“You have to give it some zing,” Lotus snapped. “A yellow door. Or a red door. Or a blue door.”
“You already made me do two colors,” Duane complained.
“You can’t paint an entire house one color,” Lotus shot back. “You have to have a complementary trim color.”
“So I’ll just paint the door that trim color,” Duane returned.
“That doesn’t offer any zing!” Lotus spat.
“This is boring,” Persia interjected into their argument and turned to Jinx. “So let’s talk about what’s got your panties in a twist.”
And that was the second part of how cheeseburgers and shakes weren’t going according to protocol.
Jinx was sulking.
“Noah and I are fighting,” Jinx said.
There was a collective eye roll because Noah and Jinx were always fighting. This usually was about Jinx being stubborn, protecting her corner when she hadn’t been pushed into one, eventually realizing that, then they’d have a sex-a-thon to make up.
No, they hadn’t been officially together for very long.
Yes, this was still the rhythm that had become their lives.
“What’s it about this time?” Gemma asked.
“He says he’s gonna pay my tuition for college,” Jinx answered (oh yeah, another update: she was sending in applications—yippee!). “I said, since I rented my house, I could pay for my own damned college.”
Another yeah: she had fully moved in with Noah in his mansion with a pool and a view of the mountains.
Her place was cute, but I wasn’t surprised she jumped feet first into that.
I further wasn’t surprised to learn Noah liked Jinx making toast in his kitchen with “ratty hair.” I knew this because she shared during another cheeseburger extravaganza that Noah did her on the kitchen floor the first time he walked in on her doing that.
Also, other times besides.
Btw: her house was the one she’d grown up in. It was paid off. It was one of the only things she had left of memories of good times with her family, before her dad got sick and the rest of it went off the rails. So she said she was keeping it forever.
“And I can get a part-time job or something,” Jinx went on. “I don’t know what I could do that’s legit, but I’d find something so I can buy groceries and pay for my schooling, and he can stop being all ‘save my woman.’”
Another btw: after much discussion and drama, Noah and Jinx had settled on her providing groceries for their household, along with paying for their streaming services, until she’d landed whatever employment she was going to land, and then they’d renegotiate.
In other words, Noah had used their brief separation to get his shit tight when Jinx made her approach so she could be in his life in a way that she could live with when she finally got her head out of her ass about living with him.
So in case there were any doubts, yet another yeah.
He so totally loved the crap out of her.
“He’s not saving you, you idiot,” Genesis (another one of our working-girl crew) said. “He’s supporting you.” When Jinx screwed up her face, Genesis amended, “The good kind of support. You know, like helping you make your dreams come true. It’s not like he’s giving you your dream, you gotta do all the studying and earn your degree. It’s just that he’s helping you to pave the way.”
“Yeah,” Persia said. “I don’t know, because I didn’t get as lucky as you, but from what I’ve heard, that’s what partners do. I mean, you saved him from a boring life of golf and shit sex with brainless, gold-digging bimbos. Now, on the flipside, he’s gonna help you get a degree. Big whoop. It’s called evening things out.”
While Persia was talking, I caught Duane and Lotus exchanging a look.
Um.
Hang on.
What was that?
