Thoroughly confused, all Trisha could do was shake her head. “Fine, yeah, whatever. And it’s a girl? What the hell? I’m not gonna pretend like I’m not incredibly aggravated with you guys right now.” She eyed them both hard and was gratified to see them lower their eyes at least.
Not cool that her best friend of nearly two decades would keep something like that from her. Not. Cool. At. All.
If she was honest she wasn’t just miffed, she was hurt too. And that sucked worse.
Raising a finger, Trisha called over their waiter. Ordering quickly, she glared at the others, silently demanding they hurry up and make theirs so they could hurry up and get back to their conversation.
When the waiter walked away, she got right back to business. “So?” Trisha lifted a brow.
Looking slightly green around the gills, Betty nodded. “All right, fine. You’re never going to believe a word I say, so please don’t interrupt me until I’m finished, you got it?”
Confused, slightly scared, Trisha turned to Gerard. hoping maybe he’d say something, do something to help explain what was going on. Help her to at least calm down. But he was no help; he was looking at the wine list like he’d suddenly discovered the meaning to the universe inside.
Shaking her hands, and rolling her neck, looking like a fighter ready to jump into the ring, Betty inhaled. “So, you know all those times Gerard and I disappear and you always complain that you can’t reach us?”
Trisha narrowed her eyes. “Yeah? You always said you were in the mountains.”
“Huh, do I?” Betty laughed weakly.
And that sound sent chills through Trisha’s spine. In all the years they’d known each other she couldn’t once recall Betty ever hemming and hawing. “Betty, what’s going on?”
“I’m getting to it, Trish. I said don’t speak.” She stuck out her tongue, and Gerard started rubbing her arm tenderly. Taking a deep breath, she said, “So we’re actually in Kingdom.”
“Kingdom?”
Umm…color her clueless, because that meant squat to her. Cocking her head, she waited for some sort of explanation.
Gerard cleared his throat, glancing around at the other tables with a concerned frown.
“Okay, Kingdom. And where’s that exactly?” She tried, but couldn’t quite hide the skepticism in her words.
“Jeez, Trish…seriously, no talking.” Betty glared. “Danika was right, this is hard.”
Danika? Who was Betty talking about? And why did she suddenly feel like she’d stepped into an episode of the Twilight Zone? Betty was acting weird, so was Gerard, and not that that was totally unheard of, they were both weirdos, but this went beyond the norm for either one of them.
“All right, I’m just going to lay it out there. Kingdom is like another planet completely.”
Trisha started laughing, because seriously, it was obvious Betty was pulling her leg.
But Betty only frowned harder and plowed on.
“I’m serious. At first I didn’t totally believe it. But you know, when there’re fairies hovering in your living room that are the size of hummingbirds, well you don’t really have a choice but to believe it. Especially when one of them curses your husband with a—”
“Mmhhmm,” Gerard cleared his throat, frowning at Betty who jerked and then blushed.
“Erm. Umm. What I mean is.” Betty smiled. “Anyway, that part doesn’t matter.” She flicked her wrist. “So Kingdom is far, far away, and that’s where we live when we’re not here on Earth. It’s full of all the fairytales you’ve ever heard of. In fact, Gerard,” Betty clapped his broad shoulders, “is from the Beauty and the Beast story. Aren’t you, sweetie?”
And the whole time Betty’s smile grew wider; Trisha’s heart sank farther. The laughter died on her tongue somewhere around the far, far away part and she was pretty sure her eyes were bulging from her head.
Did Kelly know his sister was sick?
Trisha studied Betty who was now leaning into Gerard with a relieved look. Gerard, however, was studying Trisha and his scowl was deep and serious.
Betty was beaming. She didn’t look sick, in fact, she looked better than she had in years. Joy literally seemed to seep from her pores. They’d been friends ever since grade school, Trisha knew all about Betty’s love affair with comics and manga and fairytales… Anyone who knew Betty at all, knew that beneath the adorably geeky exterior was an honest-to-goodness uber nerd. But this was too much.
Stomach rolling, she glared at Gerard. “And you believe this?”
She threw the question at him like an accusation.
He rubbed his chin, nodding only slightly. “Of course I do, it is where I was born.”
Trisha’s nostrils flared and she bunched her fingers in her lap.
Betty’s eyes darted between their faces and her mouth formed into a tiny little ‘o.’ “Umm, maybe I explained this all wrong. Jeez, I ummm…”
Trisha ground her jaw, fighting the need to run away as her heart thumped a powerful cadence in her chest. Leaning in, she hiss whispered, “I thought we were friends?”