Page 21 of Try Me
“Okay.” Nate drew the word out skeptically, and I weighed my options. Nate and I were tight. Not as tight as we’d been before he started dating Eric, but still close. On the other hand, I was pretty sure the whole situation with Chet was both stupid on my part and more than a little unhealthy. And my fixation on it was something I was embarrassed to admit.
“Something happened with…uh…” Jesus. How to begin. Even a year and a half plus later, the situation seemed convoluted and a little messed up, especially if I was to try to explain it out loud with actual words. Nate lowered his chin, prompting me to continue with a hard stare. “With Cam and Chet and me,” I continued reluctantly. “And it’s a little more complicated because I kinda grew up with Chet.”
Nate blanched. “Wait. Really? You’ve literally never mentioned that.”
“We went to different high schools, but we were friends when we were younger. Like, way younger. And then my dad ended up being one of the whistleblowers on some shady shit Chet’s dad was doing with his financial firm. And, uh, kinda had a small role in getting him in trouble with the federal government and…”
Nate’s eyes gradually widening, making it harder to go on. I saw the moment when he got it, though. “Whoa. Pynchon Ventures was Chet’s dad? How’ve I never made that connection? Jesus, wasn’t he bilking people all over the place?” I nodded, and he winced. “Fuck. That’s crazy.”
“He and my dad owned a company together before they went separate ways after some falling-out. That was when Chet and I were kids. The Ponzi scheme came later.”
Nate had deserted his chili fries, so I stole one as he prompted me again with an impatient gesture.
“Chet and I haven’t had much contact since we were fourteen, except for basketball games and then seeing each other out at parties. Different schools, different circles. But he and Cam became friends at some point sophomore year. No clue when or how often they were hanging out.” In all honesty, I’d felt blindsided by it initially because Cam had never mentioned Chet, and we hung out a lot back then. “But anyway, Cam called me one night to pick him up from a club. Turned out Chet was with him and they were rolling balls. I dropped them off at Chet’s and Cam tried to convince me to come in to have a threesome.” I mumbled the last part, but Jesus, even saying it aloud ignited the same clashing emotions I’d felt that night. Jealousy, intrigue, frustration. Chet’s nearness had been like a layer of heat over the back of my neck the whole ride, and the one time I’d accidentally caught his eye it’d spiked to magma levels. “Things were a little weird with Cam after that and then a month later, boom, overdose.” I cringed.
I could’ve driven a Buick into Nate’s mouth, the way he gaped at me. He’d forgotten the beer and the game on TV and stared at me like I’d told him I had an extra set of balls or something.
Then he snapped his mouth shut and shook his head. “Hold on, I’m processing, but we’re gonna need to back the fuck up.Threesome. Jesus fucking Christ. Like the three of you. Cam, Mark, Chet.” He made a complicated gesture with his hands, trying to jigsaw his fingers together and that, combined with the expression on his face, had me biting back a laugh, because from the shit I’d overheard between him and Eric when they’d still been my roommates, they were freaky as fuck. And yet somehow he was still capable of seeming totally naïve sometimes.
“That’s the definition of a threesome, yeah.”
“Stop being a smart-ass. You’re blowing my mind right now.” His eyes narrowed. “And maybe not in a good way. You told me months ago that you and Cam messed aroundonetime. But now you’re telling me you were having threesomes with himandChet while dropping E. What the fuck, man?”
“The amount of emphasis happening in your speech patterns right now is concerning,” I replied as he flipped me the bird. “Also, I didn’t actually have the fucking threesome! I pretended I didn’t understand what he said and left. Cam and I never happened again.” We had kissed. It was one time weeks before he called me to pick him and Chet up, and I’d initially chalked it up to drunken curiosity on both our parts. But the invitation that night gave me the idea a hell of a lot more had been going on in Cam’s life than he’d let on. I never found out, though, because he’d started keeping me at arm’s length after that. “And like a month later he OD’d. I’m not saying I reacted rationally,” I grumbled. I kind of had to wonder if I’d recovered any logical capabilities at all. Recent behavior pointed strongly toward no.
“I’ll fucking say.” Nate gave a disbelieving snort. “Goddamn. And you were givingmefucking grief for doing some blow—which I didn’t actually do, in case you need the reminder.”
“I don’t. I apologized for that, and I meant it. I thought maybe when you were being all sketchy with Eric—and I knew that he hung out with Chet—fuck, I don’t know.” My intentions had been genuine back then. Nate had been unusually distant, and it had tapped into some primal fear that I was about to lose another friend.
Turned out he and Eric had just been screwing their fucking minds out on the down low and Nate hadn’t been ready to come out.
Nate cocked his head, and then his mouth fell open again. “Hold the fuck up. Hold. The. Fuck. Up. This isn’t even about Cam, then, is it, because the common factor hereisn’tCam.” He gazed down his nose at me. “It’s Chet Pynchon.”
Wait. What? There was a distinctive record needleskkkkkrttttnoise in my head as Nate stared at me, putting the pieces together—maybe putting them together even better than I had.
Not so naïve after all.
I couldn’t even come up with a reply.
“That’s crazy.” Nate shook his head. “But shit, why didn’t you just tell me all of this in the first place?”
I shrugged, wanting the conversation to be over, dreaming of bed, of sleep, of a world in which I hadn’t complicated all of my friendships. “Same reason you didn’t tell me you and Eric were screwing around and it had your head all messed up.”
“Yeah, I get that, but that’s a little different.” Nate shoved his beer away and folded his arms over the table. “Eric and I weren’t getting into fistfights. And I wasn’t holding a grudge against him based on total speculation.”
“It wasn’t total speculation,” I insisted. “Chetwaswith him the night he OD’d. Cam kept saying his name in the hospital before his parents got there and banned my ass.” Nate knew the story. Hell, he’d been the one to come pick me up at the hospital after Cam’s parents arrived, because I’d ridden in the ambulance with Cam. I’d been a fucking wreck both because I’d been the one to discover Cam in that state and because of the way Cam’s parents had treated me like I was diseased and then summarily dismissed me.Kicked you out. And then I’d gotten pissed. Chet’s messages later that night were just one more barb in my already thin skin. If he’d cared so much, he should’ve fucking stuck around and been there for Cam. Or so my thoughts had run at the time.
“So he wasn’t feeding Cam drugs or even supplying him, then,” Nate said as I finished rehashing the story all over again. “Which means you picked a fight with him over nothing. Nice move.”
“Yes. Exhibit #1345 that I’m an asshole.” I swigged the last of my beer and pushed it away to reach for another, but I didn’t really want it. I put it back in the bucket. “Are there twelve-step recovery programs for my kind?”
Nate cracked a smile. “Looks like step one got stamped on your cheek in purple and blue the other night.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I grumbled. “Step two is that Chet’s both an intern at Preston, Beasley, and Waringandmy fucking partner for a project we’re supposed to do.”
Nate barked out a laugh. “How the hell did that happen?”
I recounted the story of walking into orientation late, along with a recap about having to go to campus security for my phone, just so Nate was aware of the full extent of my current misery.