Page 17 of Sapphire Spring

Or had his careful, if halting, wording suggested he wouldnever do such a thing? The long silence implied neither one of them was quitesure.

“Cool, cool,” Chadwick said. “I’ll get it and I’ll, uh, youknow, get it to you. Listen, I gotta go. Starla’s coming over, and that girlcan suck the chrome off a trailer hitch and she’s the sex before you eat kind,so…”

“Cool.”

“I’ll text you later and see if you want to hang. What’sthis party you’re doing again?”

“Just a work thing,” Mason lied.

Then the line was dead.

He couldn’t mention the name Kazemi to his bestfriend—Chadwick would freak and make Mason’s shot at a redemption mission allabout him. Maybe say a bunch ofshitthat made itclear he was way closer to being the guy he’d been in high school than Masonwas.

Come to think of it, after almost forty-eight hours ofhaving a clear and sober head, Mason had never been more aware of all thethings he couldn’t tell his supposedly best friend.

Worse, the dark cloud that had always hung over theirfriendship looked poised to burst. This had always been Mason’s fear—that oneof them would eventually take the party too far, demand some form of rescuefrom the other they couldn’t quite give. But he’d figured the event in questionwould be some split-second, drunken accident neither of themsawcoming.

This was different, something that had started in Chadwick’sworkplace. Something that might involve weeks’, maybe months’ worth of meetingswith lawyers.

Months of Mason being asked to lie.

He was halfway upstairs to his bedroom before he realized hishands were shaking.

When he opened his medicine cabinet and took out the bottleof Xanax Chadwick had prescribed for him, he shook two blue pills into his palmas if they were aspirin.

They were preferable to a drink, he told himself, and ifanything, they’d calm him down enough that he’d be able to articulate the rightapology to Naser. Relaxed, he’d probably do a better job of charming his sistertoo.

At this point, Fareena was a lost cause.

But as the pills made their painful way down his throat on aninadequate swallow of water, he knew he’d made a terrible mistake.

Again.

7

An hour after its start time, Pari’sevent was one hundred people over its headcount, and Naser and Jonas werecirculating slowly through the crowd like parent chaperones at a junior highdance. Persian pop music poured from the speaker towers on all sides of thepool deck. But it wasn’t Googoosh. It sounded like a dance remix of a tune byJamshid, whose throaty and haunting voice always reminded Naser of his father.And that, he realized, might be part of why he was so stressed out thisevening. Pari’s work embraced their Iranian heritage at every turn, and theresults always brought a complicated mix of feelings to a simmer inside Naser’ssoul.

Jonas gripped Naser’s shoulder. “Let’s make separatecircuits and see what we can see, and then we’ll meet back here in a few minutesand debrief. Remember, take no action without talking to me first, my littlewarrior. Deal?”

It was a concession to a crowd that had grown so thick heand Jonas could only scope out the entire party by splitting up. Naser nodded.In a second, Jonas was lost in the press of bodies.

One of the wine stations was already empty, the tuxedoedserver clearing its empty bottles. And yet none of the surrounding guestsseemed to be hurting for a glass.

That’s when he focused on an aspect of the party that had initiallybothered him for an entirely different reason. Fortune-tellers. Four of them.They weren’t being played by women of color, at least, which somewhat offsetthe troubling stereotype. Underneath the flowing, beaded, and wildly overdonecostumes, each one glowered like a budding Karen three seconds away fromcalling the manager.

Also, who hiredfourfortune-tellers for a single party?Were they running a special?

And why was the turnover at their tables so high?

Either they weren’t very good at theirjobsor their fortunes were incredibly concise.

In the coming year, be sure to avoid men named Bob.That’ll be five hundred dollars. Have a nice evening.

He headed for the nearest fortune-teller’s table, cuttingoff a few guests before they could take a seat. He dropped down into thefolding chair with a loudthunk.

“Want to know the future, kid?” she asked with all theenthusiasm of a basset hound.

“I’m not a kid.”

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