She scrunches her forehead. “What visit?”
Dammit.Maybe they haven’t spoken since Halloween. They might not even be on speaking terms, despite Lindsay’s grand gesture to bring Natalie and Winston back together. I should’ve checked with Lindsay first. But since the cat’s out of the bag, I can’t exactly backtrack. “She’s coming up this weekend. Saturday, I think. She didn’t tell you?”
Natalie pulls her phone from where she stashes it beneath the bar. “That long-haired jabroni,” she says quietly, though the lack of malice in her tone eases the tension in my neck. “I can’t believe I’m the last to hear about this.” Her fingers fly across the phone in her hands, and when it buzzes a moment later, Natalie’s smile grows until it reaches her eyes.
“Okay, she’s been thoroughly scolded, and she says she’ll swing by here once she’s checked into the Pebblebrook Inn.”
Why is she texting Natalie back, but leaving me hanging?It’s an embarrassing, needy thought that occurs to me, but I can’t tamp it down. I texted her hours ago.Hours. It was a selfie I took yesterday morning, standing out in the cold with no shirt and a fuzzy yellow beanie while taking a sip of coffee from myWhere do zombies go for a group dinner? HeadQuartersmug––a gift from Vyla that I still smile at whenever I pull it from the cabinet. It has a little cartoon of three zombies dressed up in fancy clothes that are predictably tattered, carrying utensils and drooling.
How does someone not react to a selfie like that? Honestly. It was easily in my all-time top five.
“Have you and Linds been texting?” Natalie asks. The way her voice lilts at the end tells me she’s intrigued, and I need to maintain a straight face or Natalie will be able to tell how hard I’m crushing on her best friend.
I keep my chin down and breathe slowly through my nose as I reply, “Uh, a little since Halloween. Not that much.”
“Oh yeah, Riz told me you took care of her that night. Thank you for that, by the way. Means a lot.”
It’s sweet that she thinks I did that as a favor to her, and not an opportunity to spend time with girl I’ve been searching for since I was sixteen. If she wants to give me credit, though, I’ll take it. “Yeah, my pleasure.”
The bar stays quiet until I lock up at midnight. Snowflakes melt in my hair and on my jacket as soon as they land, making me long for Christmases from my childhood when Mamaw was still around. We never got much snow accumulation in my small Tennessee town, but you’d never know that from the way she decorated. It looked like the inside of Santa’s workshop. She’d keep the windows open all night so it was cold enough to make hot cocoa. We’d snuggle up with blankets and listen to Christmas tapes and pretend we lived somewhere close to the North Pole. I miss her all the time, but so much more this time of year.
My phone dings as I settle into my couch, feet up on the coffee table.
Lindsay: Work sucked. You’ve gotta have a Mapletown story that’ll cheer me up, right?
Then she replies to my selfie.
Lindsay: You’re as ridiculous as those abs. Don’t ever let me inside your house because I will steal this mug.
The ache in my cheeks tells me my smile is wider than usual, which is not surprising. Lindsay seems to have that effect on me.
I tell her about Vyla and Riz’s bet, and poor Debbie with her dead fang.
The only dentist in town is her ex from over one hundred years ago, but she won’t take the portal to another town’s dentist either, so who knows. Maybe vampires are allergic to floss?
Lindsay: I hate going to the dentist. The grinding sound brings back horrible memories from when I had cavities as a kid. Why haven’t they developed silent dental tools?
We have cars that can drive themselves, yet dental tools are still as loud as goddamn lawnmowers?
Lindsay: Seriously!
Why did work suck?
She might not want to discuss it, but I’m eager to know, and since she brought it up, it seems like a topic that’s not off-limits.
Lindsay: One of my idiot coworkers asked me for a Thai food recommendation for a date he has this weekend. I asked him why he assumed I’d know. He gestures at my face and says, “Because of your whole thing, obviously. Aren’t you Thai, or whatever?” with a dismissive gesture. That happened during my first meeting of the day, and I had trouble focusing afterward. I’ve worked with this guy for years. I know his kids’ names. How old they are. I even went to his ex-wife’s baby shower before his eldest was born. But to him, we all look the same and I’m just another face in the crowd.
That’s awful.
My urge to comfort her is strong, but the need to make her smile is stronger.
Why did the chicken cross the road?
I’m not sure how dark her sense of humor is, but based on her many drunken justifications for a Purge Night run by women, I’m guessing it’s somewhere between charcoal and onyx on the dark end of the spectrum.
Lindsay: Are you seriously parroting the world’s oldest joke right now?
Just answer the question.
