Her round eyes narrowed, and her mouth pulled back into a grimace. I crouched slowly onto the floor, trying not to scare her off, and held out my hand for her to sniff. She let me scratch her head, but skittered away any time I tried to pat her back.
“There you are, Taco!” Breeze called, walking past my open door. Steam drifted from the bathroom as she pulled her towel tighter around her chest. Taco’s eyes narrowed again, and her mouth curled back.
“She smiles,” Breeze explained, pointing at the dog’s face.
Be still, my heart. The tiny dog smiled at me. A rock of ice melted in my chest, leaving a warm pool behind. I scratched her behind the ears again.
“She was Mum’s. I inherited her along with everything else. She’s fifteen now, with arthritis and the hearing and vision of a ninety-year-old.”
“That’s why you don’t like being patted on your body,” I said as I rubbed the long wispy hair by Taco's ears through my fingers.
“Please tell me that's not a cleaning list? I can't have you outdoing me in work enthusiasm,” Breeze said, pointing to my notebook as she leaned her towel-wrapped body against the door frame.
I turned the embarrassingly small list in her direction.
She dipped her head. “At least you’ve stopped making lists of ways to murder Dax.”
“I’ve moved on to fantasies about Dax now,” I said.
Her eyebrows shot up.
“Murder fantasies,” I clarified.
Breeze rolled her eyes. “Who’s first on the list?”
I hesitated. Sharing personal information felt like standing naked in the middle of a busy street. But I’d already half-started, and opening up had brought me this far. I made a small internal contract with the part of my brain that was protesting at the words on my lips.How about we trial sharing this with Breeze, and only her, just to see what happens, because we need help? If she screws us over like we expect her to, then I promise you we will never share personal things with anyone new again.It was a rather reasonable contract, I thought, and my brain had no reason to protest. But a little voice in the back of my brain reminded me that this too would turn to shit just like everything else. I handed my notebook to Breeze, who pinched her chin as she read.
“Who’s Olivia?” she asked.
A wave rolled through my stomach, and my throat closed. I swallowed anyway.
“Just someone else who used to go there,” I said, immediately regretting it.
“You used to go there?” she gaped, her forehead softening as her eyes seemed to bore right into my soul.
Get out.
I took a slow breath. This was a trial, I reminded myself. If she hated me once she knew me, I’d lost nothing.
“I did.”
“God, Riley. That place was awful.” She bit her bottom lip, her gaze bouncing from the floor to my face and back again.
“It was.”
Just because I was practising vulnerability didn’t mean I had to spill my whole life across the floor. Taco climbed into my lap and curled into a warm little ball. I patted her teeny head again. The comfort of her made my eyes sting. Another tight knot in my chest loosened.
Breeze watched me for a moment longer, then straightened.
“Okay. Need help with any of this? Lifelong Glades Bay resident, at your service,” she said, striking a pose with her hands on her hips.
I smiled.
“Do you know any of these people? My dad excluded, because he lives twenty minutes out of town, and it’d be weird if you did.”
Breeze scanned the list again.
“I’d need a last name for Olivia? But Lissy, she’s a Glades Bay darling,” she said and handed the notebook back to me.
