Anjali bobbled her head. “I will make an exception for being cruel to a white supremacist colonizer dickhead.”
Colleen sighed. “And he’s got the most amazing eyes.”
Anjali rolled hers. “Because truly, recessive alleles for eye color are an excellent way to judge character and that’s definitely how to exclude someone from being a serial killer.”
“Look, there are five million people in the greater Phoenix area. What’s the chance that he’s the one serial killer in town?”
“I think your math is inaccurate.”
“Still.”
“Okay, there are a lot of people, but you should be careful. And eye color should not be a consideration.”
Yeah, she had a point. “Okay, I know I’m not supposed to be swayed by it, but his eyes are just gorgeous. I mean, like dark sapphire eyes. I thought they were contacts, but I can see colored contact lenses from a mile away because I wore them freshman year.”
“Are you thinking about having babies with him?”
“No!” Maybe.
. . . No.
She meant no.
She really did. She meant no.
“Then what does it matter what genes he has,” Anjali stated.
Colleen went on, “And he has messy dark hair, and with the verbal evisceration of Miller, I think he might be morally gray.”
“No, no,” Anjali said, shaking her head and a finger at Colleen. “No, this guy is not some high fae of the Winter Court that you will simp over. He is just some guy who happened to walk into the store where you work and needs to employ a computer science major. You are not going to turn this guy into a magical prince, and then you’ll be sad again when he turns out to be just another dude who lives in his parents’ basement instead of a castle.”
Colleen grinned as she rolled her one pair of pantyhose into a ball and stuffed it into the corner of her suitcase. “But he can fly.”
“In an airplane. He can fly in an airplane, bestie.”
“But he has an airplane.”
Anjali snorted. “It is probably a two-seater that sounds like a Chennai mosquito and will crash in the desert.”
Colleen regarded her apartment and tried to figure out what she was forgetting. “Hey, you said your monitor conked out. I’m only taking my laptop with me. Do you want to use my monitor for a week until I get back? That’ll alleviate some of your eyestrain.”
Anjali nodded pensively. “That would help me a lot. I’ll bring it back to you next weekend when you return from this foolish errand. I expect many texts, a running stream of texts and locations, though. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”
“Crystal clear.” Colleen finished shoving clothes into the tiny suitcase and then helped Anjali load the wide computer monitor into the back seat of her car.
Colleen’s desktop computer didn’t need a monitor to run its VPN while she was gone.
Late that night, Colleen was just lying down, ready to close her eyes and try to go to sleep and then stay asleep, when her phone buzzed on the floor beside her mattress.
She leaned over and looked at the bright screen that lit the white wall beside her.
The screen read Twist.
He shouldn’t be calling her. They’d agreed that forum decorum would forbid it.
And yet, there he was, Twist.
Not Tristan?
