I did.
“Do I strike you as the kind of person who would ever lie to you?”
“No.”
“Or the kind of person who would arbitrarily decide I didn’t like you?”
“No.”
“You’re damn right about that. I can pretty much count on one hand the number of people I actually like, and I like you. The only way you’ll get rid of me is if you dump me or if I keel over.”
“Thanks, Havisham.”
“Me three,” Salcedo said. “I like the fact that neither of you stand on ceremony. You say what you think. You do what you say. You don’t do things for the sake of appearances.”
“That’s beautiful,” Havisham said. “I think I almost shed a tear.”
“Oh, don’t make fun of me or this moment,” I said between hiccuping sobs.
“I’m not! I’m a salty old broad because I hold all those tears in, but—oops! I just lost one.”
“I love y’all,” Salcedo said with a smile as she put an arm around my shoulders.
She said it with an ease I envied desperately.
“There you go, Stark. Cry it out,” Havisham said gruffly.
“Y’all done made the baby cry,” Betty said. She called over her shoulder, “Jasper! Get over here and sing this girl a song.”
“I ain’t singing no song!”
Their argument made me laugh even in my tears and told me the world would keep on spinning, even if the days were dull for a while.
Chapter 40
I’m not proud of how I wallowed the weekend after Malone and I consciously uncoupled. Salcedo had found another college student to room with instead of me, which was both good and bad. Bad that I had nothing to distract me but good she wasn’t there to watch me mope. BB and I sat on the couch together watchingMurder, She Wrote. I brought some treats for the kitten because she seemed jealous of my popcorn. She was also surprisingly understanding when I said things like “This episode is likeGaslight, which is funny because Angela Lansbury was in that movie” or “Look! There’s Victor fromThe Young and the Restless!”
The next day, however, I had to get to work. Backgrounds weren’t going to check themselves. Papers weren’t going to serve themselves. Rent sure as heck wasn’t going to pay itself.
By that afternoon I wanted nothing more than to return to my Jessica Fletcher marathon, but Havisham called.
“Stark, get your ass over here.”
“I don’t wanna.”
“I’m shorthanded, and I need you.”
I poured kibble out for the cat. “I can’t mix drinks. You know that.”
“True, but you can bus tables.”
“Fine.”
Thirty minutes later I walked into Finnegan’s with a sour expression, only to be greeted by a chorus of “Surprise!”
Oh.
My birthday.
