“It’s not beer.” When she got to the kitchen, she dropped her six-pack on the counter and twisted a can free. “It’s a euphoric beverage. Nonalcoholic. Want one?”
I accepted the can and studied it. Tie-dyed, withHappywritten in large script...and that was it. “What’s in it?”
She shrugged, opening her own can. “I don’t really know. They’re mood enhancers. My friend Andromeda introduced me to them when we did Lee’s alcohol cleanse with her.”
“Is it...drugs?”
She laughed. “Of course not.” Her face grew thoughtful. “I’m like ninety percent sure.”
Well, today was a day for entertaining new possibilities, apparently. I cracked the can and took a sip. “Gingery.”
“Wait until the happy hits.” Zoey wandered past me into the living room. I followed, trying to discreetly fluff pillows and straighten things while her back was turned. “I’ve always wondered what your place looked like.”
“You have?”
“Of course.” She ran her hand over the back of my teal couch, draped with soft blankets, then moved to study my bookcases, so stuffed with books they were stacked vertical and then horizontal. I saw my place through her eyes: the shabby old furniture and abundance of plants on the windowsill, candles, and romance DVDs stacked in a tower under the television. She nodded. “It’s cool.”
“Cool?”
She ran a hand over the DVDs. “Kitschy.”
“You can be honest. I have the apartment of an eighty-year-old spinster. Or Cathy from the cartoon strip.”
She gave me a frank look. “You don’t have any cats. If you did, I’d be worried.”
I nudged my laptop screen so she couldn’t see my open tabs, a mixture of Logan Arthur Google searches and Austin SPCA kitten profiles. “Hadn’t crossed my mind.”
To my surprise, Zoey toed off her shoes, dropped onto the couch, and reached for one of my folded blankets, wrapping it like a cocoon so only her small heart-shaped face and green hair peeked out. She leaned back and sighed happily. In under five seconds, she’d made herself more at home on my couch than I’d felt anywhere.
I sat down on the other end. “I’m really happy to have you here, but why exactlydidyou volunteer to come over?”
“Because I want to be friends,” she said matter-of-factly.
I blinked. “You do?”
“For sure.” She wiggled an arm out of her blanket cocoon and reached for her drink. “I’m going to be a married woman soon.” She waved her left hand, her gorgeous emerald engagement ring sparkling. “And I need chiller comrades. Don’t get me wrong, my current friends are awesome. Some of them are artistic geniuses. But they want to go out until five a.m. every night, and that’s not my lifestyle anymore.”
“Fivea.m.? Do bars even stay open that late?”
Zoey laughed like I was joking, so I took a bigger sip of my drink. Come to think of it, there was a nice little buzz of pleasure tickling the corners of my mind.
She waved a hand at my apartment. “The point is, you seem like the kind of person who enjoys a Friday movie night, if you catch my drift. That’s who I’m in the market for.”
“Uh...thanks?” Is this really how adults made friends? You just chose someone, invited yourself to their house, and curled on their couch? I’d been doing it all wrong.
“So.” Zoey rested her chin on her hands. “His name was Chris, right? Or do we prefer The Asshole Who Shall Not Be Named?”
Oh, right. In all honesty, I hadn’t thought of Chris since...well, Saturday night. “I’m really fine,” I told her. “He’s not even on my mind.”
“Well,somethingis.” She leaned closer and squinted. “Your aura’s all out of whack. Fireworks everywhere. You’re stressing.”
Aura? I rolled with it. “I mean, there is this thing I’m dealing with. It’s a bit of an...unusual situation.”
“Ooh,” she drawled. “My specialty. Weird, wacky, déjà vu, hauntings, existential crises. Hit me.”
Maybe it was the euphoric drink shaking up my brain chemicals into a cocktail of trust. Or maybe it was Zoey’s open, eager face, and the fact that she’d put herself out there first. Because even though I was normally a private person, I found myself spilling the whole Logan debacle, from the moment he’d interrupted Carter at the Fleur de Lis to his campaign team’s bewildering proposal.
“So,” I said, wrapping it up. “Now I have to decide whether I’m going to say yes to this bananas idea and turn my life into chaos—not to mention work closely with Logan, who’s either very kind and chivalrous or very terrible and rakish, I honestly can’t tell. Or I say no and the fact that we hooked up becomes a news story that could get me fired. Because I just had to try to sleep with the political playboy on the night a hotel caught fire. Andbecause society is still so backward that an elementary school librarian caught with her boyfriend is fine, but with a stranger—oh no, a woman who likes casual sex, bust out the pitchforks!” This speech would probably be more effective if I was in fact a woman who had ever experienced casual sex, but still, the principle stood. “You see my dilemma.”
