Dating and Dragons (Dungeons and Drama, #2) (30)

Kashvi runs a hand through her hair, letting the curls fall everyplace, and looks at me with sympathy. “That’s so messed up, Quinn. I’m sorry.”

“Thanks. I guess we’ve both been through it, huh? It wasn’t a big loss in terms of Caden. He showed his true colors and I was glad to be done with him. Even losing the D&D group wasn’t the worst part of it. It was losing Paige.” I have to take a second to swallow and make sure I’m not in danger of crying. The way she turned her back on me without a second thought…I’m not sure it’ll ever hurt less. “I thought we were so close, but we weren’t.”

“She liked Caden, didn’t she?”

I laugh in surprise. “Wow, it took me way longer than you to figure that out. It turns out she was already secretly jealous that he was interested in me instead of her, but then for me to reject him? It was like I was rejecting her too.” I blow out a breath. “She might have taken it harder than he did. She decided he was the innocent boy with a broken heart of gold and I was the devil incarnate. It all worked out for her since she got him in the end. I guess nothing brings two people together like mutual hatred.”

We sit in silence. I play with my nails rather than study her expression, wondering if I’ve shared too much. I wanted to be honest with her, but that’s a lot of friend trauma to unpack when we haven’t even finished a slice of pizza.

Kashvi jumps to her feet and puts out a hand to pull me up. “Caden sucks and Paige really sucks, so thank god they aren’t around anymore. Now you have us, and we’re a billion times better.” She grins. “I think between your story and mine, we need dessert and a movie. Yeah?”

“Absolutely. Flawless plan.”

We climb onto her bed with our pizza and a bag of chocolate, and she pulls up Netflix on her laptop. I sink into her copious pillows, feeling more relaxed than I expected. No more looking back or worrying about what happened with my old friends. It’s time for something much better.





Chapter Twelve





I wake up on Saturday at ten-thirty when Kashvi’s mom pounds on the door loud enough to wake up my parents at their house. I guess her family doesn’t usually sleep in late. We’d stayed up until two a.m., but it was totally worth it. We watched rom-coms, and even an episode of BattleBots with Sanjiv, before lying in the dark and trading stories.

Kashvi gets her shower first and while I’m waiting, I look around at the jewelry on her desk. My eyes keep coming back to the dice earrings that I saw her wear the first day I met her. I hold them up to her when she comes back.

“Did you make these?”

She shakes her head. “No, I ordered them online, but I’ve always thought it would be fun to try to make my own.”

“Yeah? ’Cause I was looking at these and thinking how many things we could do with dice other than roll them. I bet we could make some really cool stuff.”

“I’ve seen some bracelets online.”

“Yes, exactly!” I grab my bag and fish through it until I find my dice. “I have a ton of dice I never actually use. It feels kind of inappropriate to sacrifice them, but otherwise they only sit in the bottom of a bag.” I hold up a four-sided die and turn it around in my fingers. “Any idea how to make the holes in these?”

She runs a hand through her wet hair and scrunches it to bring the curls out. “I don’t know, but we could ask Sanjiv.” She pokes her head out of the bedroom and calls down the hallway to him.

To my surprise, he comes bounding down the hallway a few seconds later. If I tried to beckon Andrew like that, I’d either be met with silence or cussing.

“What’s up?” he asks.

She holds up a die to him. “Do you have any tools that could drill a small hole in the center of this?”

“Are you trying to prank Mark? Because that’s just cruel. He has enough dice problems as it is.”

“No,” she says with an eye roll. “We’re making jewelry.”

He gives us an incredulous look. “I guess if you want to ruin perfectly good dice, then I’m not going to stop you. Hold on.” He comes back a few seconds later with an extremely small drill. He takes the die and starts messing with it. A few minutes later, he hands it back with a smug smile on his face.

“Done and done.”

“Why do you have tools like that?” I ask.

“For robotics.”

Kashvi hands it to me and I take a look. The hole is small enough that it doesn’t mar the look of the die, but big enough to be threaded with elastic or wire. This could actually work.

She rubs her hands together. “Okay, I’m officially excited now. Do you want to see how much we can get done before the game?”

“Yes. And let’s message Sloane to ask if they want to come over early? I don’t know if they’re into making jewelry, but maybe they’d want to hang out and crochet hats with us?”

“Perfect.”

It turns out that Sloane is very much open to it, and we make a little team of four around the table in the formal dining room. We form an assembly line where Sanjiv drills the holes, I thread the dice and beads onto stretchy elastic thread, and Kashvi knots the end and adds a dab of glue to keep them secure. Sloane crochets a scarf and throws in opinions on color selections for the jewelry. By the time we’ve finished, we already have seven bracelets, plus three sets of dangly dice earrings and one necklace. We sit back and take in our work.