She cracks up.
Actually cracks up with a full belly laugh that morphs into a bent-over, side-clutching, full-out hyena guffaw at my expense.
“You don’t think my body’s hot?” I wiggle my brows, even though I don’t think she can see me with the way she’s swiping at her eyes.
I haven’t felt this light inyears.
“You’re very hot,” she assures me between giggles.
“Clearly that’s where all of my good genes went. I won’t remember a word you say about whatever’s bothering you. Too much of an airhead.”
“I take it back. You’re smart, Mr. Mathematician. You werekindto leave the bar with me.”
“Psh. I’m an asshole.”
She’s sparkling again. Eyes lit up, lips spread in a wide smile. “Well, I deserve to only have assholes in my life, so I’m glad to hear it.”
I nudge her, mostly looking for any excuse to touch her the way she touched me in the bar. “Spill. What’d you do that’s so awful?”
Bye-bye sparkle.
My fault.
But it’s for the greater good. She’ll sparkle again once she has it off her chest, I’m positive.
But first, I get another heavy sigh. “I’m here with friends.”
“Lovely people, I’m sure, if they’re your friends.”
I am currently living for the way her lips tip up when she fights smiles after I say something devastatingly charming or amusing.
I am also currently living for the way she gives my arm a playful shove.
“You’re trouble,” she says.
“Rarely, but I’d like to be more.”
She winces.
I wait.
“I let one of my very best friends in the entire universe sleep with a guy even though I knew he murdered kittens,” she says quietly. “And she fell for him, and when one of my other friends told her about the kittens, she was more devastated than I thought she’d be, for very good reason, and it’s my fault she’s not living the life of her dreams right now.”
“Because she would’ve been happy if shedidn’tknow he murdered kittens?”
“Yes.”
Not the answer I expected.
“People have layers,” she adds quietly. “I thought…the rest of his personality…would compensate for the kitten-killing.”
“Just so we’re clear, he didn’t actually murder kittens, right?”
“Same magnitude.” She winces again. “Kind of.”
“If someone else told her the information she needed to have, then why was it your responsibility and not theirs in the first place?”
“Becausethis is what I do. I listen. I study. I read between the lines. I know thingsbeforeother people know them. And I knew this one a long time before the person who told her. I grew up in a—a hair salon, learning from the best of the best how to be the good kind of gossip. And then I choose to share or not share based on the theory that I know how to parse out if sharing or not sharing will cause the greater harm. I chose wrong. She thought we were coming here for…the next step… in their relationship, and instead, our entire friend group is splintered. And they’re not justfriends. They’refamily. At least, they are to me.”
