I am also currently living for the way she gives my arm a playful shove.
“You’re trouble,” she says.
“Rarely, but I’d like to be more.”
She winces.
I wait.
“I let one of my very best friends in the entire universe sleep with a guy even though I knew he murdered kittens,” she says quietly. “And she fell for him, and when one of my other friends told her about the kittens, she was more devastated than I thought she’d be, for very good reason, and it’s my fault she’s not living the life of her dreams right now.”
“Because she would’ve been happy if she didn’t know he murdered kittens?”
“Yes.”
Not the answer I expected.
“People have layers,” she adds quietly. “I thought…the rest of his personality…would compensate for the kitten-killing.”
“Just so we’re clear, he didn’t actually murder kittens, right?”
“Same magnitude.” She winces again. “Kind of.”
“If someone else told her the information she needed to have, then why was it your responsibility and not theirs in the first place?”
“Because this is what I do. I listen. I study. I read between the lines. I know things before other people know them. And I knew this one a long time before the person who told her. I grew up in a—a hair salon, learning from the best of the best how to be the good kind of gossip. And then I choose to share or not share based on the theory that I know how to parse out if sharing or not sharing will cause the greater harm. I chose wrong. She thought we were coming here for…the next step… in their relationship, and instead, our entire friend group is splintered. And they’re not just friends. They’re family. At least, they are to me.”
I stifle an instinctive response of family sucks. I have Zen and I have Mimi and I know family can be great.
But when I think of my siblings and my parents and the rest of my nieces and nephews, family sucks.
When I think about my business partner and newly former best friend, family sucks.
But this woman—Duchess—has family that she loves enough to feel bad for hurting, no matter how good her intentions.
Her hair lifts in the breeze, and it’s instinctive to tuck it back behind her ear for her.
Soft. So soft. And deliciously curly.
I want to sink my hands in it and twirl it around my fingers and grip it while I kiss her.
She sucks in a breath but doesn’t pull away. If anything, she leans closer. “You shouldn’t be nice to me. I hurt people who are nice to me.”
“We all do.”
“Not like this.”
“You’re being very hard on yourself for someone who went out of her way to do nice things for dozens of people and animals tonight.”
“That’s not enough to make up for what I did.”
There’s so much more to her story, and I want to hear it. I want to hear all of it. “If it helps, I’m a disaster myself. Helping me is a bigger burden than you could ever imagine.”
Her lips tip up again. “You are not.”
“Oh, I am. I think I’m your biggest good deed tonight.”
“You want to be my biggest good deed tonight.”
“Guilty. But I had a shitty day. Wouldn’t I be a good good deed?”
“My high school English teacher would have a field day with that sentence.”
“See? I’m trouble. I need good deeds done to me.”
She laughs again.
And then she shrieks and leaps to her feet, swatting at her hair and spinning in a circle. “Get it off get it off!”
Behind us, a cat yowls and takes off into the night.
“What—” I start, vaulting to my feet as well.
“Get it off!”
“Get what off?”
She’s dancing in a circle, shaking her fingers through her hair. “Bug! Lizard! Lizard bug in my hair!”
“Hold still. Let me see.”
“I can’t hold still! Creepy crawlies. Creepy crawlies!”
I grab her by the shoulders on her next circle around. “Duchess. Let me see.”
“It was—wait. Wait. Was that a cat? Was that a freaking cat playing with my hair?” She quits fighting and looks up at me, her hands dropping away. “Tell me that was a cat playing with my hair.”
I comb my fingers through her hair, enjoying this more than I should. “Can’t find any big bugs. Small ones either. Or lizards.”
“Oh god.” She clenches my shirt while I keep combing through her hair. “I thought a cockroach was crawling in my hair. Or one of those geckos.”