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“Hm. Whisky girl likes bitter,” I grumbled.
“Hey, there’s something sweet in there too.”
“Yeah, yeah. That’s all yours—cinnamon rolls… I never really got the appeal.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
Again, thankful for the beard. I parroted to the barista what Grace wanted, then cleared my throat and lowered my voice. “And I’ll have a… a lavender latte.”
“What was that?” The barista asked brightly.
“A lavender latte,” I said gruffly, trying to sound as manly as possible.
Grace giggled.
My ears felt hot. “What?”
“Nothing,” she said, smiling from ear to ear.
Dammit.
Damn it.
Grace put her coffee on the wooden table with a gentleclunkand I watched the black liquid shimmer in the light filtering in through the windows.
“So,” she said.
“So.”
“To make them go away… you said you need to ‘not need them anymore.’ What did you mean?”
Her eyes shone brightly in this light. What the hell was wrong with them? They were this weird mossy color around the rim, and brown at the center.
“Bo?” she asked.
“It’s a total fucking shit show,” I grumbled, jostling my mug. The purple and white latte art shifted a bit. I could tell the barista fucked up this one a little too, as the arcs of white were a bunch of squiggles.
“Well, one of them is,” Grace said. “My ex—” she lowered her voice, “Grayson.”
I remembered that guy I’d seen leaving her apartment. “What happened?”
Her eyes flicked down to her coffee. Her eyelashes were long and dark, like spider legs, though they weren’t thickened with layers of black shit like Summer’s. I watched the corners of Grace’s lips pull up.
What was that look? Shame? Discomfort? I’d always been bad at reading expressions, and didn’t see the point in having to read the minds of emotional people.
But with Grace… I wanted to know.
“Grayson said stuff in front of the other ones that I told him—therealhim in private. That he promised not to tell anyone.”
I took a sip of my latte to stall for time, then set it down and looked her in the eye. “How many times do I have to tell you this? He’s not really your ex. He knows everything you know. He’s made from everything you hate about yourself, your deepest, darkest secrets. And he won’t hesitate to use them whenever it suits him.”
Grace looked down at the cinnamon roll sadly.
I could tell she’d lost her appetite.
“He’ll even know stuff you didn’t tell him,” I said. “Literally. All your secrets. Everything you’ve done when you were a kid that you’re ashamed of. What you think about at night. What you masturbate to.”
She winced.
