Before he can choose whatever profane synonym he wants to mean sleeping with her, my phone buzzes loudly, once, twice. I pull it out and feel my heart sink further between a rock and a hard place.
It’s an unknown number, but very few people have my number, and only one of them actually texts me.
Vin glares at me, but I take the call anyway. I mean, I did leave her my number in case she wanted to call me. I didn’t really want to continue to do this adorable running into each other everywhere by not-quite-happenstance. It’s been a little stressful not knowing if or when I’ll get to talk to her again.
Lacey’s voice picks up. “Ellis?”
“Heyyy, yeah, uh, sorry I had a quick errand to run,” I answer. Maybe my voice dips half an octave, so what?
Vin rolls his eyes and scoffs; I flip him off and turn away.
“Right, I got your note. I’m actually leaving now for work, I wanted to let you know I wasn’t going to be home,” she says, the sounds of traffic and the city nearly drowning her out. I completely forgot she had a day job. Especially since investigating the ooze seems like a full-time gig.
“Anyway, I was thinking I could catch you later, maybe for lunch? We can go to one of those places you keep suggesting—”
There’s some muffled interference, the distant sound of her yelling at a taxi about being in the crosswalk, and a horn blaring. For some reason it’s incredibly endearing, and makes me grin at nothing, until I catch Vin’s disapproving glower. I school myself into something a little more neutral before I start kicking my feet and giggling.
“Sorry about that. Thoughts?”
I clear my throat. “Yeah, sounds good to me. I’ll text you the details?”
“Great, great. I gotta run, but I’ll see you around?”
“Yeah, see you.”
“Ok, bye, love y—oh, hmm. You know what I meant.” She laughs awkwardly and hangs up before I can reply.
There’s a prick of adrenaline in my chest at the word. I froze up when she said it, partly because I would probably be all too eager to reply in all earnestness. It leaves a strange taste in my mouth. There’s something about it that feels like a leftover, like it was a habit.
I exit the call, pocketing the phone in my borrowed Steel-logo sweatpants.
I prepare myself for Vin’s impending rage hovering at the sidelines, but when I turn around, there’s the creak and click sound of Maestro’s cane as he shuffles into the kitchen. “What’s going on in here?”
“Ellis doesn’t think. Every thought in his head starts with, ‘Why do this the correct way when I could do it the wrong way faster?’ ” Vin snarls, barely holding back at all. “Folding down corners—”
“You mean cutting corners?”
“No, folding corners!”
“Wait . . . Is this about the duct tape?”
I haven’t thought about that since episode one of this particular sitcom. He’s talking about the tape we were bickering about in the van when we kidnapped Lacey like a hundred years ago, maybe last week.
“The gaff tape,” Vin growls, and I finally realize he’s not telling Maestro about all the ways I definitely fucked up. He’s picking something small and unimportant, which is a hell of a pivot for him.
Maestro suppresses an eye roll as he scoots between us. He grabs a hold of the kitchen counter, furniture surfing his way to the fridge. He pulls out a mug of likely days-old coffee, a thin layer of coffee creamer separating across the top.
“All I said was that you should have folded the corner down in on itself so you could rip a piece off faster!”
“And you see nothing wrong with giving the person it’s going on a pull tab to their release?”
“I mean, I’d take a pull tab to my release, if you know what I mean,” I say, and mouth a thank you while Maestro is shaking his head.
Vin is unmoved by my gratitude. “Fuck off.”
“That one was a stretch,” Maestro puts in, raising one wild, overgrown gray eyebrow. “And it was barely even funny.”
I can’t help the way my tail flicks in agitation, mirroring Vin like we’re a pair of angry cats. Maestro ignores the tension in the room, and picks up the newly refilled pill container, pops today’s a.m. pills open and empties it out into his wrinkled palm.
