She was good—too good, honestly. I went back with her, where we listened to Paris Paloma on the way to her place and sang along, Jade hamming it up just to pull me out of my spiral. Foraged a little dinner of scraps with cheese and crackers and veggies, and she didn’t press, just sat with me and made silly small talk, and we wound up dancing in her living room. First it was to beautiful classical music, and then when that wasn’t enough to get through to me, she switched it to honest-to-god disco and led me through the corniest dance moves until we were both laughing too much for me to be upset, and in the end, it was a spontaneous thing for me to kiss her hungrily and passionately, just burning over with so much adoration that I felt like my chest would explode, and it turned out I did get lucky with her that night. Wound up in her bed begging her to fingerfuck meharderuntil my feelings sat right in my mind at last, and then to fuck my face until I didn’t know up from down, and I cradled her close to me once we were done.
She wasreallygood. So good I was going to cry for years when she left. But for right now, she was here, and that was the best thing in the world.
“Thanks,” I whispered against the soft skin of her collar.
“Thankyou,honestly,” she said, squeezing my butt. I giggled.
“You’re welcome.”
“Be careful you don’t fall asleep like that. You’ve got to clean up first.”
“Iknow.Just a bit.”
Just a bit. That would be enough.
Chapter 28
Alyssa
My first problem was self-indulgence, because I couldn’t even bring myself to leave Jade’s place until the afternoon, even though I knew full well I needed to get back to Daniela’s and play it cool. I knew that, but when I woke up to Jade playing with my hair and looking at me like I was the best thing she’d ever seen, for a minute, I felt like maybe I was okay after all. And I guess I got a little addicted to that.
I was a little addicted to making out with her, too, so we did some of that. And she popped out for chocolate croissants, too, so that made things even better.
But eventually, I had to head out into the rain, where a thin drizzle in the morning had picked up to a steady shower. Jade drove me back to the Birdhouse so I could take my car, and I held my jacket over my head and ran across the slick asphalt from her car to mine, fumbling in through the door and shivering against the wetness in my clothes as I started the car and cranked up the heat, letting it run to warm up. Once I had stripped out of my jacket without feeling colder and wetter for it, I texted Daniela an apology for being out so late, a little white lie that I’d been out on a trail all morning and was running back away from the rain now, and to ask her if she wanted meto pick up anything. I didn’t like the cool tone she used when she asked me if I could stop into the grocery store and grab some sourdough and tomatoes, but I was going to get her the best sourdough and tomatoes money could buy, because it was the least I could do at this point, except that the last thing I was expecting was to run into Linda, fifteen minutes later at the grocery store, nearly colliding with each other over the tomatoes.
“I saw this one first,” Linda said, snatching up a tomato.
“Clearly you’re more of a tomato expert than I am, because I wasn’t even beholden to that particular tomato,” I said. She gave me her little upside-down smile, dropping the tomato in question into a bag.
“I’m not a tomato expert either,” she said. “I just was already planning to pick that one up and so I got very committed to it. Are you feeling better?”
“Oh, um.” I scratched my head. “Better from what?”
“Yesterday at the Birdhouse. You looked like you were going to throw up when you left.”
I laughed awkwardly. “I thought I was doing a good job pretending I was okay.”
“Acting’s not your strong suit.”
“Well, so much for my promising Hollywood career.” I turned back to the tomatoes, picking carefully between them. “I’m feeling better now, yeah.”
“Acting’s not your strong suit.”
“Ugh, Jesus, even now?” I sighed, tossing the bag of tomatoes in my cart and leaning back against it wearily. “Okay, you win. I’ve been feeling rough. But I’ll be all right.”
“Something on your mind? I know I don’t look like it, but I am capable of emotional support sometimes.”
“You don’t look that scary. Sorry to burst your bubble.” I shrugged, fiddling with a spot on the shopping cart handle. “Ijust hate feeling like a burden… that’s all. It’s starting to get to me.” I didn’t need to get into the details of Drew cornering me about it, or Charlie apparently complaining about me behind my back. Even with everything between Charlie and Linda recently, I didn’t want to start pointing fingers at her girlfriend or their friend. Linda gave me a sympathetic smile.
“I feel you.”
“Yeah?”
“I make decent money, but Charlie makes so much more than me that I feel like I’m irrelevant. Can’t be trusted with household tasks, don’t do as well as she wants in social settings, don’t… dress up nicely enough. Sometimes I feel like I’m deadweight. But…” She shrugged with one shoulder, looking at the wall past me. “Eh. Just bad thoughts. You’re not a burden. People like having you here.”
Some people did, which was nice. How many did I need to like me to compensate for someone like Drew, like Charlie, talking to people about me, aligning people against me? But I wasn’t getting into that. “Thanks,” I said quietly, and she laughed dryly.
“Weird conversation to have at the tomato display. But I meant to catch you anyway,” she said, squaring her shoulders with me. “Susanne wants to chat with you a bit more. About the job this time. We’re moving into the stage of actually looking for someone, a spot in outreach coordination, pretty aligned with your marketing work, so I told her you’d be interested. I spoke for you, but whatever, I’ve always been presumptuous.”
