The caption is something about us beingbuddies.
I drop to the floor, my back against the edge of the bed. Fingers shaking, I pull up the thread with Coal, vodka in control of my faculties so I fire off a text to him before the rest of me can catch up.
PEEP, MINI CANDY CANE, AND THE BEST CLAUS
how bad would it be if i kissed the guy who stole from us
My head hangs back against the mattress. The room is a merry-go-round of the too-bright overhead lights, spinning and spinning, and it smells likebaked beansin here—
My phone rings. Not a text. A video call.
The vodka answers.
“First of all,” Coal says immediately, “you not texting in your normal proper format is the most terrifying way I’ve ever been yanked out of a meeting.”
I didn’t—what did I do? “Fuck. Sorry—”
“Don’t apologize. Secondly—you know you texted the group chat, right?”
Oh, nothing sobers up a person faster than realizing a drunken mistake.
I swipe away the video chat screen and check the text thread and—yeah. Yep. I did that.
Iris responded with a bunch of question marks.
With trembling fingers, I move the video call back over. I’m pale and stricken in the self-view screen, and Coal immediately goes reassuring.
“Hey, it’s fine,” he tells me. “You know Iris is cool.”
“But she and I—I didn’t—shouldn’t have—”
“Kris. I need you to breathe right now.”
So I do. That’s what I’m good at. Doing what others need me to do. Right? That’s mywhole problem.
Coal sits down somewhere, and I recognize the wallpaper behind him.
“Are you in a hallway?”
“Do you want me to go back in and take this call in a room full of winter Holiday reps?”
He said that already.Yanked out of a meeting.
“Fuck, Coal, you did not have to call me!”
“Kris—”
“Oh my god. Do they know why I’m in St. Patrick’s Day? The real reason? They found out, didn’t they? And what have I done to help anything? Ohfuck—”
“Kris.” Coal leans forward, shoulders hunching around the phone. “That meeting had nothing to do with Christmas’s joy. We won’t start any repayments until after the winter Holiday collective treaty is signed, which won’t be until negotiations are done, which are still looking to go for a few more weeks. We’re good for now, I swear. We have time.Breathe.Tell me what happened.”
My eyes flutter shut. The vodka is seemingly satisfied with the path it’s led me down and is now havingwordswith all the beer in my system. Churning, vomit-type words.
Or maybe all that roiling is from the taste of Loch on my tongue.
“Kris,” Coal says again, softer. “What happened?”
I screw my thumb and finger into my eyes.
