“Wow. Makes a big difference. Thank you,” I say to her.
“Welcome to physics.”
“I know physics.”
She slides me a look. “Do you know it as well as you know, say, how to run a restaurant?”
That wasn’t sly at all. “I know physics better.”
“Believable.”
“But I’m a fast learner.”
“Also believable. Speaking of learning, I heard Zen say your villain era doesn’t really suit you.”
Zing. She lines up, takes her shot, and she scores.
“Midlife crisis.”
“You’re thirty-three.”
“You’ve done your homework.”
“You’d expect nothing less.”
She’s not wrong.
And even knowing it’s dangerous, I like knowing that she’s thinking about me as much as I’m thinking about her.
Also?
Not a single soul has asked me if I’m okay after my dizzy spell the other day. Nor has anyone other than Sabrina asked what Chandler did to me or how I feel about my former research lab partner actually being in his villain era.
They’ve only hinted that they suspect Sabrina and I are hooking up.
She’s not posting secret videos of my confessions all over the internet.
Not like someone posted a video of the House of Curry food fight my first week here.
Sabrina seems to take her gossip seriously. She’s up-front that she knows everything and will disclose it when she thinks it’s necessary. I’ve seen it in action. And not just with the woman who posted the wedding video, though that was definitely the most direct.
We hike in silence for a few minutes save for the sound of Jitter’s happy panting and the crunch of our shoes and poles on the trail. It’s fascinating to me that the path is covered in packed snow, like this trail is hiked often, even in the winter, though we seem to be the only people here now. The sky’s a clear blue peeking through the pine trees, and there’s something unexpectedly peaceful and almost enjoyable about being out here.
My fingers are cold. My toes are cold.
But not unbearably so.
“Is what your lab partner did to you the only reason you’re in your villain era now?” Sabrina asks.
And honestly?
I like that about her.
No hiding. No games. No small talk. She’s straight to the point.
I shake my head. “Just the final straw.”
“And the rest of the straws?”
“A lifetime of being manipulated.”
She slides a look my way. Does she know it was my family? Does she suspect it?
Or am I reading more into that look than is actually there because I want to tell her?
Some older lady came in yesterday and was grilling Zen about their personal history and our relationship, which sent Zen into a retreat.
I know Sabrina noticed.
Not because she said anything.
But because she did something. She popped out from the kitchen, where she still insists she belongs at every opportunity, and asked the woman something about an old friend, which distracted the lady from grilling Zen and put her instead on a tangent about a cheating husband.
“I didn’t put together that manipulation was the right word for it until Zen used it for the first time after they moved in with me,” I add.
“Your ex?” she asks.
“Yes, but she wasn’t the first.”
I get another side glance.
“My parents and siblings,” I clarify.
“You’re younger than the rest.”
She has done all of her homework. “The inconvenient one who was blamed for arriving ten years later than the previous youngest child, stealing the baby spot in the family, and needing things they’d all grown out of. Yes.”
Her nose wrinkles. “You didn’t have nannies?”
“When my mother could see the writing on the wall about the direction the family trust fund was headed? The nannies were only for when other people were watching.”
She glances at me again, and I wish I had the power to read faces the way she seems to.
It matters to me not just that I’m honest with her, but that she knows I’m being honest.
That she knows I’m putting my secrets on the line and trusting her with them.
That she knows I’m not tearing apart her café because I enjoy punishing her.
It’s Chandler. I need a win over an asshole.
“Jitter, slow down,” she says.
He grins back at us with his larger-than-life doggie grin, then forges ahead, not at all bothered by slippery or uneven spots on the snow-packed path.