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WHILE JACINTHA SLEPT, I snuck downstairs to put the kettle on.
We’d bought donuts yesterday—myself, Ness, and Fern—but we never got around to eating them. Good thing we’d left them up here, because I had such a sudden craving I would probably have snuck downstairs to steal them from Ness’s place otherwise. These were only the cheap ones from the food store, not the fancy ones that cost anywhere from $3.25 to $8.50 each at the bakery, but there was something incredibly satisfying about a hard, crumbly donut enrobed in cheap, waxy chocolate.
Not the sort of thing Jacintha would dream of appreciating.
I thought I was being quiet, but I wasn’t quiet enough, apparently. As the kettle reached its boiling point, Ness appeared at the kitchen door. I hadn’t thought to lock it. Seemed rude, at this point. Like locking out a family member.
In her oversized T-shirt dress and woolly sweater and knitted knee socks, she looked innocent as anything.
“Hey,” she whispered, poking her head through the door. “You up?”
I smiled. “Well, clearly I am. If I’m standing, I’m up. I’m not Jerry van Dyke.”
Ness cocked her head.
“His character,” I said. “On the Dick van Dyke show—he played the brother. Well, he WAS Dick van Dyke’s brother, but he also played his brother. Remember that? He used to sleepwalk.”
“How could I possibly remember? Isn’t that show from the sixties?”
At least she wore a smile when she said it.
“You want a cup of tea?” I asked, tossing two bags of Red Rose into the pot without waiting for her response. There was only one answer to that question, as far as I was concerned.
Ness nodded and took a seat at the table. Her chair screeched against the floor, which startled me. Good thing I’d finished pouring boiling water into the pot, or I might have scalded myself.
I jerked to look toward the staircase—the stairs going up, that is to say.
Jacintha. I didn’t want Ness to wake her.
What did that say?
As I brought the box of cheap donuts to the table, Ness picked at her cuticles. Once I’d set down our midnight snack, I tapped her hands to get her to stop, the way a mother would with her child.
“I need to tell you something,” she announced.
“Do you want a plate for your donut?”
“Sure. I don’t care.”
I brought salad plates to the table, and mugs for tea. “Something serious, or just... something?”
She shrugged. I’d never seen her looking so vulnerable, so I poured the tea and fixed hers just the way she likes it. I lifted a donut onto a plate and set it in front of her before sitting down myself.
“Well?” I said. “Spit it out.”
Ness simply stared at her donut.
I wondered if it was something to do with her cousin. I hadn’t let on that Fern told me, but maybe—
“I kissed Fern,” she said.
Well, that was a relief. I thought this was going to be one of those uncomfortable conversations.
Pouring myself a cup of tea, I asked, “Just a kiss?”
She nodded, still staring at her donut.
“Well, that’s good.”
“I don’t think SHE thinks it’s good.”
Ness picked up her donut and crammed a good half of it into her mouth. She took a solid swig of tea, and followed that with the other half of the donut.
“Goodness, Ness, don’t choke!”
She looked at me flatly, but she didn’t say anything. Her mouth was still full.
“What makes you think your little friend didn’t enjoy the kiss?”
Ness shook her head, then took another swig of tea. “It’s not that. I think she enjoyed it, at first. Physically. But then the mental stuff kicked in, you know?”
“No. What mental stuff?”
I don’t think she meant to, but Ness batted her lashes when she looked at me. “Fern’s feeling guilty for cheating on you.”
A cruel cackle burst from my lips, and I quickly clasped both hands over my mouth. “Sorry. Just... why would she think a thing like that? We’re not a couple.”
“She said the two of you started sleeping together while I was away.”
“Sleeping together?” Now there was a cringe-worthy thought. “I know you like the girl and all, but she’s really not my type. I got her off one time. With a vibrator. Because she begged me. And I only went through with it because her boyfriend had just broken up with her.”
Ness raised a brow. “Boyfriend? You mean Malachi? The guy from the popcorn place?”
“She never mentioned his name, just said he was moving away and didn’t want a long-distance relationship.”
“Ha!” Ness threw her head back to laugh. “He was never her boyfriend. She’s delusional, that girl. She thinks if a boy is civil to her while she’s buying popcorn, suddenly they’re engaged.”
“Maybe she meant someone else,” I said.
“No, I know who she meant.”
I’m not sure why I was arguing Ness’s point. Look how clingy Fern had been with ME! And I did nearly nothing to encourage the girl.
“She hangs off me like a rag doll,” I said. “But we are NOT in any kind of a relationship. In fact, I’d be only too glad if you took her off my hands.”
Ness’s expression fell. She grabbed another donut and broke it into quarters over her plate. “You know when you’re friends with someone... for a while... like, for a couple years, even... and all that time you’re wondering what it would be like if you got together? And you’re hoping for it, right? It’s a dream of yours. And then you finally kiss and...”
She trailed off, staring at her donut pieces as her warm fingers melted the chocolate.
“It’s not what you thought?” I asked.
Ness nodded tearfully.
It hurt my heart to see her this way. I knew she’d been mooning over Fern, and I so wanted things to work out for the two of them—in part, to get Fern off my back, but also because I care about Ness. Deeply.
“Maybe I set my hopes too high,” Ness said. “Maybe I was expecting too much. The chemistry isn’t always there right away. Or so I’ve heard. Sometimes it’s a skill. You have to work up to it.”
Normally, I’d have said something encouraging, but it was too late at night to lie. “That’s bull, in my experience. If the chemistry’s not there at the start, you can’t create it out of thin air. Who do you think you are, some kind of sexual alchemist?”
Ness seemed stunned. As she looked me plain in the face, the melty donut chunks slid from her fingers, onto her plate. She gazed down at them and said, “I was afraid... yeah... of that.”
“Sorry to be so blunt. I was really hoping you’d get Fern to stop following me around like a creepy little puppy.”
“No, I know. It’s good. I’m just... yeah... it’s a let-down.”
I sighed and said, “I know how you feel. Well, except mine’s sort of the opposite. Or maybe it’s the same.”
Ness took a sip of tea and looked at me like she was actually interested in my problems—a pleasant surprise.
“With Jax—Jacintha—we had a great thing in college. Oh, that was so long ago. I didn’t realize she’d spent all these years wanting me. We’ve been friends. That’s all I thought we were. Friends. I never imagined she’d pounce the moment I left my husband.”
“And there’s no chemistry anymore?” Ness asked.
“No, it’s not that. The chemistry is still there. When she takes me to bed, it’s... wow...”
I wasn’t sure how to describe what I felt. My emotions are messy and complicated. It’s funny, feeling like a teenager at my age.
“So what’s the problem?” Ness asked.
My body felt heavy, suddenly, and I slumped my shoulders. “She’s just not what I want in my life right now. The bedroom stuff feels good and all, but I don’t want to live with Jax. I don’t want her to be my... my what, my wife? Is that who she’d be? We’re friends. And not even close-close anymore. She isn’t the person I want to be with, romantically.”
Jacintha’s voice sounded from somewhere unseen to ask, “When were you planning on telling me this?”
At first, I thought I was hearing her disembodied spirit. It didn’t seem real until she appeared on the stairs, wearing nothing but her gorgeous silk slip.
Jacintha was a dream, no doubt about it. When Ness turned around, she certainly noticed that winning body. How could you ignore breasts like glorious globes, slim hips, full lips?
“Well?” Jacintha asked as she stormed toward the table. “You would let me move out here, make a fool of myself, and then send me packing?”
“No,” I replied, remaining surprisingly calm, given the circumstance. “I never told you to come here. You showed up on my doorstep with all your personal possessions. Pretty presumptuous, if you ask me.”
Her eyes blazed, but I didn’t care. In that moment, I only wanted was to be rid of her.
All at once, this strange decisiveness came over me. I was ready for anything.
As Jacintha started to chew me out for destroying her misguided vision of the future, the basement door creaked open. A tearstained face poked through. Clearly, Fern had been listening in on my conversation with Ness. Clearly, she and Jax both had.
“Oh boy,” I said.
Fern looked absolutely pathetic, like a sick puppy. “We don’t have chemistry?” she asked, weeping in Ness’s direction. Even though Jacintha was still screaming, Fern guided her gaze toward me. “You think I’m a creepy puppy?”
Yes, absolutely I did, but I couldn’t deal with her—not while I had Jacintha shouting in my ear.
My hand chose that moment to move across the table until it found Ness’s. We were the still hub of this chaos. My ancient oak table was our time-out zone. I grasped her hand, and she held tight to mine while Fern sobbed and Jacintha hollered.
Good thing I don’t have any close neighbours. Goodness knows what they’d think of this show.
When Jacintha’s voice turned hoarse, she pointed to Fern and said, “You! Call me a taxi! Then follow me upstairs and help me pack!”
Fern whimpered, “The taxi doesn’t run at night.”
Jacintha looked scandalized by this item of information. “What kind of a two-bit operation—”
“But I have my car outside,” Fern went on. “Well, my grandmother’s car, but she’s in Florida, with my mother.”
“Perfect,” Jacintha said. Not a thank you in sight, but I don’t think Fern noticed. “You’ll bring my luggage to the car and then drive me to the nearest hotel.”
“We don’t have one on the island,” Fern said. Before Jacintha could so much as react, Fern added, “But you could stay at my grandmother’s house. There’s no one there. And it’s really nice. I think you’d like it.”
“Let’s go,” Jacintha said, clapping her hands and leading Fern up the stairs.
Once they were out of our hair and banging around on the second floor, I looked to Ness. She seemed shell-shocked. I felt much the same way.
“What was that?” she asked.
I had no answers.
“What do we do?”
That one I could field. “They’re going. We let them go.”
“But they’re so mad at us. We said awful things about them. I didn’t mean for Fern to hear...”
Squeezing Ness’s hand a little tighter, I said, “We let them go.”