Page 57 of Safari Murder Party
“You were wrong about me. I have what it takes to make it in this industry, and—this job was everything I’d ever wanted. You almost ruined it.” Fletcher twisted to face him. A scalding cauldron of emotion churned in her stomach. Vulnerability, self-pity, outright rage. He’d seen her, understood her, and still tried to define her choices without her consent.
Waylon’s face sank lower until it was in line with hers, lashes long and thick. This close, she could see his heartbeat in the veins of his neck, right below the sharp edge of the jaw softened by stubble. He cleared his throat and said, “And for that, I’m sorry. But you were wrong about me, too. You said I’d always be a Cartwright, but that night, my dad had Melv write up a no-contact agreement. As far as my dad was concerned, I wasn’t a Cartwright anymore. Not until the diagnosis. It took dying for him to invite me back to Lydell. Back into his life at all. So, maybe we’re even.”
She didn’t want to believe him, and she didn’t want to be even. She wanted to stay mad at him for the rest of her life and then some, her skeletal middle finger flipped in the general direction of his coffin. But some traitorous part of her heart decalcified, the hard shell chipping off. A prickly feeling gathered in the cave of her chest.
For a moment, his apology hung unanswered in the air. She almost accepted it, but the rumble of an elephant stampede in the distance reminded them exactly where they were. And why.
Waylon said, “I think this is the part where you get undressed and pretend I’m not here.”
He also decided now was a good time to take his shirt off.Objectively, it was easier to ignore his presence when she wasn’t face-to-face withthat. Sunlight dripped off the planes of his chest—way too tan for a New York November—and the sight of it puddled in Fletcher’s core.
“You, um.” Fletcher swallowed. “You also have to pretend thatI’mnot here. Equal opportunity and all that.”
Something flared in Waylon’s eyes. Like he could tell the way her heart rate kicked up and liked being responsible for it.
“As you wish.”
And then he proceeded to drop his pants to his ankles with no regard for her presence at all. Fletcher should have, probably, maybe, turned away sooner than she did. But for a long second, she just stared at the gray elastic of Waylon’s boxer briefs, the way they hugged his thighs, the length of him at the center.
What was she doing? That wasWaylonshe was eyeballing.
One nice comment wasn’t enough to forgive him for the psychological damage he’d unknowingly inflicted for the last 1,155 days. She turned then and fought the urge to forcibly shake out her limbs. Reaching behind her, she found her zipper carefully positioned within reach. Right where he’d left it for her.
The river was cool against her skin as she waded up to her shoulders, and if she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine she wasn’t ten feet from her dead boss’s naked son. She floated, letting her skin wrinkle and the daylight drain. Today had been eight million years long, and she was glad to see its end.
A groan of relief parted her lips. Fletcher couldn’t help it.
Behind her, in a plane of existence Fletcher was refusing to validate with her cognitive awareness, Waylon chuckled.
Fletcher didn’t respond, but she did sink lower, blowing bubbles out of her nose.
“I think this is the first time I’ve ever seen you relax,” he said, his voice distant.
Fletcher snorted. “What happened to ignoring each other? You aren’t supposed to be seeing me at all.”
“I could sense it in your aura.”
“Didn’t take you as a big aura guy.”
A clipped laugh. “Joplin’s responsible for that one.”
Fletcher’s stomach lurched with envy at her colleague’s name, thinking about how they clung to each other in the pool, the nicknames, the way his name sounded in her mouth—
Bitter guilt clogged Fletcher’s system. Joplin wasdead. She couldn’t be jealous of a dead woman. Regardless of whether or not that dead woman had a romantic history with Waylon.
Shaking off the thought, Fletcher waded toward the banks and scavenged around her backpack for something—anything—to use as a towel. Cocktail napkins from the wine cellar it was.
To his credit, Waylon kept the toned expanse of his back to her the whole time she clipped her bra and shimmied into the spare set of clothes she’d packed—a cream-and-black tweed skirt, a chambray shirt, and a slightly-more-practical-than-heels pair of slingback flats. She offered him the same decency when Waylon buttoned a short-sleeved linen shirt, forcibly paying as little attention as possible to the way the water sluiced through the curves of his biceps, followed the veins of his forearms.
Tragically, noticing Waylon was growing increasingly harder to avoid.
Beneath the umbrella canopy of an acacia tree, their glampsite came together quickly: twin temperature-regulating sleeping bags; silk pillowcases for memory foam pillows that sprung out of capsules; and a solar lantern with USB charging ports.
Fletcher plugged her phone in as she sank into the fleece folds ofher sleeping bag, snug despite the evening wind picking up with the first clouds on the ink-dark horizon. Still no service. She fired off a string of messages to Ford anyway, just out of routine. Although they normally discussed the slope of Ariana Grande’s ponytail or which vegetable best embodied them as a person, tonight’s messages read:
THIS IS A SHIT SHOW
THE SHITTIEST OF SHOWS
