Daphne inhaled sharply.
April felt two feet tall.
Elena tilted her head at Daphne, eyes narrowing. “Did you get a tattoo?”
Daphne didn’t answer, but April supposed the wordtattoostoked something in Elena’s memory, or at least her manners, because she finally looked at April again and smiled.
“April,” she said. “It’s good to see you.”
I can’t say the same.
Is it really, you manipulative hag?
Fuck you, fuck you, and then fuck you again.
A myriad of retorts arranged themselves quickly in April’s mind, coalescing on her tongue and ready for fire, but before April could figure out which was the most devastating—if a bit immature—Elena’s attention shifted back to Daphne.
“Can we talk?” she asked. Her voice was softer now, her shoulders rounding a little in submission. “Alone? Please.”
April waited for Daphne’s response—hell, no, or even a politeI don’t think so, because it was her birthday and April had taken her to dinner and given her a tattoo and then an orgasm, and she was about to share her art with Daphne, her whole fucking soul, so surely,surely, Daphne was not going to say yes to the woman who’d nearly wrecked both of their lives.
But then…
You stopped answering…
April squeezed her eyes shut. She could feel Daphne turning toward her, everything tumbling down around her.
“April,” Daphne said softly, but April didn’t wait to hear what she was going to say. The plea. The apologetic expression. She simply turned and walked out of the room, and she didn’t slow down until she reached her car, started the engine, and peeled out of Cloverwild’s parking lot, her tires spitting gravel.
April didn’t rememberturning onto certain roads or even getting out of her car. But half an hour later, she was standing on Ramona and Dylan’s front porch, ringing the bell and shaking, despite the balmy breeze drifting off the lake.
It took a few minutes, but eventually the porch light flicked on, the lock slid back, and the large oak door swung open, revealing a bleary-looking Ramona with her hair piled on top of her head, sleep shorts adorned with cartoon illustrations of sushi, and a baby blue tank top that was on backward and inside out.
“Apes?” Ramona asked, blinking into the golden porch light. “What—”
“I saw Elena. She’s here. With Daphne right now at Cloverwild.”
Ramona’s expression cleared quickly, eyes rounding and mouth dropping open a little. She said nothing, just opened the door wider, then led April into the kitchen. The stove light was on, but Ramona flipped the switch next to the sink as well. April sank onto a stool at the white-and-gray quartz island while Ramona filled a kettle with water, then set it on a burner before dropping two peppermint tea bags into dark blue mugs.
Still, neither of them said anything, not until they both had steaming cups of tea in front of them, April’s hands curling around the warm ceramic. Even then, she wasn’t sure what to say.
“So,” Ramona finally said, leaning her elbows on the counter. “Elena?”
April nodded at her reflection in her tea. “Yeah.”
“And Daphne…”
“I don’t know. I think she’s been talking to Elena on the phone, but I…” She set her mug down, dug the heels of her hands into her eyes. “Fuck, I just don’t know.”
And she didn’t, but as she sat here, her heart beating fast as shethought about Daphne, about Elena, about the Devon, about everything that had happened this summer and still might happen, she realized she didn’t want to talk about Daphne.
She couldn’t.
Not until she talked about something else.
“What happened to us?” she asked, lifting her eyes to look at her best friend of nearly twenty-five years. Such a simple question, but as heavy as the sky pressing down on them.
Ramona sighed, a resigned expression on her face. “I don’t know.”
