Perfect Fifths_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [91]
“She hates it when I call him E-Car Jerry,” Marin says. “And when you say it, too. She says we should know better.”
“We should.”
“But it’s funny.”
“And you like E-Car Jerry, right?” Jessica discards the empty soda can and candy bar wrapper. Hands now free, she heads straight for the closet and flings open the doors. There’s nothing inside but empty hangers, a dry-cleaning bag, a folding ironing board, and a safe. Jessica sheepishly closes the doors, feeling silly for thinking that Marcus could possibly be sitting there on the floor. Hadn’t he told her that he doesn’t do that anymore?
“Sure. He’s nice. He makes Mom happy,” Marin says.
Jessica walks toward his duffel bag, cinched tight, slouching against his unslept-in bed. Jessica furtively looks over her shoulder, as if Marcus could have stealthily reentered the room without her noticing.
“I like E-Car Jerry, but I hate those tracksuits. I refuse to wear mine,” Marin says in a very prim and professional tone that cracks Jessica up. “Why are you laughing?” Marin is deeply offended.
“Nothing,” Jessica replies before adding, “Just you. You’re funny.”
“I’m not being funny. I’m being serious. I hate those tracksuits. They are itchy aaaaaand fugly.”
Jessica can’t take her eyes off the duffel bag. “Those tracksuits put the FU in fuuuuuuuuuuugly.”
Now Marin bursts into laughter.
“That’s it!” Jessica cries out, egged on by her niece’s enjoyment. “Tell your mom we just came up with the next conflict-free rhinestones-on-the-butt slogan. Not BU! FU!”
The joke isn’t so funny, but that doesn’t matter. It isn’t really about the joke itself, but the idea of the joke and how Jessica can get away with joking—even lamely—about the fugly tracksuits, but Marin cannot because those fugly tracksuits could revive her mother’s business and represent the first creative collaboration between her mother and her any-day-now fiancé. Jessica has always felt a special kinship with her niece. Marin looks exactly like Bethany (“a knockout,” just how Marcus described her), but even the Darling grand-matriarch has noted that Marin comports herself far more like the younger and moodier of her two daughters, a comment that was delivered to the elder daughter with a resounding “Good luck.”
Jessica grips both ends of the rope that ties (and unties) the mouth of the duffel. Why is she tempted to do this? What is she looking for inside? What hasn’t Marcus already told her that she needs to know?
“Hey, Aunt J.?”
Jessica drops the ropes as if she’s been caught. “Yes?!”
“I hope you didn’t get mad before when I said that thing about not being married. Because I didn’t say it because I’m still, you know, mad about not being a flower girl. I—”
Jessica doesn’t wait to hear the rest. “Oh, no! I didn’t get mad. In fact, it’s kind of strange that you should bring it up, because …” She pauses, knowing that she probably shouldn’t do this, and yet that grownup appreciation of discretion can’t quite overcome her childish impulse to tell all. All day she has kept this secret to herself, and now she really wants to share it with someone. And who better than Marin?
“Can you keep a secret?” Jessica is still looking at this duffel bag, which, upon closer inspection, appears to be coated in a thick layer of… nastiness. If this is what his bag looks like before he spends a week in a tent pitched in outhouse mud, what will it look like afterward?
“Sometimes,” Marin replies. “It depends on the situation. And the secret.”
“I appreciate your honesty.” Jessica hums in thought. She’s feeling oddly unsettled by Marcus’s luggage, and she’s not sure why.
“What is it?! Aunt J.? What?! Don’t leave me hanging here!”
Jessica is still trying to decide whether to tell Marin the real secret or to make one up when she spots Marcus’s handwritten note on the desk. Jessica picks up the paper and is about to read the message when Marin breaks the silence.
“Did you see Marcus?” She says this as if she has just been