"You're impossible," she says, but her voice has gone low and warm.
"You married me."
Ruby's voice cuts across the room. "Sloane. What are you wearing?"
Sloane turns, arms spread. "Ask him." She jerks her chin at me.
The room erupts. Ruby cackles until she has to grip the pool table. Darla wheezes. Candace presses her lips together, fighting it. Maggie claps both hands over her mouth. Frankie tilts her head, studying the print with genuine artistic assessment.
"T. rexes in nurse hats," Frankie says. "That's actually impressive."
"A patient gave me a sticker," Sloane says flatly. "A five-year-old, dead serious, stuck it on my shoulder and said, 'You're Dino-mite.' I still have it on." She turns to show the sparkly sticker.
I pull her back by the waist. She lets me, leaning into my chest. My chin rests on her shoulder. The T. rex pattern is soft under my fingers. I trace one of the little nurse caps with my thumb.
"Stop petting the dinosaurs," she mutters.
"Can't."
Something in me unclenches. My shoulders drop. The volume spreads out, loses its edge. Food circulates. Maggie's set up trays along the bar top.
Ruby ducks behind the bar, plugs her phone into the aux, and hits shuffle on her playlist. Tom Jones fills the clubhouse at full volume.
"What's new, pussycat? Whoa-oh-oh-oh..." Ruby frowns. Skips to the next track. "What's new, pussycat? Whoa-oh-oh-oh..." Her finger hovers. She skips again. "What's new, pussycat? Whoa-oh-oh-oh..."
The room goes quiet. Ruby scrolls through her playlist. Her thumb moves faster. Stops. Her chin lifts.
"Every song," she says. Her voice is level. Too level. "Every single song on my playlist is 'What's New Pussycat' by Tom Jones."
Nash takes a very long sip of his beer.
Ruby rips the aux cord out of the wall. Tom Jones dies mid-whoa. She scans the room, eyes landing on each of us. East studies the ceiling. I examine my beer. Nash hasn't blinked.
"I will find out who did this," she says to nobody in particular. "And when I do, it will be biblical."
Kyle, from the far end of the bar: "Have you tried restarting your phone?"
Ruby turns to him with the measured precision of a turret locking onto a target. Kyle retreats behind Maggie. The women keep exchanging looks. Ruby's smile has teeth. Candace is too quiet.
Maggie speaks first. Calm, deliberate, terrifying. "Now that you've all tasted what happens when someone touches my kitchen. Three pot roasts, James. You're eating three."
James, mid-bite on his second cookie. "That's fair."
"And nobody goes near my spice rack again. Ever."
"Yes, ma'am," East says, grimacing from the cookie.
"That includes you." She points at me. "I know you were the lookout."
I hold up both hands. She's not wrong.
Ruby folds her arms. "Forty-seven songs, Knox. I want a name."
I keep my face neutral. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Forty-seven copies of Tom Jones. On my playlist. You watched me discover it and didn't flinch."
"I was hydrating."
