“Me too. I know, um…” She trailed off, walking ahead of me while the path turned single-file through a clutch of trees, and we came down the rough stone steps onto a dirt path that wound upwards. I knew where Daniela was taking me—same spot on the overlook she always liked. I followed along next to her.
“You can say it,” I said. “I’m not sensitive.”
“I know you had a whole thing with Charlie, and Alyssa’s really close with you and all, so I’m worried… she wasn’t being different with you since then, was she?”
“No. Not at all.” And I’d have noticed. Alyssa was taking up too much of my mind these days.
“Weird. I’ll probably ask tomorrow, once it’s less recent. In the meantime,” she said, flashing a smile at me, “it’s perfect timing to see a sunset. C’mon.”
“Yeah… just one second,” I said, slowing down behind her, and I knelt to rummage in the brush. One little precocious bush among the still-dry foliage, lush with blue flowers. I slipped out my phone, and I took a picture.
Cat would be devastated to know I was taking pictures of Alyssa’s favorite flowers instead of watching the sunset with Daniela.
Chapter 16
Jade
“You know,” Daniela said, sitting back on the rock ledge next to me, holding her tea in one hand, her eyes out on the vibrant orange sunset breaking over the valley. “I’ve missed doing stuff like this.”
I glanced at my phone. Alyssa still hadn’t opened the message with the flowers. My mind circled the anxious thoughts wondering if she was all right. “You haven’t been doing dinner parties?” I said, and she snorted.
“Ma’am, you’ve met me. If I go without feeding somebody, I’ll shrivel up into a raisin and die. Not the house party.”
“Okay, we’re being cryptic today. Do I get to ask for clues what you mean? Maybe 20 Questions?”
“Hanging out like this. You know, just you and me. I missed being able to drop by your house and harass you while you’re trying to make some candles and fulfill some orders.”
This was so… loaded. Cat had insisted Daniela was interested in me. My stomach sank. Daniela was perfectly wonderful—I’d had some feelings for her for a minute, built on a solid foundation of friendship. Everything I would have wanted from a relationship. But the thought of her trying something with me made me feel like a cornered animal. “Well, you’realways welcome to come around,” I said. “You can come hang with me and Cat, assuming you’re not holding a grudge with her.”
She sighed, pursing her lips. “I feel like I put my foot in my mouth whenever I end up discussing that with you.”
“You can say it. I’m actually asking this time.”
She sipped her tea slowly. “I just don’t know why it had to be a big deal.”
“Cat didn’t want it to be a big deal. She just wanted to work things out with Drew. And he made it into a personal attack.”
“A personal attack?” She frowned. “I mean, he shut down her event plan pretty hard, and maybe he should have been more flexible, but it wasn’t personal.”
A hot sensation bubbled up in my throat, and I lost my temper and snapped. “The personal attack was calling her aself-righteous bitch riding someone else’s hard work.”
She gave me a wild look. “Drew did? Are you joking?”
“Self-righteous bitch, I can look past, as a pretty self-righteous bitch myself,” I said, “but Cat’s been doing half the work for the community for almost three years. But it’s classic for a man to discredit a woman’s help. Especially a disabled lesbian.”
“That’s not what literally anybody said about it. Matt and Skye told me—”
“Yeah, because he’s the one with the whisper network and the benefit of the doubt,” I said. “When he tells people Cat was harassing him, people believe him. When she tells people he was harassing her, people think she’s being a gossipy bitch talking about him behind his back.”
“Well… it’s just…” Daniela blinked fast, her face scrunched up in disbelief.
“I mean, Christ, the whole thing he was saying about her was that she’s a disrespectful asshole because she’s talking shitabout him behind his back. But the very act of him telling people about that ishimtalking shit about her behind her back. But it’s okay when he does it?”
“I… but…” She shifted, looking down. “So what are you saying, he’s actually a bully and everyone in town is his collaborator?”
“No, I think—” I sighed, raking my hand back through my hair. Daniela wasn’t his collaborator either. She was just caught up in his shit as much as everybody else was. I forced myself to push out a long breath, trying to consciously relax the tight muscles in my back. “I think the people close to him give him the benefit of the doubt. And then they repeat his side, and then you have a dozen people telling his story, and so it spreads, and so everybody wants to believeit can’t be that all my friends are wrong in the exact same way,you hear it from everyone, everywhere. And I think Drew knew that and was counting on that. And I think that’s why he’s more pissed off at me than he is at Cat, because I’m a self-righteous bitch enough to not play along.”
“That’s… a lot to put on someone.”
