“Hello.”
“I’m Jewel,” she introduces herself, and I shelve her face and name in my head. I’ve always loved remembering people’s names, because I hate not being remembered. I’d imagine it’s the same for everyone.
“Blair,” I extend a hand for her to shake, and she takes it, almost too eagerly.
“I know!” She beams. “You’re the boss’ girl, right?”
“Whose?” I ask immediately, then backtrack. I forgot Arlo is these people’s boss. With a chuckle, I lower my head. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“I’ve heard great things about you!”
“Have you?”
She nods. “Freya talks about you a lot. She really seems to like you.”
A frown etches on my face. Not once did I allow myself to think that Freya liked me as a person. She always acts like I’m an inconvenience, and given the way she treats people, I highly doubt she likes anyone.
“She does?”
The skepticism in my voice makes Jewel squint her eyes, but not in a hostile manner. More like, she’s trying to understand the reason behind my bewilderment.
“She does,” Jewel echoes.
I clear my throat. “I’m sorry, but who are you to Freya?”
“Oh!” Her eyes light up. “I’m her wife.”
My hand stops mid-air as I’m about to take a sip of my water. Jewel looks at me with beaming eyes, and my brain short-circuits for a fucking minute. How in the fucking hell is Freya, the grumpy cat, married to a ray of sunshine like this one?
“I… You’re her what?”
Jewel nods. “Mhm! I’m her wife, see!” Excitedly, she shows me her wedding ring, and I have to do a double take.
The band is gold, with small rubies on it. It has a certain elegance to it that I haven’t seen before, and although the band is on the thinner side, it looks perfect. It’s one of the prettiest wedding bands I’ve ever seen.
“Oh, it’s so pretty. Why rubies, though?”
“Ruby is my birthstone,” Jewel states matter-of-factly. “And Freya’s is sapphire, so she has a few of them on hers.”
I’m still reeling from the shock that Freya is fucking married. I never noticed the wedding band — then again, I never truly looked. But still, to know someone’s putting up with that stoic personality on the daily makes me shudder.
“That’s very cute,” I mutter, unsure of how to proceed with the conversation.
“You know,” she finishes drinking her water, setting the dirty glass in the sink behind me. “Freya is rough around the edges; everyone knows that. But deep down, she’s just really scared of being unlovable.”
That hits me harder than I thought it would
Slowly, I look across the room, spotting Freya chatting with Aria in the same spot as earlier. Though this time, her eye darts to her wife every few seconds, paying no mind to me at all.
But there’s something in the air that makes me pause. The pull between the two is definitely there, and either Jewel is oblivious to the stares of her wife, or she’s pretending not to notice them.
“Anyway,” my attention is drawn back to Jewel when she speaks. “Are you nervous?”
“About tonight?”
She nods.
“A little,” I admit, setting the glass aside. “But I have Arlo by my side.”
