1.
~~~
Luke’s apartment.
-- 4:42 pm
“Do you want this?” Jules yelled a question at Luke, her hands on the espresso machine.
Harry had just stood up from a squat with a long black case under one arm and a suitcase in the other, now waiting politely for Jules to either get out the way or walk with him out of the narrow kitchen.
Big stainless-steel thing - the espresso machine. Harry had no idea what it cost, but it looked expensive enough. How’d they not settle that before they asked him to come help move her shit out?
Luke looked around the doorway.
He nodded. “Take it.”
“That’s not what I asked, though.”
God, Harry thought, can this fucking day be over already?
“I mean, you like it, you want it? You take it.” Luke shook his head just a tiny bit, gave a little shrug. Didn’t seem like he was trying to be a dick about it.
Jules stared at him, not moving, giving Harry secondhand embarrassment.
“Luke-” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Do. You. Want. It?”
He gave the machine a glance.
“I can get another one.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Harry adjusted the case against his hip.
Jules looked at him. “Harry.”
“No.”
“I didn’t even ask you anything.”
“I know where this is going.”
“Do you think he should keep it?”
Harry looked at Luke. Luke looked back at him.
Harry shook his head. “Absolutely the fuck not.”
Jules’s eyebrows went up.
“I mean I’m not answering. I have a wife. I know traps when I see them.”
Luke laughed.
“Now will you please allow me to exit this incredibly uncomfortable situation?”
Jules turned and Harry got past her. He gave Luke a silent ‘eesh’ with his face as he passed, Luke pressed his lips and shrugged with his eyebrows and shoulders.
Harry had been prepped to dislike Luke. And he figured it’d almost be the polite thing to do, right? Your wife’s best friend gets divorced, you fuck off the ex-husband.
Kelly had been firmly, naturally on Jules’s side from the beginning, and Jules herself had supplied enough complaints over the last couple of weeks that Harry had formed a vague picture of the man as a bit of a wet rag. Though, thinking back to the couple times he’d met him, once at a barbeque, once at Luke’s restaurant, Luke had seemed alright to him.
Harry slid the case into the back of the rental van.
Luke came out behind him carrying a cardboard box marked KITCHEN.
“Where do you want this?”
“Left side. Anything going to storage is left.”
Luke set it down. He tapped Harry on the arm. “Thanks for helping with all this.”
“Kelly volunteered me.”
“Don’t go thinking I’m a good guy or nothing. This is not my idea of a fun Saturday.”
Luke laughed and nodded, smiling at the boxes in the van. “Yeah, I feel ya.”
He looked back toward the building. “You guys really OK with Jules staying at your place?”
Harry shut one of the van doors halfway so it wouldn’t swing out.
“Nah, yeah, of course.”
“I know Kelly doesn’t mind.”
“Kelly? Nah. Her and Jules go way back. It’s a fucking sleepover for those two.”
Luke nodded.
“Good.”
Luke looked sad, but maybe also a little relieved. It was hard to tell. Harry expected to be warned against the ex-wife and her evil ways. Or to be recruited to Luke’s side. Nothing.
“I’m glad she’s got somewhere,” he said. “This whole thing’s been shitty enough.”
Harry nodded.
“Yeah.”
Luke rubbed his palms together once.
“Back to it?”
“Sure.”
They went back inside.
Jules was crouched beside an open box in the living room, wrapping something in an old T-shirt.
“You two done bonding?”
Harry walked past her, chucking a little ball of spent packing tape in an arc at her. “You jelly that we besties?”
“Nah, you can have him.”
Luke sighed quietly.
Harry heard it. Jeez.
He saw that maybe she had heard herself too.
She stayed uncharacteristically quip-less for a while after.
“Hey,” Luke said to Jules and she looked over. “Found these under the console.”
He tossed a black satin pouch gently. Jules caught it. She opened the pouch.
“You’ll need those on the shoot. Tuesday, right?”
“Yeah, batteries. Shit.” Jules dropped the pouch in a box. “Thanks.”
“Van?” Harry presented a heavy box to her, labelled Summer Stuff.
“Van. Good boy.”
“Eat me.”
“See? He loves helping.” Pointing up at Harry.
Luke smiled.
Harry carried the box out before he got volunteered for anything else. When he came back, Jules had her purse over one shoulder and was standing near the door. Luke was holding out a key. “Keep it for now.”
She said, “No.”
“Just until you’re sure you got everything.”
“I got everything.”
“You don’t know that.”
“If I forgot something, text me.”
“You can just come get it.”
“I don’t want the key, Luke.”
Luke stood with his hand out, key in it. Jules took the key. For a moment Harry thought she’d changed her mind. Instead she walked over to the little bowl near the door and dropped it inside.
~~~
“He seems nice,” Harry said at a red light.
“Do you want to get murder-suicided in a U-Haul?”
Harry looked at her, her angry face turning to a bitten back smile. Thinking then, of course, his wife would have her hottest friend live with them indefinitely. Not Barb or Janice. Green light.
“I know he’s nice,” she said after a while.
