“You should do a whole rainbow,” Katie says. She’s had a few mimosas. Possibly even several. “Like—your head could be a rainbow. You could have a rainbow head.”
That would be a logistical nightmare, and I’m about to explain why when my phone starts ringing in my pocket. With avoice call. My anxiety levels rise, and when I pull out my phone to see that it’s Javier, they spike.
I make some excuses, head outside to the backyard, take a deep breath, and answer as casually as I can.
“Hey, sorry,” he says immediately. “For everything, I didn’t mean to…put you on the spot like that.”
“It’s okay,” I say automatically, then have to backtrack. “I mean. You’re fine, right? You didn’t get mugged and kidnapped and left for dead on the side of the road? Or in a car crash? Or abducted by aliens?”
There’s the briefest of silences, just long enough for me to regret the aliens thing, but then he makes a noise that might be a laugh. “No,” he says. “No kidnapping, no aliens.”
“Well, I hadn’t told anyone yet.” I stare pointedly into Emily’s nice backyard. “So it’s a moot point.”
“Thank you.”
I snort. “You’re welcome. It’s my skin, too, you know.”
“Your dad would probably take it better than my mom,” he says. “She’d probably renounce her earthly possessions andbecome a nun or something, after everything I’ve put her through, and I couldn’t blame her.”
“I think it would be equally awful in a different way,” I say without elaborating, and Javier laughs. “Did you at least have a nice hike?”
“It was great until this morning when I got back to my cabin and realized I’d sent everyone I know into a panicked tailspin.” He sounds resigned. “I just needed a little time to, you know. Clear my head. After everything.”
Ah, yes.Everything.
“Did it work?”
“Sort of,” he says and huffs out a laugh. “I feel better about my dad. And I talked to my mom this morning. I apologized, and then she apologized, and then I apologized again. I’ll probably get at least a one-month reprieve from her suggesting I call my dad.”
“There’s gotta be a way to distract her. Get her to renovate her kitchen or something.”
“I think something would have to break catastrophically for that to happen.”
“How catastrophically?”
Javier laughs, throaty with a slight rasp, like he’s had a rough day. “Bad enough that she’d have to rip it up anyway,” he says. “A flood? Something falling through the ceiling?’
“I know someone who once had a raccoon fall into her bathtub,” I offer. “It wasn’t very happy. Neither was she, actually.”
He laughs again, all warm and lovely and relaxed. “What do you think the worst animal would be to fall through your ceiling?”
“Specifically into the bathroom, or any room?”
“Let’s stick to the bathroom.”
I lean against the warm siding of Emily’s house and wiggle my toes in the grass. They’re painted bright, glittery purple today. “I think any apex predator would be pretty bad. Like, a bear or a wolf or something. I wouldn’t want a tiger in my bathroom.”
“True, but you could just close the door on a tiger.”
“For what, sixty seconds? A tiger wants to get out of the bathroom, a tiger’s getting out of the bathroom.”
“I think something that could hide would be worse.”
“Worse than a tiger? In your bathroom?”
“Okay, think about it,” he says, and there’s a slight squeak on the other end of the line, like springs compressing, followed by amrrrrprowr!“Yes, I know you’re also upset with me,” Javier says and is answered by another cat complaint. “Imagine going into your bathroom and there’s a hole in the ceiling above your bathtub, but instead of a tiger or a bear, there’s nothing but tiny footprints.”
“Is that Zorro?”
