He’d woken with a Saharan dryness in his mouth, his heart thundering at the back of his head. Ungluing one eyelid, still on the shadowy border between sleep and full consciousness— light slashed him across the eyes like a belt with a metal buckle, and Marlowe’s only defense had been to roll over, groaning, and throw up an arm to shield his face. Usually, his system was quick to recover, even after the wildest nights. He was equipped with a metabolism that was like an active furnace constantly burning off all the shit he shoveled into his body— but apparently, there was a limit to what it could do. He’d discovered that limit.
Blindly groping for his phone on the nightstand, a text reminded him he was supposed to spend today with Syd and Len at the beach, which sounded good, in theory: stretched out and horizontal for hours, listening to the waves break themselves on the shore. The sweetness of a restorative mimosa souring on his tongue. The exhalation of the ocean in his ears, nature’s white noise machine. Maybe he could sleep the worst of this off. But Syd’s Advil reserves were low, having handed them out for the whole week like a painkiller Pez dispenser, and after losing rock-paper-scissors— twice, he’d insisted on a redo— now Marlowe found himself unwillingly at the drugstore, staring in mute incomprehension at the shelf of Advils, Tylenols and other ibuprofens from behind a pair of Len’s cat-eye Celine shades. Their lenses were darker than any of his cheap tinted aviators but still, the brightness got in; with every too-quick turn of his head, it bounced around his brain like reflections off a mirror. He’d dressed in a wrinkled silk shirt, barely held together by the bottom two buttons, and his usual abundance of jewelry, looking very much like a rockstar on day three or four of a bender— haggard, strung-out, but with the same raw-boned sex appeal as always, scratching carelessly at the back of his sunburned neck, jeans slung low on narrow hips. Hearing his name startled him awake. Not just his name, but his first name. The off-limits one. Turning his head slowly, Marlowe looked first at Ainsley, then over his shoulder. The aisle was empty apart from an older man stooped over a low shelf, tufts of white chest hair poking through his collar as he compared the SPF percentages of sunscreen. “Ainsley, I think you have me confused with someone else,” he replied slowly, turning back to her, though his drawl was without its usual smoothness. His voice sounded like it’d been coarsely grated. Her expression had the look of something stormy brewing behind the eyes, meaning that whatever was coming his way would come anyway— but feeling that it was in his best interest not to acknowledge this, Marlowe dropped his head to look down at the selection of painkillers again. He chucked his chin towards them in a feeble nod. “You get stuck with drug-run duty too? Which one of these is the strongest? Assuming that over-the-counter morphine is out of the question.”
There was a small amount of satisfaction in the fact that she’d managed to annoy him, and even more satisfaction in the knowledge that he’d been trying to hide his annoyance and she’d picked up on it anyways. Ainsley could see it in the way he moved, could hear it in the faint difference in how he spoke. She’d always been observant, and had learned to read people at a young age— it was practically a survival skill when you grew up with as many siblings as she did. One wrong move when somebody was having a bad day and the whole house would be divided in a silent war for at least a week.
But the satisfaction was quickly replaced with her own annoyance at Marlowe’s lack of acknowledgement at the jab behind her way of addressing him. She’d been told she was far too passive in her confrontation style before, but it was clear that the hit had landed, at least to some degree. So he was probably intentionally ignoring it, which somehow made her even more annoyed. If there was one thing Ainsley hated, it was being ignored or brushed off, especially when she was already angry. “I know what I called you,” she started, peeling her gaze from him to glance at the shelves of painkillers. Yes, she was now intent on giving Marlowe a piece of her mind, but she did still have her initial errand to run. “Kasey told me,” Ainsley continued, ignoring his question, “that you two hung out.” She reached past him to grab a bottle of extra strength ibuprofen— generic, because name brands were a scam— before turning to face him fully once again. “Why don’t you just leave her alone already?”
