And then an alarm went off.
A loud alarm.
Right by my ear.
I jolted upright.Bobby said a few words that you wouldn’t find in a Valentine’s Day card, and the lights came on.I realized I’d missed headbutting Bobby—and probably breaking his nose in the process—by about a centimeter.Bobby, back straight, eyes wide, looked like how I felt.It was like getting a bucketful of cold water thrown on you.It was like getting goosed by a maiden aunt (is that an expression?).It was worse.
Bobby’s eyes narrowed, and he dug around under the pillows until he came up with a kitchen timer.He did something to it, and the ringing sound stopped.Then he held up the timer for my inspection.
I let my head fall back, and I groaned.
In a voice I would have called strangled on anyone else, Bobby said, “I need this to stop now.This thing with Keme.No more.”
“It’s not my fault—”
“Dash.”
“But he—”
“No more.”
Holding up a hand in surrender, I nodded.
Bobby snapped off the light.This time, though, thingsdidn’tget interesting.We lay there in the dark, adrenaline leaching out of us, our breaths evening out.Bobby was right.This had to stop.Keme had taken things way too far.He was a maniac.It was starting to affect my, um, relationship with Bobby.First thing tomorrow, I’d tell him—
“Oh my God,” I breathed.
Bobby didn’t ask.I couldhearhim not ask.
“When’s the next time you’re due for a haircut?”I said.“No, wait, it doesn’t matter.I can just cut it myself.I only need a little bit.”
Slowly, in the dark, Bobby pulled the pillow over his face.
“Hear me out,” I said.“I think your hair looks enough like Keme’s that if I sprinkle it around the house for a few weeks, I can convince him he’s going bald.”
Home for the Holidays
This story takes place beforeAlways Murder.
1
“Oh my God,” I said, and I put down my frosting…brush?I mean, it was technically a spatula, but this was an artistic endeavor.“We didn’t even talk about that.”
Bobby didnotput down his frosting brush.Er, spatula.Bobby kept frosting.He had chosen to decorate the snowflake-shaped sugar cookies, which meant a single layer of blue-white frosting.Big surprise: Bobby took his job incredibly seriously, and, of course, he was nailing it.
“We’re talking about it right now,” he said with the kind of matter-of-factness that would have made—uh, somebody famous for their patience scream into a pillow.(Oh!Gandhi!It would have madeGandhiscream into his pillow.)
“Talking about what?”Indira asked.
(If you need to know, she was in charge of the Santa-shaped cookies—lots of different colors, lots of fine details.)
“Going home for Christmas.”
“Hmm,” said Indira.And then she looked at me.
Which was—if you asked me—unnecessary.
Okay,yes, I’d been meaning to talk to Bobby about what he wanted to do for the holidays.But here’s the thing about asking questions, especially if you ask Bobby: he’s going to answer them.And if you’re me, sometimes you don’t want an actual, you know, answer.Because that might result in both of you flying across the country and getting trapped with your parents on their farm in the middle of nowhere, and you can’t escape, and you spend Christmas screaming into your pillow like Gandhi.
