"No way."
Oh look. I was right.
I lift an eyebrow. "You're going to let your grandma down?"
She stubbornly crosses her arms. "I'm not above it."
"She's one of two people with the power to get through your Do Not Disturb."
"So?"
I shrug. "That doesn't seem to me like a person you want to let down."
"She's not." Cecily takes a deep breath and blows it out noisily. "Why are you doing this? There's no way you're this nice."
We both know she doesn't know me well enough to make this assessment. She seems hell-bent on flinging insults my way, and I am too tired and hungover to do anything about it. Have I mentioned I will never touch tequila ever again?
"It'll take up a few hours of my day and make it so that I don't have to spend the whole day with my parents." There. I said it.
Cecily's brown eyes widen. "I thought your family unit was vanilla."
I push out a sigh. "Sort of. Kind of. Vanilla adjacent. Compared to how you talk about your family, anyway."
Cecily smirks. "I knew you had a different flavor underneath."
Now I'm the one smirking. "You do realize you're talking about how I taste?"
Cecily angles her body away, adjusting her sunglasses that needed no adjustment. "I hope you bite your tongue the next time you sneeze."
Menace.
CHAPTER 10
Dominic
Cecily pulls upto Klein and Paisley's house Monday morning in a late-model, black Jeep. I catch sight of her from the front living room window, and not two seconds after she's shifted into Park does she lay on the horn. It's not a nicebeep beep. It's long and mean, indignant. If a car horn could sound like a put-down, this one would take the cake.
I blow out a breath and step outside. Cecily's death glare reaches across the front yard, searing me. I give her aone momentfinger, then lock up the house behind me. Paisley is at work, and Klein is teaching a creative writing class at the local YMCA. It's only his third week, and the class consists of senior citizens.
Tucking their house key in my pocket, I make my way down the driveway to Cecily's waiting vehicle. Slowly. To annoy her. Apparently, this infuriating woman has turned me into a spiteful teenager.
She has her phone out, tapping away, refusing to look at me as I approach. From here I spy her light-wash denim jeans, her white top with the V-neck.
Her outfit is visible to me because her Jeepdoesn't have doors.What's it like to drive this thing when it's pushing one hundred? Degrees, that is. How does she survive Arizona summers in this contraption? It's spring now, that magical period in central Arizona where the inhabitants forget there is a scorching summer on the horizon.
"Would you like a rag?" Cecily asks when I hurl myself into the passenger seat. Because, again,there aren't doors.
"For what?" I ask, buckling myself in.
"To wipe that look of disdain off your face."
Plenty of my time is spent around sharp women, but Cecily is different. Cecily has teeth. Claws. She punches straight. And though I'm not much of an antagonizer, there's something about her that makes me want to punch back. Press her buttons. Light that fire in her eyes. It's a pyre burning men. Burning me.
I deliver a light slap to the glove compartment. "Could you have chosen a more impractical vehicle for the climate?"
She stabs the air between us with a red-painted nail. "There it is. I knew you had something to complain about."
"I'm not complaining."
