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She shook her head. “I never throw up. Ever.”
“Ever?”
“Nope. Not even norovirus can take me down. I have a cat—a cat iron—a cast-iron stomach—have you ever heard of the two beers and a puppy litmus test?”
I shook my head, smiling at her. “No.”
She rubbed her nose. “You ask yourself would you have two beers with this person and let them watch your puppy for a weekend? Some people are a yes/yes. Some are a no/no. My ex was a yes/no. He was fun to be around, but I couldn’t rely on him.”
“Amy was a no/yes. She was reliable but she wore me out.”
“I’ve been thinking that for me you’re a yes/yes,” she said. It came out “yeth/yeth.”
I smiled at her gently. “You’re a yes/yes for me too.”
“Good. Because I want to tell you something. Because I think you should know what kind of person I am, you know? Like, what I’m capable of?”
“Okay…”
“You might not like me after.”
I gave her an amused look. “I’m sure I will like you.”
She shook her head. “No. This is really bad. Like, it’s so bad. It’s about what I did to Nick. When I found out.”
I peered down at her. She looked so serious I pivoted to face her. “Tell me.”
She looked at me a moment like maybe she was reconsidering. Then she leaned over my lap and grabbed the bourbon, pulled the top off, took a swig, and set it back down.
“Wow, that bad, huh?”
She came back to her side and looked up at me with a sniff. “So when I was in college, I used to work at Starbucks, right? And when I’d get a rude customer, I’d make their drink extra good. Like, I’d use cold-pressed coffee in their Frappuccino instead of the coffee concentrate, that kind of thing? And I wouldn’t tell them what I did so they could never re-create it. That way for the rest of their life their drink would never be as good again and they’d always be chasing that one time and they’d never enjoy it the way they did that day.”
“Okaaaaay…”
“This isn’t the part,” she said. “This is so you can get it, okay? So you can see how diabolical I am.”
I chuckled. “All right…”
She looked at me bleakly.
I arched an eyebrow. “What’d you do?”
She drew in a long breath. Then she mumbled something too low for me to hear.
I dipped my head. “What? I couldn’t hear you.”
“I said I poured glitter all over the house.”
I choked on my laugh. “What?”
“Five gallons of it. I put it on the blades of the ceiling fans too. For later. I got a ladder and I took so much of it and I poured it up there so when they turned on the fan—”
I descended into a fit of laughter.
“It’s not funny, Jacob! I’m not proud of this, this isn’t how rational people behave!”
“No, you’re right,” I said, wiping at my eyes. “You should be in jail. I’m calling the police.”