“You quit.”
“Maybe I should come work for the CIA.”
“I will actively recommend against that. And not to you. To them. I will actively recommend that they not hire you.”
As she should.
I’d be a shitty spy.
Can’t keep a straight face for anything.
Kidding.
But also, I don’t want the commitment and pressure of being a spy.
Have a few issues with boundaries when I believe in a cause.
Clearly.
I’m asking my sister to give me random info a government agency might have stumbled across and kept secret, aren’t I?
And I broke another rule when I asked Sloane for a favor.
I do favors for people. I don’t ask for favors. Not from people outside my tight, close-knit circle of friends.
Ask for favors from people you don’t trust with your life, and it gets complicated.
Like when they bring you pictures of the thing that you need to put your hands on and inspect for yourself.
Vanessa goes still.
Eerily still.
I look at her, and she reaches across me to hold me in my seat the way Mom used to when she’d brake too hard.
Except we’re not moving.
Vanessa might not be breathing.
I look at her, then out the car in the direction she’s looking.
And—
Ah, fuck.
Sloane.
She’s coming down the alley, chatting on her phone. Undoubtedly coming to check on the museum before her day shift.
She does that a lot, which I shouldn’t know, but I do.
She’s not the only one in our fake relationship who’s been watching the other.
She makes a frustrated face at the phone that I feel in my soul, and my heart does that annoying thing it’s done every time I’ve seen her since she kissed me where it flutters like I’m a fucking teenager.
I breathe through it.
Just because I’m as interested as Sloane is in never dating or getting married doesn’t mean I’ve fully mind-over-bodied my biological instincts yet to convince myself women in general aren’t inherently attractive, some more than others.
