As I sit back to process this, I’m struck by the distinct and unpleasant feeling of being watched. I look around, and unless I’m imagining it, gazes scatter. “Is everyone looking at us?”
“No!” Daphne says quickly, but then she glances around and hesitates. “No,” she says again, this time with much less certainty. “What happened with West?”
“We argued. I yelled at him. As expected.”
“What’d you argue about?”
I pull my attention from the whispers at the next table. “He was added to my Sunday panel.”
The disbelief on her face fills me with smug vindication. “They want you to share a public stage with him?” she asks.
“Can you believe it?”
“Did he evenattemptto apologize?”
“What do you think?”
She leans toward me, eyes fierce. “What are you going to do?”
The breeze swirls her hair around her shoulders like the palm fronds above us. I tip my head back and close my eyes with a sigh. I swear I haven’t felt the sun in four months.
“I thought I could get him kicked off my panel, but my first attempt didn’t go well.”
“What happened?”
“I asked to speak to the director, and he called me a Karen.”
“The director did?”
“No.” I sigh regretfully. “I didn’t get past the undergrad volunteer. It was West who said it.”
“He shouldn’t have said that. You have a right to stand up for yourself.”
“He shouldn’t have said a lot of things, but here we are. I haven’t even told you the worst part yet,” I add.
“How is sharing the stage with your professional nemesis not the worst part?”
“Because the worst part,” I say with my eyes still closed, “is that West thinks he beat me.”
I can see his smirk in my mind, can hear his smug voice.Likewise, Darling.Darling! He’s never called me that in his life. It was always Mars. Occasionally Jupiter.
West thinks he won this round, and Ihatethat. I hate that he knows he got under my skin and that there’s not a single inch of this campus that’s not colored with memories of him. I hate that without even looking, I know that across the crowded lawn, the library peeks over the tops of food trucks and white vendor tents. I’m surrounded by land mines; anywhere I go, I’m at risk of having my hard-fought peace blown up by somethingas innocuous as the biography section on the third floor of Main Library.
“Well, what’s your plan to show him that he didn’t?” Daphne asks.
I sigh again. “I don’t know.”
“I know an Etsy witch who charges six dollars to put a curse on your enemies.”
I snort. “Of course you do. Enough about my drama. How’s writing?”
She makes a dramatic dying-animal sound as she slumps onto the table.
“I thought you were doing final edits?”
“Oh, that!” She brightens. “Yeah, I turned those in last week. Now I’m working on something new, and it’s going even worse than this.” She holds up her lopsided top. “But my editor saved my life by pointing out that my main character needed a stronger motivation for tracking down the killer. I’ve decided to go with a revenge arc. Should I send her a sourdough starter as a thank-you?”
“Absolutely,” I say with a bit too much enthusiasm.
