Chapter Nine - OLIVER
Ariel’s massive Victorian house used to belong to my mother’s family. They owned it jointly for like a hundred years or something. Ever since my gramps won it in a card game sometime last century. It’s on Mountain Avenue, the most desirable downtown neighborhood in Fort Collins, and it’s huge, so it’s worth a crap ton.
But Ariel bought it about three years ago after my Uncle Vic had been using it as a seasonal haunted house every Halloween for more than a decade. It looked like a haunted house. Straight-up Munsters, or Amityville Horror, or any of the other insert-iconic-creepy-place-here houses.
Unfortunately for my Uncle, and Ariel too, the house is part of the Fort Collins historical record and could not be renovated without approval. Which is why Vic had a hard time convincing buyers that the million-dollar price tag, as well as the million-dollar renovation, was going to be worth it.
It just so happened that Ariel and I were flush with money that year from the website and she needed a tax writeoff quick.
Eighteen months of missed deadlines and a blown budget later she was ready to move in.
Four months after that the local kids forgot it wasn’t a haunted house anymore and trashed it on Halloween when she was out of town.
Yes, long story short… Ariel lives in a huge six-thousand-square-foot money pit with six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, and it still looks creepy as hell, even though she painted the whole thing pink and white.
The Munsters in Pink. And. White.
It looks like a strawberry milkshake.
Only one of my princess sisters would paint a haunted house pink.
Ariel lives on the other side of College Avenue from me, so I don’t go over that way much. I stick to the office, Shrike Bikes, the tattoo shop, the theater, and my house when I’m in downtown.
So color me surprised when I pull up in front of the Milkshake Mansion and see a twelve-foot-tall inflatable Santa Claus waving at me from the front yard and holding a digital sign that is counting down the days to Christmas.
We get off the bike and take our helmets off.
I give her a look.
She shrugs. “What? These fucking kids around here. I just got one last week asking when we were gonna have a real ax murderer again. Can they not see the bazillion signs all over town telling them the FoCo Theater is the new haunted house? I’m skipping Halloween and going straight to Christmas.”
I shake my head, but she’s already walking up her front sidewalk.
Those kids are probably gonna trash it anyway because an ax murderer is a bazillion times cooler than a strawberry milkshake Santa. But I don’t say that. I just follow her inside.
The aroma of something delicious permeates the air, and since Ariel was in the mood for gutting the entire downstairs when she renovated, you can see the kitchen from the front door, and it’s filled with women.
Victoria and Ellie are doing something at the stove and sipping drinks while they do it. Cindy is sitting at the breakfast bar slurping down what might be a strawberry margarita, and when Ariel approaches, she stands up and hands her one too.
West, Mac, and Pax are sitting at the real bar on the other side of the massive main floor, looking up at a Bronco game with a bottle of Stoli in front of them.
Good to know we’re all gonna be liquored up for this conversation. Because obviously this is a Mister meeting. The only problem is that we’re missing a Mister.
I walk over and take off my leather jacket, draping it over the back of a barstool, and then point to the bottle. “Since when do you drink vodka?”
I’m looking at Pax, since he’s the drinker—which kinda pisses me off, since the last thing I need is his drunk ass as my potential brother-in-law.
But West is the one who answers. “It was a gift,” he says.
“From who?” It’s not her, I tell myself. It’s not her, it’s not her. Every one of these college kids in this town probably drinks Stoli…
“It was in the apartment.”
“My dad’s place?” Hmmm.
“Yup. What’s that condo for, anyway?” Pax asks. “Just a crash pad so he doesn’t have to drive home late at night?”
“Yeah,” I say, still thinking about that bottle. “He’s had it longer than I’ve been alive. Usually he rents it to students but he kicked the last tenants out for partying too much and hasn’t bothered to put it on the market again.”
“Fucking college kids,” Mac says, still looking up at the TV.
“So,” West says.
“So,” the rest of us say back.
“Where the hell is Five?” Pax asks.
“Why would he be here?” I say, pouring myself a drink.
“Um,” Mac says. “Why wouldn’t he be here? I mean, he shows up every other time we seem to have a meeting.”
“Yeah, and we’re in his town,” West says. “So we figured he’d be around.”
“His town?” I laugh into my glass as I drink. “He doesn’t live here.”
“What do you mean?” Mac asks. “Sure he does.”
I squint my eyes at Mac. “Did he tell you that?”
“No. But… you guys are family, right?”
“He’s ten years older than me, man. He doesn’t hang out with me. It’s just business.”
“He doesn’t live here?” Pax asks, going all serious on me. “Where the fuck does he live?”
“I dunno.” I shrug. “He lives all over, I guess. He’s got a house in Vail, I know that. Some place in London, I’m pretty sure.”
“How could you not know where your… fucking… whatever he is, lives?” Pax asks.
“He’s, like, barely a cousin. Our parents are friends. And like I said, he’s ten years older than me. We’ve never been, like… buddies. We don’t hang out, for fuck’s sake. I call him when I need him. And up until this past year, that wasn’t very often.”
“Hmmm,” they all say together.
“That’s weird,” Mac says.
“Whatever,” I say, already bored with this shit. All I want to do is go back to my office and watch that video of Katya over and over and over again. Plan my next move. What will I say? Should I make another video? Find her phone number? Should I go up to that apartment two buildings over and knock on the door?
“Oliver?” Pax is saying.
“What?”
“Jesus Christ, are we boring you? Can’t keep up with the conversation?”
“Just zoning out. What do you want from me?”
“So nothing weird going on here?” West says, taking over.
“Nope. Just the same old small-town bullshit as usual. Work is the same, home is the same. Everything is the same.”
“Well, that’s good news,” West says.
“Makes me nervous,” Mac replies.
“Yeah,” Pax adds. “Like we’re missing something.”
I try to concentrate on the football game. Katya isn’t unusual. Yeah, she’s a girl who came back from my past, but this is Katya. I know her better than she knows herself. I don’t care how long she’s been away, I know her deeply. I know her inside. I know her heart. And every bit of it is good. Not one ounce of her is manipulative or evil. Not one ounce.
If she wanted to fuck me over, she could’ve done it many, many times.
She is clean, she is good, and most of all, she is loyal in the only way that counts. She loves me, I know it. And I love her, she knows it. We’re gonna work out this bullshit that’s happening and come out the other side just fine.
Nothing to worry about here. Nothing to see at all.
“Dinner’s ready!” Ellie calls from the kitchen.
We all get up, hungry and wanting to put the Mister shit behind us. But Pax grabs me by the arm as Mac and West walk off.
“Hey,” he says, leaning into me a little. “We need to talk without the girls after dinner. You got a place we can do that?”
“Well, we can’t leave together from here if you want it to be secret. They’ll follow. Ariel for sure. Victoria probably.”
“So where?” He’s looking at me like this is urgent. “I don’t want Ellie to find out until I tell Mac.”
“Find out what?”
“Where can we talk that won’t make them suspicious?”
I look around the main floor and my eyes stop on the door to Ariel’s office. “In there, I guess. I’ll tell Ariel I need to make a phone call, then you guys follow me in there. I bet they don’t even notice.”