Jitter whimpers and huddles against my legs.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” Marley starts, but she barely gets it out before a piece of naan goes whizzing past her ear.
“Hey!” someone yelps.
“Who threw that?” Nani Parvati yells.
No one answers.
But someone shrieks near where Laney and Devi are sitting, and when I look back, Laney is very poorly stifling the most impish grin I’ve ever seen on her face, and Devi’s staring slack-jawed.
“Someone threw food on me!” Addison cries.
“Food fight!” someone who sounds remarkably like Lucky calls.
And then it’s game over.
Nani Parvati’s eyes go wide. She opens her mouth, dodges left as a samosa sails straight at her, and retreats to the kitchen.
I’m alternating between gaping at Laney—she started a food fight—and shoving napkins at Grey. “I’m so sorry,” I babble along with Marley, both of us ducking and dodging flying food in a way that Grey can’t.
He’s massive.
Tallest guy in the room.
Widest guy in the room.
Even when he’s trying not to be a target, he’s getting creamed with tandoori chicken and biryani and chana masala. Vindaloo and korma.
“We usually just eat it,” Marley says while we both desperately try to wipe off the increasing number of food stains all over him.
Jitter lunges for an overturned bowl of kheer.
Grey’s blocking his head with his arms. “Is this because I’m changing the café?” he asks.
“Every once in a while, we get out of control,” Marley says. “Theo’s usually involved.”
“Theo’s not here,” someone snaps.
“But his girlfriend is,” I whisper.
Marley and I make eye contact.
We both slide a look at Laney.
She’s coated in something green, and she’s laughing her ever-loving ass off.
“Cover your cast,” Devi shrieks.
“Dammit,” I whisper.
“Hey,” a booming voice calls from the doorway. “Break it the fuck up.”
The food stops flying.
Theo strides in the door, glaring at everyone. “If my girlfriend’s cast has to be reset, I will pay every single fucking one of you back with cat shit in your mailboxes. And worse.”
Marley fans herself.
She’s not the only one.
“Is that the porn star?” Grey mutters to me while he wipes cucumber sauce out of his hair.
“Naked motivational knitter,” I reply. Jitter’s still trying to eat, and I’m still trying to separate him from his dessert.
“Zen’s coming themself next time they want curry.”
I try to repress a snort of laughter, and I fail.
Miserably.
“I am so sorry,” Marley says again, but she’s only half paying attention.
The rest of her is watching Theo lift Laney out of the booth where she’s mostly escaped the food fight unscathed.
If he hasn’t figured out she did this to herself, he will soon enough.
And they’ll probably both laugh their heads off all night long about it.
Which shouldn’t be what makes my eyes hot with tears again, but it is.
I want that.
I want someone to laugh with and wreak havoc with and someone to tell all of my secrets to.
I just don’t believe in it. No matter how much I started wishing I did after Hawaii.
“Is your car coated in dog fur?” Grey asks.
I clear my throat and blink quickly while I stare at Jitter. “Of course.”
“Good. It can get covered with food too. You’re giving me a ride home.”
That sounds like a threat.
And macchiatos help me, I am here for it.
11
Grey
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.
I scratch the dog behind the ears. “Later, Jitter.”
Sabrina shoots me another look.
This one is more complicated.
I think it says I know you like my dog, and I know why, but I’m not going to tell you how I know why so you’ll wonder if I really know or not.
Zen asked if I was cut out for vengeance.