AllFreeNovel
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“What?” Bailey says.
“You want to talk about it?” I ask.
“No,” she says quickly, her eyes darting around like she’s looking for an escape hatch. Bailey’s wound a little tight these days, but this is next-level touchy. “Talk about what?”
I give her a break, because that’s what friends do, and instead of asking what burr got stuck in her saddle, I point to my hair.
Bailey’s hair is currently a gorgeous, creamy blonde a few shades lighter than mine. Every now and then she likes to do something crazy with it—a few weeks ago she went with pink tips, until her boss at the bank shut that down and made her change it back—but this is new. She’s cut the hair across her forehead into bangs, I guess, but they don’t look quite right.
She’s been having a hard time lately. And when Bailey has a hard time, she kind of goes a little crazy. Not boiling-a-bunny-level crazy. Just randomly-cut-your-own-hair crazy, apparently. It’s charming as hell, even though sometimes it worries me to damn death.
“Oh, that. That would be the last vestige of my relationship with Peter going down the drain. Or in the trash can, in this case,” she says.
“What happened?” I growl.
Bailey rolls her eyes.
“Down, boy,” she says, patting my hand like a dog. “Nothing happened, really. He was supposed to come pick up the last couple of boxes from my place today and he no-showed.”
She wants to play it that way, fine. Gloves are off.
“How did you get from Dickless Dick to crazy ex-girlfriend?” I ask, pointing at her head this time.
“Funny.”
“You know what I mean.”
She leans back in her chair and crosses her arms.
“I don’t know,” she says, sighing. “Just the last straw, I guess.”
“It’s not exactly the first time he’s bailed on you,” I point out.
“I know that,” says Bailey. “Don’t you think I know that? Maybe that’s the problem.”
“What?”
She studies her nails a minute before answering me.
“I wish I knew.”
We sit and sip our coffees a minute until a thought occurs to me, something I know for sure will help cheer her up.
“So remember I told you about that guy from my cooking class at the studio?”
Bailey perks up, nodding.
“He’s hosting the cooking competition next week,” I tell her.
“Ooh,” she says, rubbing her hands together, an evil, gleeful smile on her face at the thought of my obvious torment. “I’d like to be a fly on those walls.”
My turn to roll my eyes. “Of course you would.”
“Hey, don’t get me wrong. If he’s picking on you for real, I’ll kick his ass,” she says. “But I always got the impression you liked bickering with him.”
“I do not like bickering with him. If you even call it bickering.” Who says that? Bickering. “He’s a pest. A menace. And at this point, a necessary evil, at least until this competition is over.”
“Is he cute?” she asks. For some stupid reason, that makes me choke on my drink.
