the same thing here, too. They do a tournament and get some of the patients on skates. Those kids are cute.”

Sophie was softening up, and I didn’t think it was to her credit. “That’s great,” I said impatiently. “And?”

“He’s not big into social media but he does appear in other people’s stuff,” she said, which I knew because I’d looked at his mom’s and sister’s accounts. “Women have posted about him, but almost everything was deleted later.”

But being Sophie, she’d been able to find it anyway. “What does that mean?” I demanded. “What are you holding back? Stop trying to be cagey.”

“I’m not,” she said, and added, “I’m only saying that he’s a popular guy.”

That was something I already knew—but then I understood what she was trying to imply. “He’s been with a lot of women who deleted their posts about him when they broke up. Why didn’t you just say that?” I asked her, and she mumbled something. I walked closer to the window, both to get some fresh air and because the cell signal seemed to work better there. “You cut out for a second. What did you say?”

“I didn’t cut out, I just didn’t say it very loud,” Sophie told me. “I felt bad about it.”

“What? Why do you care about Campbell Bates?”

“I don’t,” she said. “I was remembering when I looked up Danny and saw the women he’d been with while we were apart for all those years. I was also thinking of seeing Carrington’s car parked in front of his house at night, and still there in the morning. It felt like crap,” she clarified.

“I already told you that I’m aware of your unhinged jealousy about your husband’s prior relationships.”

“Brenna, you’re such a brat!” she yelled, and that came through the phone loud and clear. “I was trying to avoid hurting your feelings, too, but never mind. Campbell has been with more women than I can count and they’re mostly gorgeous model-types who make me feel like I should be living under a bridge rather than participating in society. But he hasn’t been with any of them for more than a few months, not ever. Not even the girl who wrote that he was the love of her life, and that’s still pinned on her page. I have no idea why she wouldn’t have taken down that embarrassing crap after he dumped her—”

“How do you know that he’s the side doing the dumping?” I interrupted. “It could be that he’s looking for someone to settle down with but just has terrible taste. There’s no reason to assume that the breakups are all his fault.”

“Is this really what’s important when your boyfriend is facing seizure of his assets and a prison term?”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I told her, “and you brought it up. What else did you find out? What makes you think that he’s the one who’s breaking hearts?”

She hesitated more but then said, “I’m not saying that he’s a heartbreaker, but there’s enough evidence of angry women to make me believe that he was the one taking the wheel in the breakups. And I’m usually right about this kind of stuff. You know I did my job for a long time and I also did it very well.”

She was six years older than I was, so yes, she had more experience, but I couldn’t let her get away with the self-congratulatory crud. “Didn’t you have to quit your job because, by mistake, you started investigating the Russian mob—”

“Brat!” she interrupted, and hung up. But then, maybe out of spite, she did send me the file she’d prepped on Campbell. She’d omitted her usual cover letter but the attachment was huge, anyway, and it was all screenshots of social media posts. I scrolled quickly. There were at least twenty pages, and each page consisted of four or five pictures of him with various women and a lot of gushing captions, embarrassing emojis, and cringey hashtags. No, it hadn’t been #forever and he wasn’t #theone, not for any of them.

I scrolled and tried to count them, all their beautiful faces. Could that have been right? Were there actually almost ninety women represented here? No, no, I must have been wrong. If he’d started when he was sixteen, he’d only had twelve years…I opened the calculator app. Assuming he had roughly ninety posts disparaging him and/or deleted, that meant he’d averaged seven and a half girlfriends per year. He’d been with someone new just about every month and a half. I tapped my nails on the screen, thinking harder. I’d met him in January, when he’d come in to buy the birthday gift for Carrington. Now, it was March.

If I looked at it that way, then I had already beaten the average. I was still here, except, of course, that I wasn’t a girlfriend. He hadn’t once done anything besides acting friendly. He just didn’t want to sleep with me, like a line of guys that had comebefore him…actually, no one had come at all, not them or me, not in a sexual way. I remembered one of my would-be partners pulling on his pants and remarking that he’d rather sleep with a rabid fox than spend another moment with me. I’d told him that I would be happy to look for that animal for him, and that I hoped he enjoyed hydrophobia.

All those women, and Campbell hadn’t even wanted to kiss me, not even when I was lying on a couch about a yard away. He wasn’t interested in us having any physical interactions, although he must not have minded being physical with all those other women. I flipped through their pictures again. Yes, Sophie had been right. They were all pretty, and when I looked them up more, I found that a lot of them were also accomplished…oh, holy Mary. One even worked for one of my favorite designers in New York.

This was ridiculous, so I put down my phone and resumed scrubbing. Why was I thinking about sex right now, when someone who was possibly and kind of a friend had so many problems? Well, maybe because I’d been a little preoccupied with the idea of touching him, ever since he’d lain down in my bed. I’d watched the outline of his body in the glow of the nightlight that I always flicked on, because I didn’t care for absolute darkness.

Campbell had fallen right asleep, but I’d watched him and no, it hadn’t been pervy. I’d been worried because he’d started to murmur words and phrases under his breath, things that were hard to decipher. He’d definitely said “no” quite a few times,and I thought “Dad” and maybe something that sounded like his sister’s name.

Mostly he’d just sounded upset. It was upsetting to hear, as well, and I’d sat up and thought about waking him out of those dreams. I’d reached over, hesitated, and had left him alone.

I wondered how he was doing now. I picked up my phone to ask, then decided he’d heard enough from me. Right now, he was associating my name with his stolen car and a whole lot of extra problems. My idea about becoming indispensable could quickly turn into a roadmap of how to annoy someone if I wasn’t careful. So that was why I waited, mostly patiently, until Sunday evening before I sent just one message saying hello. He got back to me the next day: “Good news, they found my car.” He didn’t have time to talk, he said, but it was “pretty much drivable.”

That was…good?

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