Read Online Precise by Rebecca Berto, Lauren McKellar - Free Book Online

I tried to get away with something this lame.”
    Coop keels over in laughter. “That’s ‘cause you’re still—whoa!” Coop says, stopping. Then, “Who’s that?” He points a direct line to Katie’s ass.
    Brent grits his teeth, and hisses, “Kates.”
    “Sounds hot.”
    Brent clears his throat and tries again. “Katherine Anselin. Lifelong family friend.”
    “Right.” Coop stares again as Katie bends down to put back her drink and pick another. His body leans at the same angle as hers, only his eyes are wide, trance-like.
    Brent whacks Cooper’s shoulder hard enough for him to recoil.
    “So next is Hall Sex—after you’ve been married so long you can’t remember the year she locked you down. You just pass each other in the hall and say, ‘Fuck you.’”
    Tim and Marco make little noises, sucked in to the joke, waiting for the punch line. Both guys grab a handful of chips from a nearby bowl still transfixed on Cooper. It’s a surprise they aren’t spitting it out between laughs.
    As Brent reaches for some chips—just to do something with his hands—he sees Katie walking back, bottle in one hand. Her pace is rhythmic, confident.
    Why couldn’t I have been like Liam? Brent thinks. “She’s not coping,” Liam had said to Brent, weeks after Paul’s death. But, a week or two later, he’d said she was a bit better, but weird. Confused, Brent decided to wait. Give her time. Then it’s now and months have passed.
    “You’re bursting my eardrums with that crap joke. You’re shit,” Brent says. He smirks, so they get he’s joking, but even to him it feels stiff. He stands straight, and says, “Kates is coming. Be nice.”
    “Last is,” Coop continues as if Brent never spoke, just as Katie wobbles up next to Brent, her eyes seeming to sparkle, “Courtroom Sex—when your wife and her lawyer fuck you in the divorce court for everything you’ve got.”
    Tim howls with laughter. Cooper keels over again, roaring, slapping his thighs between fits of laughter. Marco chuckles too.
    The lumpy feeling returns, so Brent looks between Katie and the cooler. A drink feels like the right thing for him, too.
    “Cool,” Katie murmurs, as Brent leaves.
    When he returns, Coop is hanging his arm over Katie’s shoulder. She isn’t standing there like a lump. She’s . . . giggling. Her hands clap together and Coop slips closer to her side. Marco pretends to focus on something distant in the backyard—Dina, Tim’s fiancé, maybe—but his hands are tumbling together in a loose clasp.
    Brent’s silent, trying to figure out what he missed, how the Katie he thought he saw earlier turned into this other person, when Coop rustles his dirty blonde hair and says, “The man himself is back!” Cooper throws one triumphant arm in the air. He gazes at Katie, their noses almost touching. “See, Brenny can’t even run his own café, but me? I’m your capable man, baby girl.”
    So much for chatting about Liam.

K atie sits with Brent and Marco, chatting on concrete steps in the backyard. There are lights set up sporadically around the backyard, so most of the area has partial lighting. The nearest one protrudes from the fascia several meters away, which creates hanging shadows under Marco’s eyebrows and lips.
    Katie shivers out of her trance. Somehow, she ended up here chatting to Marco, Brent’s friend, and Brent. She gulps down more of her drink, the fizzy bubbles making her eyes start to water, pushing away the image of Marco with curly hair—blonde, to be exact—and a longer nose. It’s the shadows playing tricks, pretending to be Paul’s ghost.
    She notices Marco is sometimes quiet, sometimes chatty in bursts. He sits with his knees raised and his hands linked around them. Katie actually spends time laughing for once, covering her mouth and giggling in to her hands at trivial jokes about drinking, who’s an alcoholic, who’s not, and the like.
    “Even ask Brent; I ain’t an alcoholic,” Marco