Page 76 of Pucker Up
“No. I hope I’m not going to be here very long.” I sounded like an asshole, but as much as I hated to admit it, being in the same room as Goldie was…hard. “Can we get this started?”
Goldie checked her watch and looked at the door. “In just a minute.” She took a sip of her water, and as she set it down, there was a knock on the door.
“Are you expecting someone else?” I turned, but couldn’t see who had knocked through the small vertical window.
Goldie got up and opened the door. “Come in.”
Then the last person I expected to see stepped through the door. My fucking brother. “What’s this all about?” The chair clattered to the ground as I stood up.
“Yeah. What is this all about? I thought you wanted to do our final session.” My brother crossed his arms and remained in the hallway.
Fern put a voice recorder on the table. “Gideon, please come in.” She stood and the sleeves of her bedsheet dress flapped as she gestured for Gideon to sit beside me. I picked up the chair, but didn’t sit down.
“Goldie, who is this?” Gideon’s face was its usual stony self as he stared at Fern.
A pang of jealousy shot through my body as Goldie reached out to rest her hand on my brother’s arm. “Gideon, this is my mother, Fern Lauper. She has some information I think both of you need to hear. Please. It will take less than a minute of your time. Have a seat.”
Goldie returned to the table, and Gideon entered the room and stood behind the chair. “I’ll stand, thanks.” It didn’t slip my attention that his hands were balled into fists and his jawbone was twitching.
“I’ll stand too.” I pulled the chair to the far end of the table and rested my hands on the back, ready to toss it at Mr. Punchy if I needed to.
Fern shook her head. “There’s a lot of negative energy in this room.”
“No shit,” Gideon growled. “Can we get on with…whatever this is?”
Goldie held on to the recording device and turned it in her hands while she spoke. “Gideon, over the past little while I’ve gotten close with your brother.” He glanced at me.
“Good for you. What does this have to do with me?”
Gideon can be scary, but Goldie didn’t back down. She set the recorder in the middle of the table and pointed to it. “Ace told me about Hailey.”
“You motherfucker.” Gideon lunged at me, but I shoved the chair in between us.
“Stop!” Goldie shouted. “Let me finish and then you can pound each other’s brains out.”
Gideon’s nostrils flared, but he took a step back. I kept the chair between us. “Go on,” Gideon grumbled.
Goldie pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her hands, something I noticed she did when she was nervous. It looked like Gideon’s outburst had gotten to her after all. “I want you to listen to this recording. I think it explains it better than I can.”
Before either of us could object, Goldie pressed play on the device.
There was a lot of background noise, like it was in a coffee shop, but it was muffled, like the device was in someone’s pocket.
Fern reached across the table, her dress dragging along it and she pushed the forward button. “Let’s move this to the important part. To give you boys a little bit of context, I found Hailey, the source of your pain, and the truth is here. I pretended to be an interviewer doing a piece on influencers.” She turned up the volume.
A voice—Fern’s spoke first. “Tell me, Hailey, how did you get so many followers on Instagram?”
The next voice was one I hadn’t heard in almost a year. “Hard work.” She giggled.
“It has nothing to do with your baseball star boyfriend?” Fern prodded.
“None at all. I got here on my own.” Her voice was squeaky and high like a baby. I hated her so much.
“I admire that. My editor only wants self-made influencers in the story.”
I wondered if Fern had worn her fortune teller getup to conduct the interview. Hailey didn’t sound like the brightest woman in the world, but surely she had to be suspicious of a woman who looked like she carried a crystal ball around in her pocket.
“Well, that’s me.” I could see her doing a little I’m-so-innocent shrug.
