Phil grinned over at Lalie as he set the phone down on the couch cushion between them. “I told you so,” he said, propping his feet up on the coffee table and leaning back in his seat. “You are the only girlfriend in the world who has a problem with strippers being at a guy’s bachelor party. A bachelor party, Lalie… what else should we do there?”
When she only glared at him with her arms folded over her chest, he went on.
“I mean, come on… it’s not like they’d be after anyone else but the groom, anyway.”
“Oh, really?” she wanted to know. “I think I’ll call Adelyn myself and double check on this answer you apparently received from your brother.”
Phil chuckled, snatching the phone up before she could get a hold of it. “I don’t think that’s necessary,” he mumbled.
“I don’t care what you say,” Lalie went on, “I’ll let you boys have your stupid bachelor party… but there will be surveillance, Phillip.”
Phil cringed. “Don’t call me that! My mother calls me that!” he let her know. “And surveillance? C’mon, Lalie, don’t you trust me?” He tried giving her his best impersonation of Justin’s grin, but apparently he wasn’t any good at it because she just continued to glare at him. Finally, she gave him a semi-convincing smile.
“It’s not you that I don’t trust, sweetie… it’s the other boys.”
“What do you care what they do?”
Lalie stood up, put her hands on her hips and frowned at him. “There will not be strippers in this apartment!” she said in the sternest voice he’d ever heard her use, and then stalked off into the kitchen.
Later that night, Phil sat in the bedroom cradling the cordless against his ear. “That’s right, you heard me… it’s a no go on the strippers. Lalie’ll freak,” he said as softly as he could into the phone.
“Just as well,” he heard his brother answer back. “It’s probably better if we don’t purposely try to get into trouble.”
Phil was taken aback. “You’re giving up?” he said louder than he had planned. “Just like that?”
“Listen, Phil,” Justin went on, “It’s not worth it. I don’t want to do anything to upset Adelyn before the wedding. Hell, she could realize that she’s getting the short end of the stick in this deal and run off. I can’t lose her just because of some stupid party with girls that I don’t even know.”
“Stupid party?” Phil echoed. “May I remind you that I’m the one planning this party?!”
“Oh. Sorry. The party isn’t really stupid… What I meant is that compared to my relationship with Adelyn, it’s not quite as important. Make sense?”
“Perfect sense,” Phil sighed as he leaned back against the headboard. “Okay, okay, no strippers.”
“It’s coming up, Phil,” Justin’s voice interrupted his defeated thoughts.
“What?”
“The wedding. It’s almost here.” His voice was listless and dropped off into complete silence without warning.
“You don’t sound too excited about it,” Phil observed after a slight pause. “Are you nervous or something? I mean, you just got done telling me how you never want to lose her… and now you talk about the wedding like it’s a chore.”
“I guess I’m nervous,” Justin admitted. “When you think about getting married, you don’t think about all the work that goes into it… and then you start to think about how things are going to change afterwards, and you don’t know if you’re ready for those changes or—”
“Justin!” Phil interrupted. “It’s going to be okay. You love her, right?”
“Of course I do!”
“Then what are you worried about?”
Justin didn’t answer, and Phil was getting tired of waiting in silence, so he sat back up and bed and grabbed a notebook from the nightstand. “So…” he said, looking down at his list. “What kind of food do you want at your party? And don’t say something weird.”
“Like what?”
Phil grinned. “Let’s just say that I won’t be cooking anything complicated,” he rephrased. “And since Lalie’s all upset about me wanting strippers at this thing, I doubt she’s going to help feed them.”
“Probably not,” Justin agreed.
Tuesday, the next week, Phil had taken the day off from his job at Caldwell Enterprises to meet with a perspective agent. He hadn't even looked at his book since he'd written it... well, besides the copy that someone at Carter Publishing had mailed to him. Apparently they'd typed every single word and sent it to him and his "agent" to look over. In order for him to make sure it was all right, he had to have an agent first.
He and the agent, a Mr. Andrew Boyle, had just had lunch at a small deli in town and discussed everything that agents needed to know about their clients. The two of them set up an appointment with Carter Publishing to sign some contracts only a week after Justin's wedding. The truth was that it could have been made a lot earlier, but Phil was deliberately trying to stay out of Justin's light, and if he were to sign that contract before the wedding, and their entire family happened to talk about it in the days coming, Justin would be furious, and that was the last thing that Phil wanted.
After parting with his new agent, Phil walked the few blocks back to his and Lalie's apartment building with a rare smile on his face. For once in his life, things seemed to be going uphill instead of down... and he didn't want to waste it.
When he put his key in the lock, the door popped open before he had even turned it.
"Lalie?" he called, pushing it open the rest of the way. "I thought you were at—"
There, sitting on the couch, sat Lalie with a strange woman who had black hair down to the middle of her back.
"Work..." he finished. "Who..."
Lalie was grinning. "Phil, remember when I told you about my friend Cindy from college?"
Phil froze. He remembered the conversation more clearly than ever. It was the same girl who'd picked on him all throughout the eighth grade for having a crush on her. And he supposed that Lalie had told her all about that conversation they'd had back in Pennsylvania.
Cindy turned around, and as much as Phil hoped that she'd grown ugly in the past fifteen years, she hadn't. In fact, she was ten times more beautiful than he could have imagined.
He had no clue what to say to her, so he just stood there by the door, staring.
"Phil... you remember, don't you?" Lalie interrupted his stare.
"I remember," he said. Justin, a sixth grader at the time, had snuck over to the eighth grade lunch table and slipped a notebook page onto Cindy's lunch tray, then went back to his own table and told everyone that would listen that his brother had a crush on Cindy Blackburn. Phil, having no idea what the piece of paper was, clearly remembered how she had shown it to the girls next to her. The next thing he knew, the whole cafeteria was pointing and laughing at him. He didn't live it down until high school, which had seemed like an eternity at the time.
"Phil Timberlake..." Cindy said, and Phil cast his eyes back in her direction. "I remember you. You look really different."
"So do you," was all he could think of saying.
"I had no idea you were going out with Lalie!" She turned to look at Lalie. "Wow, I really had no idea..."
Phil didn't say anything.
"How's your brother? Justin, was it?"
Phil couldn't keep the frown off of his face. After all those years, after she had tormented him throughout the eighth grade, and all she could ask about was JUSTIN? "Justin's fine," he mumbled, trying to hide how uncomfortable he was. "He's getting married next month."
"Oh, wow!" Cindy exclaimed. "I just can't believe how old we're all getting."
"It happens," Phil muttered, and Lalie shot him a look. "I mean, yeah."
"Oh!" Lalie said, jumping up from her spot on the couch and grinning at her boyfriend. "That picture that Justin gave you of the two of you and Kyle... I'm going to go get that so she can see what Justin looks like now."
"Great," Phil muttered under his breath as she dashed out of the room and into their bedroom.
Both he and Cindy stared the doorway in silence until she returned with the picture in her hand.
"Here," she said as she fell back down on the couch next to Cindy. "There's Phil, and that's Justin... and that's their little brother, Kyle. He's a sophomore at the University of Minnesota this year. Aren't they cute?"
Cindy nodded, and Lalie looked up at Phil. "You can close the door, Phil," she said, "and sit down."
If he shut the door, then there would be no chance of a quick escape. "I thought you were working today," he said slowly. "I took off to talk to that agent, but you said that you were going to go in—"
"Cindy came into Caldwell today to cash a check, we ran into each other and started talking up a storm," Lalie explained with a smile. "I took the rest of the day off so we could catch up."
"Ah."
"Seriously, Phil, close the door."
"Actually, I was just dropping by to get..." Justin was obviously the best liar in the family. "To get my... checkbook so that Justin and I could run and pay for the..." Quick, what did guys need for weddings?
"Oh!" Lalie exclaimed. "I forgot to tell you that he called and said to meet him at four if you wanted to help out with the florist."
Damn Justin and his efficiency. "Before that," Phil went on, "we were supposed to..."
Now, even Cindy looked up at him, waiting for him to finish. He wiped a few beads of sweat from his forehead.
"We were supposed to... well, we made a bet, I lost and now I have to shell out twenty dollars. He wanted it at..." He glanced up at the wall clock that read one fifteen. "One thirty."
Lalie looked confused. "You don't gamble, Phil."
"Only with Justin... which is stupid because he always wins." He made his way to the kitchen, swiped his checkbook from the table and stuffed it into his back pocket. "Gotta run. Bye," and he shut the door behind him before she could protest anymore.
Now, all he had to do was find Justin and make sure he didn't blow his cover.
Phil burst through the door of Justin's office, out of breath. "I knew I'd find you here," he puffed.
"God!" Justin exclaimed, looking frustrated. "Do they let everyone in here!?"
Phil sat down on a chair by Justin's desk. "It's not like they have high security on the obituary office. What is someone going to do? Take some dead guy's information and use it against them?"
"Shut up," Justin mumbled. "Why are you here? I left a message with Lalie that we were supposed to meet at four."
"I need your help," Phil told him. "I was trying to get out of something, so I told Lalie that I had made a bet with you, lost, and I came to pay you twenty dollars before you got upset."
"Why in the hell did you say something like that?" Justin paused. "Well, if you're gonna make this believable," he reconsidered as he held out his hand. "Where're my twenty bucks?"
"You don't get it," Phil glared at him. "Besides, helping someone does not require a down payment."
Justin raised an eyebrow. "It does when you receive my help."
"I'm asking you for a favor, Justin," Phil restated. "If Lalie asks you about a bet, please cover for me, huh?"
Justin only grinned, withdrawing his hand. "What did we bet on?"
"Ah... a baseball game."
"That's boring," Justin decided as he rolled his eyes and leaned back into his chair. "Let's make this more interesting."
"Justin, a fake bet does not have to be interesting. Trust me."
Justin's eyes widened at his brother. "Well, we have to make it believable, don't we?" He didn't wait for a response. "My guess is that you stumbled your way through your explanation about this bet, and she already thinks you're up to something. Am I right?"
Phil glared at him.
"What was it that you wanted to get out of anyway?"
"It doesn't matter," Phil mumbled, casting his eyes away from Justin's.
"You have to tell me," Justin insisted. "If I'm going to help you out here, then I have to know all the details. How can we create a believable lie without all the details?"
"You're overdoing this," Phil accused. "All I need you to do is say, 'oh, yeah, he paid me,' and move onto the next topic of conversation. If you start talking to her like this is a stupid plot in one of your novels, then she's going to know something's up."
"Lying 101, brother... the more details there are, the more believable the lie is. I'm surprised you haven't picked this up by now... living with me for so long."
"Okay," Phil said, leaning in toward Justin's desk and glaring at him. "I'll admit that you're a horrible person. Is that what you want?
"I want you to let me handle this."
"I should have never come to you for help. I should have known that your help comes with a price."
Justin looked hurt. "You don't have to pay me the twenty dollars, Phil. I was only kidding."
"I'm not talking about the money," he said, getting up and walking to the door. "And don't sit there with that confused expression on your face. You know exactly what I'm talking about."
“No, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Justin said, louder than Phil expected him to. “You always feed me these cryptic messages and expect me to know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Listen to yourself,” Phil said as he turned around and pressed his back to the door. “You stand there saying that you don’t know what I’m talking about, but it’s you I’m talking about, Justin. When you come to me for help, I come through for you every single time. Then, I ask you to help me out just once and what do you do? You pry into my life, forcing me to tell you things that I obviously don’t want to tell you, and then you say that if you’re going to help me, then it’s gotta be by your terms, not mine.” He stopped for a second, and they just stared at each other. “One favor, Justin,” he said with a deep breath. “Is that so much to ask?”
Chapter 22
Keeping the Peace
Family: Timberlake
Non-Nsync Fiction
I'll Never Stop {Fiction}
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