“I didn’t say that.”
“Whatever,” Skye grumbled.
“What happened?”
Skye shrugged. “I thought I might find a cousin or a sibling. I wasn’t even… I didn’t thinkshe’dstill be alive.”
Lucia suppressed a sigh. “Your mother.”
“She’s not my mother!”
“Of course not. Sorry.”
Skye shook her head. “I was stupid. I just… I was so surprised, and I reached out. I actually contacted her.”
“I take it that didn’t go well.”
“No. She said she’d only disappoint me, that she’d have disappointed me if she’d kept me and still would.”
“That’s rough.”
“I…I wrote her a letter after that. Can you believe it? An actual fuckingletter.” She scoffed. “I don’t know why but I just, I had all these thoughts.” She slapped her head. “And I couldn’t stop them from bleeding onto the page.”
Skye wiped her face. “She told me to get lost and never contact her again.”
“I’m sorry, Skylar.”
Skye nodded, sniffing. “It’s whatever.”
A pause.
“I guess it made me more irritated in general and you…you took the brunt of it.”
“Why me? I mean, sure, I get that you were more irritated overall, but—”
“I don’t know. After we’d broken up, we mostly got along, right? I mean, we were never serious anyway, and it’s been so long ago. I don’t want you back or anything. And I’m not jealous of you and Blackwell.” She paused. “Though she’s hot.”
Lucia grinned. “That she is.”
“It just, it seems so easy for people to…leave me.” Her voice dropped at the end.
Lucia grabbed her hand and squeezed. “None of that is your fault or on you.”
“Right.”
“I’m serious.”
“Anyway. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have used you as a tank, even if you can soak up more damage than anyone else I know.”
“A tank?”
“You know, in one of those role-playing games where you have a party of heroes to fight?”
Lucia only blinked.
“God, you’re hopeless.” Skye chuckled, but this time, her tone was almost affectionate. “OK, like usually there are four or five: a mage, a warrior, a healer, an assassin, and so on. There’s also always one character who stands in front and takes all the incoming heat. The tank, or the protector. Their health stat is usually the highest, and they can take it, more than the others can, anyway.”
“I don’t even know what to say to that,” Lucia said. “Aside from, ‘Do tanks regenerate, or do they eventually run out of…tankiness?’”
