The door swung shut behind them. “We won’t be holding any dances in here,” Pepper joked. “You don’t get claustrophobic, do you?”
Kendra laughed as she reached for the doorknob. “Maybe it’s like a circus act. One of those cars where the clowns keep coming out and out and out.” She turned the knob and pulled, but nothing happened. “What the hell?”
She tried again, jiggling the doorknob. Still nothing.
“Great. How come we couldn’t get locked in a room that had a refrigerator?” Pepper asked.
Kendra banged her knuckles on the door. “Hello. Hello, we’re stuck.”
Fortunately, the woman who had been showing them around noticed they were missing pretty quickly. She knocked lightly on the wood paneling. “Are you girls nearly done in there?”
Pepper snickered. “What the heck does she think we’re doing?” she whispered to Kendra.
Kendra grinned at her, but answered the landlady. “We’re fine, if you can just help us get the door open.”
In the end, though, it took the building attendant with a set of tools to get the door off the hinges to let the girls out.
The maintenance man shook his head in confusion. “I swear I fixed this door only last month. Don’t you worry. I’ll get it done up again, and this time, hopefully it’ll hold.”
Thirty minutes of paperwork later, Pepper and Kendra were the proud owners of a three-month trial lease.
“I’m so excited.” Kendra lifted her cup of coffee in the air in a toast. They’d marched out of their new apartment building into a small coffee shop right next door where Pepper could see herself spending far too much money in the near future. “To independence and a place of our own.”
Pepper clinked her coffee cup against Kendra’s, before glancing at her phone for the millionth time that morning.
Kendra laughed. “Are you still waiting to hear back on that interview? I thought you’d decided working for DreamMakers would be enough for now.”
It wasn’t that she was trying to keep anything secret, more that the whole idea of her change in relationship status was still so shiny and new that she didn’t want to share. But at the same time, this wasn’t a secret she could keep for long, not with Kendra having expressed interest in Jack.
It was like walking a tightrope carrying lemon meringue pies in either hand. No way this could go without getting at least a little messy.
“I’m waiting for a call,” she admitted.
“Oh, right, the big date last night with Billy.” Kendra rested her elbows on the table and leaned forward, eyes bright with interest. “Confession—maybe this is a little creepy, but I wanted to see where he was taking you. I Googled the restaurant. Bizarre.”
Which fit Pepper’s assessment of the evening perfectly, since her date had been pretty bizarre as well. Her curiosity got the better of her. “What do you mean?”
“The chef’s specials? Oh. My. God.”
Not that Pepper could tell her anything about them, since Jack had ix-nayed that bit of the evening. “Spectacular?”
Her friend’s nose crinkled. “Spectacularly disgusting. Last night it was tripe and haggis.”
Pepper choked on her coffee. It appeared Jack had saved her from more than she’d expected. “You’re not serious.”
Kendra nodded enthusiastically. “So, tell me, how did things go?”
It was one of those situations where Pepper wasn’t sure she could really describe everything without writing an essay. Or a short story. Or at least a really bad pun. “They didn’t. But they did. But not with Billy, and actually nothing really happened, but it looks as if it might in the future.”
Which was a whole lot of nothing.
Kendra looked suitably baffled. “What?”
There was no direction to go but straightforward. “My date got interrupted. Turns out Billy wasn’t as much of a catch as he wanted me to believe.”
“You’re kidding. Oh, that’s too bad. He seemed like such a nice guy.” Kendra sat back in her chair, playing with the swizzle stick from her drink. She shrugged. “So that means you and I are back on the market.”
“Umm, not completely. And I’m not quite sure how to tell you this, but then, I don’t want to not tell you because that would be worse. Jack and I are seeing each other.”
Kendra’s jaw hung open. “You and…” A crease appeared between her friend’s brows as she puzzled that out.
Pepper shifted awkwardly in her chair. “I guess there’s always been something there between us, and last night he showed up to kind of rescue me, and…”
“Well, of course.” Kendra bumped the palm of her hand against her forehead. “All that time you were complaining about Jack it was because you secretly had the hots for him.”