“You were baiting him. That’s just as bad. Trust me. I’m basically the queen of trash talking on the soccer field,” Waylay informed her.
“You have to have my unit dialed up higher,” I accused. It had felt as if my insides were in danger of exiting my body.
“Actually you’re only at an eight. Knox and me figured Sloane had an advantage seein’ as how she’s a girl and has had her period for a few decades.”
“Exactly how old do you think I am?” Sloane asked, then shook her head. “Never mind. Just tell me what mine is set at.”
“You’re a nine.”
Sloane punched the air in victory. “Yes!”
Naomi was watching us again. I held up a taco and gave her a friendly nod. “Take me to a ten,” I told Waylay when Naomi looked away.
“I don’t know. Knox said the girls aren’t allowed to use level ten at the bar anymore since Garth Lipton almost pooped his pants.”
“Take me to ten,” I insisted tersely.
“There’s nothing heroic about shitting your pants, Rollins,” Sloane said under her breath. Her body went rigid again, and the taco she was holding exploded when it hit her plate. “Gah! Waylay, I wasn’t insulting him. I was giving him advice.”
“It sounded like an insult to me. Besides, you swore, and that’s a dollar for the swear jar, which means Aunt Naomi gets to spend extra time in the stupid produce aisle.”
“Waylay, how are your tacos?” Naomi called.
“They’re good. They’d be better without all the slimy weird vegetables in them, but I guess I can suffer through that part,” the kid said.
“Garth Lipton is forty years older than me,” I said to Sloane over the top of Waylay’s head.
“I’m just looking out for you. You could barely handle an eight. I’d hate to see what a ten would do to you. I mean, I’d love it. But I’m being the bigger, more mature adult here,” she whispered back.
“Just because you can’t handle a ten has no bearing on my endurance. I’ll be fine.”
“I am a woman. Two weeks ago, I had cramps so bad I had to lie down on the floor of the public restroom at the mechanic’s garage. And then I had to get back up and go do my job for eight hours. I was born to handle a ten.”
“You two aren’t saying mean things, but your tones are getting kinda snippy,” Waylay warned.
“Take me to a ten,” I ordered.
“Fine. Tens all around. I’ll show you how to handle it,” Sloane snapped.
“I hate to point this out because I’m definitely having fun here, but I think you guys are losing sight of the reason Knox is letting me electrocute you.”
First Knox, now Waylay. The voices of reason were getting less likely as the evening wore on.
Sloane glared at me over Waylay’s head. I glared back.
“Bite me,” she mouthed at me.
“You’re not my type,” I mouthed back.
“Is everything okay down there?” Naomi asked, sounding nervous.
“Fine except for Lucian scowling at me like a—” Sloane grunted, her face contorting in pain. “Worth it,” she wheezed.
“You’re such an idiot,” I told her. And then I was doubling over, my face hovering over my plate of tacos as an excruciating current of pain tore through me. “It’s in my kidneys.”
Waylon and Piper were barking frantically now.
“Knox Morgan! Why is our daughter electrocuting our guests?” Naomi shrieked.
My friend held up his hands. “Daze, there’s a perfectly logical explanation for this.”
“Jesus,” Nash muttered. “I don’t know which one to arrest first.”
“You know what? I think I’ll go get the cobbler…and more alcohol,” Lina said, getting up from the table.
“I’ll help,” Waylay said, escaping the room before a punishment could be dealt out.
“I’ll supervise,” Nash volunteered.
We got to our feet and began ripping off electrodes. My legs felt like they were made of brittle wood. One wrong step and I’d collapse. There was an echo of pain in my lower back.
I took Sloane by the upper arm and steered her toward the back door. “Outside,” I said tersely.
“But I want to watch Naomi tear Knox a new one,” she complained.
“You have a lifetime of opportunities for that.” I dragged her outside onto the deck and shut the door. It was cold and dark. The naked trees cast skeletal shadows over the snow from the stingy light of the crescent moon.
“Did level ten fry your brain?” Sloane asked, slipping out of my grip.
“We’re calling a truce,” I announced.
“That’s not how that works.”
“I’m forty years old. I run a multimillion-dollar business. I own property. I pay taxes. I vote. I cook. I get the goddamn flu shot every year.”
“Congratulations. Where can I send your gold star?”
“We’re adults,” I said, pointing to the window where it appeared chaos was still reigning. “And that in there was the latest performance in a long line of immature shit shows that we’ve starred in together.”
Sloane crossed her arms and looked down at her feet. Her boots were brown with purple stitching. “I’m not saying you’re right. But you’re not exactly wrong.”
“This has to stop.”
She puffed out her cheeks. The light from inside made the stud in her nose twinkle. She looked like a mischievous forest fairy. “I know.” She turned away from me and moved to the railing. “I hate that every conversation with you has me regressing to a teenager with no impulse control. It’s embarrassing.”
“I hate that I let you get under my skin. It’s infuriating,” I admitted.
She gave the night sky a small smile. “So you admit to being partially human.”
“I’ll deny it if you repeat it.”
She hugged her arms tighter around her and hunched her shoulders against the cold. Slowly, I moved closer until my arm brushed her shoulder, lending her some of my heat.
“What are we supposed to do? Just forgive and forget?” she asked.
“That’s not possible,” I said dryly.
She let out a short, bitter laugh. “Tell me about it.”
“We have to come up with some sort of solution. For them.”
We both glanced over our shoulders to the kitchen where everyone was gathered around the island with coffee and cobbler.
“They look really happy without us,” Sloane observed.
“Then we’ll find a way to keep them happy with us.”
“Let’s start with no interaction between us when we’re in the group,” she suggested. “I don’t think we’re ready for polite small talk.”
I hated to admit it, but she was right. It was safer to just avoid each other until we developed a tolerance.
“Fine. And if for whatever reason one of us doesn’t feel they can stand the sight of the other for a particular event, we make prior arrangements to stagger our attendance.”
“That is such a rich-person-fancy-dinner-gala thing to say. No offense,” she added quickly, then winced. “This is going to be harder than I thought.”
“It’s a habit. Nothing more,” I insisted.
I wasn’t about to allow a habit to control me. Unironically, I pulled my daily cigarette from the breast pocket of my shirt and produced my lighter.
Sloane looked pointedly at the cigarette as I lit it. “Some habits are harder to break than others.”
She had no idea the struggle I’d endured that afternoon after our exchange in her office. I’d wanted nothing more than to soothe away the flood of anger with my daily dose of nicotine. My fingers had itched to hold the filter between them; my ears longed for the scratch of the lighter.
But I’d refused to give in.
A reward. Not a crutch.
A reward was a marker for an accomplishment. A crutch was a symbol of weakness. And I had no tolerance for weakness, especially not within myself.
“In the future, if you feel you can’t control yourself and the need to insult me is too overwhelming, we’ll deal with it privately,” I suggested, exhaling smoke toward the moon.
“Me?” She turned and looked up at me. “You didn’t even make it through your first taco tonight before cracking like an egg.”
“Yes, well. It’s over now.” I both loved and hated it when I had her undivided attention. I forced myself to look away from her.