“He did, but we’re not talking about Hudson.”
“He’s not mad that I missed it, is he?”
“Daph. He’s nineteen. If you’re not his guitar, a girl he’s interested in, or food, he’ll be okay with a text wishing him a good semester.”
“Good point. I’ll text him. When I get my phone fixed. Now tell me Simon’s treating you like a queen.”
“Pardon me, I am treating herfarbetter than one would treat a queen,” Simon says with a sniff.
I break out into a case of the smiles, and my heart sighs in happiness.
“Daphne—” Bea starts again.
And I know where this is going.
It’s not her fault.
She had to become a parent the wrong way many years before she would’ve chosen it herself, and she can’t turn it off sometimes. “Bea. This thing I’m doing? It passes the rocking chair test. I already have stories. Like, not even kidding, we got in a situation yesterday where someone thought my companion was a stripper. And I’m sitting in a lady cave right now.A lady cave. It’s a secret room in the…place we’re at.”
“In the interest of my deepest desire to make Daphne stop sayinglady cave, may I ask what’s arocking chair testand how, exactly, does it relate to Daphne’s situation?” Simon asks.
“It’s how we decide if we’re doing something stupid,” Bea tells him.
I grin wider. “Like you going on your first date with him.”
“I’m sorry, what? Our first date was arocking chair test?” he asks.
“You passed,” she says.
“Had I known, I certainly would’ve tried harder to fail.”
I can hear him smiling—he’salwayssmiling—and that helps me feel a little more normal too.
“Tell him I don’t think he passed,” I tell Bea.
“He can hear you,” she assures me.
“I know. I just wanted him to know that I give him failing grades. That thing in your bus after dinner that night wasnotprime keeper material.”
She laughs, and I relax deeper into the pink chair.
If I can make her laugh, she’s loosening up enough that she’ll still be worried about me, but not so much that she’ll ask Simon’s security detail to call in favors to find me.
“Please relay to Daphne that I delight in disappointing people,” Simon says, “so I’m rather more likely to find excusesto fail to meet expectations if she insists upon setting them so high.”
Yep.
Still hear him smiling as he says it.
He’s hilarious. Sometimes odd but always hilarious.
“Really? You’re going to intentionally fail to meet expectations now?” Bea asks him, and I can hear her smile too.
“Only when it doesn’t put me in danger of provoking your ire.”
Dammit.
Now I’m smiling so hard myself that my cheeks hurt and my eyes are burning.
