I took a bite of pie, unfazed. Dessert first was my mantra. “What? It’s technically true. We graduated seven years ago.”
“You let him think we’ve been dating since then!”
“Look how happy it made him. Besides, you didn’t correct him either.”
Kira groaned, burying her face in her hands. “Unbelievable.”
I chuckled, pushing my plate toward her. “Here, eat some pie. You’ll feel better.”
She peeked out from behind her fingers, fighting a smile. “You’re the worst.”
“Maybe”—I lifted my fork in a mock toast—“but at least I don’t hate blueberries anymore.”
We finished the pie in record time but took our time with the salads, talking about nothing. It was almost like things were back to normal. It gave me hope that things could be okay again.
After we paid and left the diner, Kira tucked her hands into her jacket pockets and said, “Thanks for buying me lunch.”
“Anytime. C’mon, I’ll drive you home.”
Our pace slowed as we approached my car, a black sedan that looked cleaner now that the storm had passed. Kira lingered a few steps behind, looking up at the sun that poked through the gray clouds.
“You don’t have to. I could take the bus.”
I shook my head. “Let this be the thing that scares you today.”
She opened the door. “I’m not scared of you.”
“That’s funny”—I ignored her questioning glance as I turned the car on—“because I’m pretty scared of you.”
11
KIRA
The Burrow Bitches
Ariadne: What are you going to create for your application?
Kira: Ugh. I have no idea.
Britney: i’ll be your muse. paint me!
Macey: She needs to submit more than just paintings, Brit
Britney: even better. draw me like one of your french girls, bitch
The blank canvas stared at me. Taunting. Flaunting. Insert any other adjective to describe the situation—hell, I wasn’t a writer.
Apparently, I wasn’t much of an artist either, considering I couldn’t figure out what to paint. At what point in the creative process did the creative actually know what they were doing? When I was young, I could paintwithout thinking. It didn’t matter what I was painting. All that mattered was putting color to paper.
Now, with the pressure of judgment, I knew that it mattered very much what I painted.Identity. How could I paint something that represented my identity when I wasn’t sure I liked who I was?
The tarp crinkled under my feet as I fetched a glass of water. I wasn’t sure why I bothered with the preventative measures, given everything in our apartment was secondhand, but paint was a bitch to clean.
Any hope of muscle memory coming in to help me paint disappeared. A shame, considering my muscle memory in other parts of my life had proven its strength recently.
Landon: I’ll be there in a minute.
Before Landon returned, I never knew what to do with the muscle memory gained by loving him.
