Rob emptied the remaining contents of the bottle into her wineglass, holding it vertically while the final drops dripped out. "You gotta let some of these go or you're going to run out of steam before the evening's over."
Linden glanced up at me and gestured around the table. "You can see why I still prefer my solitude."
"At least half of them have already heard some version of that story," Ash said. "She'll only overshare to the other half."
"Yeah, that's the problem," Magnolia replied. "I'd like the other half to live in blissful ignorance."
"You need to stop hoping for impossible things," Linden added.
"Truth," Ash said. "When you look at it that way, this is entirely your fault."
"Zelda, did you know Ash built a library in his bedroom when he was a kid?" Magnolia asked, pointing a cheeky grin at her brother when she pushed away her empty plate. "He made little pockets and cards to go inside each book and hounded me and Linden for money when we didn't return them on time. He fined Lin ninehundreddollars for misplacing an R. L. Stine book."
"I don't believe I've paid that." Linden gave his beer a thoughtful frown. "Then again, Ash manages my money so what do I know?"
"That is delightful," I said, meeting Ash's gaze with the biggest heart eyes I could manage. "Do you still do that?"
He shook his head, saying, "No, I—"
"He has a stamp now," Magnolia interrupted. "Look inside any of the books on those shelves in the living room. All stamped. Most dated with when he read them too."
I pressed a hand to my chest. "That's even more exquisite than the library fines. I'm totally checking when we get home."
He shrugged this off with an eye roll but he didn't mean it. He was an adorable little nerd and I loved that shit.
Now that everyone else was finished eating, their plates and utensils tucked together and pushed aside, Linden pulled the serving dish of spicy shrimp toward him and dug into it, asking, "When did you move in—wait, never mind. I didn't say anything. It wasn't me. Blame someone else."
Diana folded her arms on the table as she leaned toward me with a conspiratorial glint in her eyes. "Is it official, then? You're living together?"
"Um, it's mostly, well," I stammered.
"Baby blankets," Ash murmured to me.
"We'll just see where the summer takes us," I said.
"I hope it takes you into autumn because the church puts on a darling fall festival and I just know you'd love it, Zelda," Diana said.
Ash squeezed my thigh again, his thumb stroking high enough to glance over my panties like a proper perv. "I'm sure Zelda enjoys a good fall festival as much as the rest of us," he said. "But we have an early morning at the office so we should—"
"At the office?" Rob echoed, glancing between us. "I didn't realize you're in financial services too."
I shook my head. "Oh, no, I'm—"
"Zelda has an extensive background in customer-facing operational systems and employer-side federal and state compliance as well as quantitative analysis. I'm fortunate she accepted my offer to get my house in order as I'm now in a position of needing to rapidly scale up," Ash said.
This was met with a moment of collective eyebrow lifting though it took me the duration of a full minute to realize the response wasn't because these people doubted a word he'd said aboutme. Everyone at this table knew Ash rarely invited anyone inside the house, never mind letting them put it in order. Those eyebrows were all for Ash.
Life was a real trip. One day you were busy hearing you didn't have what it took to make it in academia while simultaneously writing—ahem, make thatproofreading—someone else's graduate thesis for them, and the next you were the brains of the operation and no one doubted it for a second. Life was a real fucking trip.
"We should grab lunch sometime this week," Rob suggested. "My office building is a few blocks away from where you guys are on State Street and your schedule"—he paused to smile at Magnolia—"is pretty flexible up until Thursday, right?"
"Depends how my final fitting goes," she said ominously. "I might not be allowed to eat the rest of the week."
"Stop it. You're eating. Yes, you are," he replied.
"Maybe not after Tuesday," she argued with a hearty laugh. "The seamstress will break my ribs if that's what it takes to get the corset laced up. Honestly, though, I will turn into a ball of fire if it's too small again. Actual burning fire."
"I told you to try the green juice cleanse Heather from the yarn store recommended," Diana said. "She looks fantastic."
