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7

You Are Three, You Come with Me

They met just outside baggage claim at Logan Airport.

Lore and Hamish were already there, talking—a little thorn of jealousy hooked into the meat of Owen’s heart at that, stupid and silly but it scratched him just the same. Lore looked like Lore, but like a reduced sauce of who Lore was and always had been: hair dyed of smoke and lavender over an undercut carved with geometric lines, wearing an outfit that Owen would best describe as apocalypse prepper Blade Runner chic . Pair of custom headphones around her neck, the cups ringed with pink lights. Doc Martens lacquered with stickers. Thin soft hoodie with a cross-body bag. Pockets everywhere. Even her carry-on was badass: some kind of frosted metal with pink wheels, pink edges, pink handles. Every inch of her, cool as fuck. Like she’s trying too hard, Owen thought suddenly, a poisonous plant grown up out of jealous earth. An invasive thought he had to kill quick.

As for Hamish—

He’d seen him online, obviously—Facebook and Instagram and even Twitter back when Twitter was a thing. And so Owen figured he was prepared to see what Hamish looked like now, but—

It still knocked the wind out of him.

Hamish looked the opposite of himself.

He had always been big, always tall. But most of his bulk was gone, winnowed down to an athlete’s form. And now he was clean-cut, well-kept. V-neck T-shirt under a light blazer. Copper-top hair close cropped. A beard shorn so close to the face it barely qualified as a beard and looked more like it had been painted on. This was a guy who owned a Peloton. Who ran marathons. Who not only had a robust 401(k), but had opinions about them. That’s not Hamish, Owen decided. Another bad, mean idea. Another invasive he had to stomp out. People are allowed to change, he thought, less like a belief he agreed with and more like an argument he was desperately trying to make to the jury of himself.

The sounds they were making indicated small talk: that gentle murmur of inconsequential chatter, like the noise of a small creek cutting through a soft forest.

“—yeah, yeah,” Hamish was saying, chuckling as he talked, “three kids, Taylor, Emma, and Chad, and of course each of them do their own sport, you know. Emma does field hockey, Taylor, she’s our soccer fiend, and Chad runs cross-country, so dude, I’m pretty sure we’re just an Uber for our kids at this point.” It was weird for Owen to hear it, because it was Hamish’s cadence—he used to get high and talk all the time, just an endless stream of consciousness yammer, but always about wild shit like Star Wars or Bigfoot or some new live bootleg cut of some jam band he loved. But while the cadence was there, now it was strictly middle-aged Dad vibes instead, like an artificial intelligence online had stolen his voice but not his personality, deepfaked for this airport meeting.

Lore said, “Cool, man, that’s great,” and to Owen’s ear it was very clearly her meaning the absolute opposite of that, or at the very least Lore transmitting the signal that she gave absolutely zero shits at all about this conversation. She started to say, “You know, I think kids are way overscheduled these days—”

“You have kids?” Hamish asked, surprised.

“Oh, hah, fuck no—” But then she turned and saw Owen, and her face did this thing where it went through a series of expressions, a roulette wheel spinning until it finally landed on something resembling happiness and surprise, or at least the artifice of it. She said his name, and in it, he heard the doubt give way.

She didn’t think I’d show up .

“Owen, hey,” she said after a few perfectly awkward seconds. Lore went in for a hug.

He returned it—it was weird, ill-fitting, like a sweater that was too big, too roomy, to really feel comfortable. As if she didn’t know how close they were, or weren’t, still. Which was fair, he thought. Owen had the same question, though bitterly, he suspected he already had that answer.

Hamish, on the other hand, said, “Hey, buddy!” and went in for a big hug. Felt genuine. Robust. Like one of his old hugs—the difference being there was so much less of him to hug now—a body hewn of rock, not soft happy marshmallow. It turned what was supposed to be a Hamish hug into something sharper, less comforting.

“Hi, guys,” Owen said, forcing a smile. He was still shaky from the flight—the ghost of adrenaline still haunted his body’s hallways. “Good flights?”

“Yup,” Hamish said, nodding along.

“Long,” Lore said. “Red-eye. Plus, after parking on the runway for too long, it was like almost seven hours in that sky chair. How about you?” But even before he could answer, she grinned. “You still hate flying, don’t you? You’re not white as a sheet, exactly, but—”

“More gray,” Hamish offered.

“Yeah. Gray.”

“I like the flying, it’s the constant fear of crashing I’m not into.”

“I have some stuff for that,” Lore said. “For anxiety. Stuff that’ll open you up, clean you out.”

Hamish snorted. “I don’t think ex-lax is gonna help him, Lore.”

“No, I mean—open up and clean out his mind, not his ass.”

They all laughed. It was a good moment. A small respite. Stupid banter felt right. Like maybe they could snap back into place, like LEGO bricks clicking together.

Owen said, “I take some stuff, but um—I probably should keep on my regimen, or whatever.”

They all nodded at one another.

And then—the moment was over. They stood there, sharing air, the frequency between them feeling increasingly dead. Nobody knew what to say.

All around them, the chaos and bustle of the airport exit filled the void.

“Nick is picking us up, right?” Owen said, trying to chip away at the wall of ice that had suddenly sprung up between them.

“Yeah, yeah, I think so,” Lore answered.

“Fucking Nick,” Hamish said, his gaze cast to the middle distance. “Fucking cancer. I can’t even believe it.”

“Fucking cancer,” Owen echoed.

“ Fuck cancer,” Lore said. And they all nodded at that, as if cancer itself could hear them and see them agree that it could get fucked. If they’d had drinks, they would’ve clinked them, Owen decided. But they had none, so mostly they just shifted around awkwardly.

Hamish sighed. “He’s young, too. I mean, we’re not young young, but for cancer? We’re young. I mean, did you think—” But the words died in his mouth before they could come to life. “I dunno. I dunno! I just know a lot of times it’s all the awful shit we put into our bodies—the foods we eat, the sodas we drink—”

“You know, no, it’s also the shit they pump into the air,” Lore said, by way of correction. Owen could feel Lore getting spun up—like one of the turbines from the flight whirring to life. “Not to mention the shit they spew into the water. And the ground. It’s in the plants now. Poison, all of it.”

“Yeah, well,” Owen said, interrupting whatever Hamish was about to say, “I just hope he’s going to be as okay as he can be through all of it. Whatever he needs this weekend, he gets. Right?”

They all seemed to agree to that.

(Though they didn’t really have any idea what that would come to mean.)

And then a beat-up-looking black Escalade pulled up next to them, giving a few short goose honks. Wonk-wonk-wonk. They shared quizzical looks as an old man, maybe in his seventies, got out. The old guy, with thinning hair and a well-oiled mustache and goatee, stiff-legged over to them and said in what sounded like a thick Russian accent, “You are three, you come with me.”

Again, they shared looks.

“We’re waiting for our friend,” Lore said, confident.

“I am Roman, your driver. Nick. Nick is your friend.”

“Oh.”

“That’s us,” Owen said. “I guess.”

“Cool,” Hamish said. “Good to meet you, Roman. Let’s ride.”