Sabrina doesn’t argue about taking me home.
But she does make me squeeze into the back seat with Jitter, who drools all over me and tries to eat dinner off of my clothes while my knees are pressed against the passenger seat in front of me on the short drive.
Although now that I’m in the car with her, I wonder if she’s actually taking me home, or if she’s planning on pulling some mountain woman driving move and tossing me out of the car and over a cliff.
“Are you always so blunt?” I ask her as we leave downtown.
Why not?
She did come to my rescue again.
She doesn’t ask what I mean. “When I have to be.”
“Was that Ms. Cheerios?”
She makes eye contact with me in her rearview mirror.
Her SUV is one of the smaller models and I’m scrunched in back here.
Especially with the dog taking up two-thirds of the back seat.
I smell like an Indian buffet, and I should be looking forward to getting out of here and showering. And since the townhouse neighborhood is so close, it’ll be maybe a three-minute drive.
I get a shower soon.
Instead, I want her to tell me what Addison’s code name was.
Was she Ms. Cheerios who ruined the pompom competition in high school? Or Mr. Arby who was the talk of the town after the car wash went wrong?
I know she switched genders and fudged details, and since I met Kayla the trampolinist in the past half hour and figured out that her parents are not running an illegal craps table in the basement of a local art gallery—she said her mom runs the local grocery store and volunteers at a pet shelter—I’m realizing just how much of a puzzle Sabrina gave me.
I’m intrigued.
About all of them.
I want to figure this out.
I want to figure it out almost more than I want to see the look on Chandler Sullivan’s face after I put a giant-ass bee on the building that built him.
“No,” Sabrina finally says.
“The woman who made the wedding go viral isn’t Ms. Cheerios?”
“Correct.”
“Who is she?”
“I didn’t tell you anything about her.”
“Why not?”
“Because I was too hurt and mad at her when we met to find a different story for what happened, and I didn’t want to talk about her.”
I don’t know if I believe her or not. The story rings true, but that doesn’t mean it’s not another puzzle. “What else do you know about her?”
“Nothing.”
“Because you forgot?”
“Yep. I’m off gossip.”
“You just made sure I knew I was talking to the second-biggest villain in town. Are you sure you’re off gossip?”
“It’s my new life mission to get everyone off of gossip. Best way to do that is to make sure other people who gossip know the consequences of their actions.”
She doesn’t ask who I think is the biggest villain in town.
But I’m watching her in the rearview mirror.
I know that little phrase landed. I’m nearly certain she’s curious what I meant and has her own suspicions.
“You saved me from walking into a trap and potentially telling all of my deepest, darkest secrets to someone who’d spill them on the internet,” I say. “This feels like using your powers for good.”
She slams on the brakes, and I realize we’re here.
Back in the little neighborhood.
“Here you go,” she says. “Front door service. Thank you for flying Jitter Airlines. Be sure to watch your head as you depart.”
“Was any of it the truth?”
She meets my gaze again, and she doesn’t have to answer me.
I can see it in the who do you think you are to get all of my truth? in her bright green eyes. “That’s for me to know and people who trust me to find out. Now, get out before I take back the gift card Jitter gave you and use it for having my car dry-cleaned instead.”
“I didn’t want to be your good deed for the day again.”
“I don’t want you to be my good deeds again either. So stop needing me, please.”
She doesn’t mean it.
Not rudely, anyway.
Meanwhile, I completely mean that I didn’t want to be her good deed, but I’m not actually sorry that I was.
I wouldn’t have told Addison what’s-her-face any of my secrets, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have felt like a fool if I found out later that she was the original poster of the viral wedding video.
Would’ve felt a little too much like being back with the rest of my family.