Stalwartly, she pushed the memory of Phineas, and what they’d just shared, from her mind. She was unwilling to address that just now; her feelings were too raw.
“Knock-knock. Have you seen Tiffan—oh!”
Olive’s head snapped around to see Bonnie stopping short just inside the doorway. It appeared that she took one look at Olive and froze, one foot mid-step. “Oh dear,” she whispered.
Defensively, Olive wrapped her arms around her middle, pulling Phineas’s jacket tighter. “What? And did you justsayknock-knock instead of knocking?”
“It was easier,” murmured Bonnie, already turning to reach for the door. “And you left the door open. I have been trying to find my sister to drag her back home.” She nudged it shut so the two of them were alone in the room. “Oh dear,” she repeated with a sigh as she turned to survey Olive once more.
“What?” Olive snapped again, lifting her jaw. “Have I grown a second head? Sprouted a mustache? Dribbled soup down myfront? Tried to explain why Herodotus’s accounts of the Greco-Persian wars were flawed? Mispronounced something?”
Bonnie smiled faintly as she crossed the room. “The fact you consider the last to be as heinous as the first says a lot about you.”
“The fact you people donotcare about Herodotus’s effect on our histories says something aboutyou.”
“I care, just perhaps not as deeply as you.” Her new friend stopped in front of her and offered Olive a smile. “But I wasoh dearingbecause you look like you might want a nice long cry.”
“Well, I do,” snapped Olive again, turning away but not going too far, because her friend’s comfort was welcome, “but I am not going to.”
“Are you going to get angry instead? That works for my sister. Well, Tiffany. Our other sister, Ember, seems to have infinite patience.”
Bonnie and Tiffany had a third sister? Why wasn’t she attending the house party?
With a sigh, Olive felt all the tension and irritation, leach from her shoulders.
“No,” she whispered, staring at the cluster of hair pins on her dressing table. She’d lost any number of them in the storage shed at the excavation site, and somehow, it hadn’t seemed to matter at the time.
Bonnie’s hand rested on her shoulder. “What is it, Olive? You can tell me. I know we just recently met, but I like to think of you as a friend. One I bonded with over our love of the printed word.”
It was true. Of all the young ladies attending the Dumpkins house party, Bonnie had seemed like such a kindred spirit. Would it hurt to share the truth?
It will make you feel better.
“I think I…” Tears pricked at the back of Olive’s lids. “I think I love Phineas.”
“Ah.” Bonnie was quiet a moment, then ventured, “And that is a bad thing?”
“It is if he does not love me back.”
To her surprise, her friend snorted a laugh, but when Olive swung around to glare at her, Bonnie shrugged.
“Forgive me, Olive, but…” She snaked her arm around Olive’s shoulders, while simultaneously nodding to her blouse. “It is fairly clear you have beenlovedquite thoroughly.”
With a gasp, Olive slapped her hands over her buttons, only to discover they were, in fact, done up incorrectly. That, combined with her mess of a hairstyle, and the fact she was wearing Phineas’s jacket, was fairly damning.
But she refused to be damned.
So she lifted her chin and shrugged Bonnie’s arm away as she began to undo her buttons completely. “Well, what of it?”
Her friend’s smirk was obvious in her voice when she asked, “So youhavebeen loved?”
“I have beensexed.” Olive bit her lip as she shrugged out of the jacket, which she tossed over the back of a nearby chair, and then her blouse, letting that drop to the floor. “Is that the righttense? To sex? No, that is not it. Intercoursed? No, that is not a verb either.”
Bonnie’s eyes gleamed “Grammatical tenses aside, I think what you and Phineas just shared is called ‘making love.’ Here, let me help you.”
Olive gave up and accepted the offer because her fingers were shaking too much.
“We did not make love,” she muttered. “He does not love me.”
