Chapter 2: Three Minutes to Midnight
The click of heels on the hallway tile was a precise, ticking metronome. Each one drove a spike of adrenaline deeper into Freddie’s system. His apartment, usually a sanctuary of controlled chaos, now felt like a crime scene waiting to be discovered.
His eyes, wide and panicked, shot to Marly’s suitcase by the door. A glaring beacon.
“The bedroom,” he hissed, already moving. “Just go in there and close the door. I’ll say I was debugging your laptop. It’s plausible.”
Marly didn’t look at the suitcase. She didn’t look at the bedroom door. She looked at him. Her initial flash of fear had solidified into something harder, like cooling steel. Her fingers, which had been gripping his arm, loosened and then fell away.
“No.”
The single word hung in the thick air.
“Marly, come on—”
“I said no.” She crossed her arms, planting her feet slightly apart on the scuffed hardwood floor. “I’m not hiding in a closet. I’m not your dirty secret, Freddie. Not for one more second.”
“This isn’t about being a secret! This is about not detonating the bomb in the elevator shaft!”
“It’s already detonating.” Her voice was eerily calm. “The fuse was lit the minute we started this. You just didn’t want to hear it burn.”
The heels stopped right outside his door. A moment of absolute silence. Then, three quick, familiar raps. Knock-knock-knock.
Freddie felt the sound in his teeth. He looked from Marly’s set face to the door and back. The distance between them, just a few feet, felt continental. He saw the defiance in her eyes, but underneath it, a flicker of the same terror he was drowning in. She was choosing to drown standing up.
He closed his eyes for a half-second, swallowed hard, and walked to the door. His hand hovered over the knob. He glanced back. Marly gave a single, sharp nod.
He opened it.
Carly Shay stood in the hallway, a whirlwind paused mid-spin. She was all vibrant energy, dressed in clothes that looked casually thrown on but undoubtedly cost more than Freddie’s monthly rent. Her smile was wide and immediate, her arms already half-open for a hug.
“Freddie! You will not believe the traffic from JFK, it was like a parking lot full of insane people—” Her words, a rapid-fire stream, cut off as her gaze traveled past him, into the apartment. She saw Marly.
The smile didn’t vanish, but it changed. It stiffened at the edges, turning quizzical. “Mar? What are you doing here?”
Carly stepped inside, the hug aborted, her perfume—something fresh and expensive—cutting through the apartment’s stale popcorn scent. She looked between them, her celebrity-perfected intuition clicking pieces into a puzzle she hadn’t known was on the table.
“She just got in from school,” Freddie said, the words coming out too fast. “Spring break. Train was late. I told her to come up, I was gonna order food.” He could hear the lie, tinny and pathetic.
Marly finally moved. She walked forward, stopping beside Freddie, not touching him. “Hey, Carly.”
“Hey,” Carly said slowly. Her eyes did a quick, inventory scan: Marly’s relaxed posture in Freddie’s space, the single suitcase by the door, the absence of cheerful sibling greetings. The charged silence in the room, thick enough to chew.
“So you two were just… hanging out?” Carly asked, a slight tease in her voice that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Yeah,” Freddie said.
“No,” Marly said at the exact same time.
Carly’s brows lifted. She looked from one guilty face to the other, and the last remnants of her performing smile faded. The real Carly, the shrewd one who’d built an empire out of her own personality, surfaced. “Okay. What’s going on?”
The silence stretched. Freddie’s mind was a blue screen of death. All his carefully coded protocols for disaster avoidance had failed.
Marly took a breath. “We’re seeing each other, Carly. Freddie and I. We have been for a while.”
There it was. The words, once released, seemed to suck all the sound from the room. The hum of the gaming console in the corner became a roar.
Carly blinked. She actually took a small, unconscious step back, as if the words had physical force. “Seeing each other.” She repeated it flatly. “Like… dating?”
“Yes,” Marly said, her voice gaining strength.
Carly’s gaze snapped to Freddie. It was a different kind of look than he’d ever gotten from her. It wasn’t anger, not yet. It was utter, profound betrayal. “For how long?”
“A few months,” Freddie muttered, unable to meet her eyes.
“Months.” Carly let out a short, humorless laugh. She paced a few steps into the living room, her hand running over the back of the worn couch as if for stability. “Months. And you didn’t think to tell me? Either of you?”
“We were going to,” Marly said, stepping forward. “I wanted to. Today, actually. You just… got here first.”
“Oh, how convenient for you.” Carly wheeled around, her composure cracking. “So what was the plan, Freddie? Keep it a secret until you got married? Send me a Save-the-Date and hope I’d be cool with it?”
“It wasn’t like that,” he said, finding his voice. It sounded ragged. “It just happened. And then it was… real. And I didn’t know how to…”
“How to tell your best friend you’re screwing her little sister?”
“Carly!” Marly’s shout was sharp, a crack of lightning. “Don’t you dare reduce this to that. Don’t you dare.”
“Then what is it, Marly? Enlighten me. Because from where I’m standing, it looks like my best friend and my baby sister have been lying to my face for months. Playing house behind my back.” Her voice trembled, not with tears, but with a raw, furious hurt. “Do you have any idea how stupid this makes me feel? Everyone must have known. Spencer must know.”
“Spencer doesn’t know,” Freddie said quickly.
“Oh, well, that’s a relief! At least my brother isn’t in on the joke!”
“It’s not a joke!” Marly yelled, her own anger finally breaking through. “This is my life! My relationship! It doesn’t orbit you, Carly! For once, it has nothing to do with you!”
The words landed like a physical blow. Carly went very still. The famous face, usually so animated, went blank with shock.
Freddie saw it—the exact moment her hurt crystallized into something colder, harder. “Right,” she said, her voice now dangerously quiet. “Nothing to do with me. Except it’s in my best friend’s apartment. Built on years of my history. And it’s with my sister, who’s barely out of college.” She leveled a look at Freddie that made his stomach drop. “You’re 22. She’s 20. She’s a kid.”
“I am not a kid!” Marly shot back.
“You are to me!” Carly’s shout filled the space. “You always will be! And he was supposed to know better.” The disappointment in her eyes was worse than any anger. “You were supposed to be one of the good guys, Freddie.”
That hurt more than anything. Freddie felt the words sink in, hook deep. “I am,” he pleaded, sounding hollow even to himself. “Carly, I love her.”
The room went dead silent. Even Marly looked at him, her anger momentarily stunned.
Carly just stared. She looked from Freddie’s desperate face to Marly’s defiant one, and something in her seemed to shut down. The fight drained out of her shoulders, replaced by a weary, profound sadness.
“Yeah,” she said finally, nodding slowly. “I can see that.” She walked back to the door, picking up the small designer bag she’d dropped when she entered. “That just makes it worse, you know?”
She didn’t look at either of them as she opened the door. The hallway light spilled in, a stark yellow rectangle.
“I came here because I had a fight with my producer and I needed my friend,” she said to the open air, her voice thick. “Silly me.”
She stepped out and pulled the door closed behind her. The latch clicked with a terrible, soft finality.
The ensuing silence in the apartment was absolute, broken only by the frantic, metallic buzzing of the fridge. Marly stood rigid, breathing hard, her fists clenched at her sides. Freddie sank onto the arm of the couch, his head in his hands.
The bomb had detonated. They were still standing, but the building was in ruins around them.