“The pothole?”
“Cassandra.”
“Oh my god, Helena, he didn’t do this. I literally fell off my moped.”
“My question still stands.” She didn’t take her hands off my cheeks, and my heart was pounding so hard I thought I’d throw up. Somehow, I managed to shake my head.
“I don’t think he’s even looking for me. He’s busy with a different woman.” Namely, his actual wife. Helena’s eyes widened.
“He’s with somebody else?”
“He has been. I’m not unhappy about it. I’m sure she’s a lovely woman and much better suited to him than I am.”
She looked at me with galaxies of emotions in her eyes, and frankly I don’t think anyone had ever looked at me like that. My literal girlfriend hadn’t looked at me like that. “You said you haven’t been separated from him for long…”
“I haven’t been… going to events and things… without him, for long.”
“Oh, Cassandra,” she said, her voice cracking, and I wanted to scream. She was beingsokind and caring and sympathetic towards someone who didn’t exist. “I’m so sorry.”
“You really don’t need to be.” My hand betrayed me, moving to where her knee was touching mine on the couch. “Will you believe me now that I hit my head while driving?”
She gave me a sad little smile, eyes crinkling with tears in the corners. “That’s what happens when you try driving on zero goddamn sleep, Cassandra.”
“I just… have a lot of places to be.”
“Like the fucking emergency room at this rate.”
“Who ever landed in the emergency room driving five miles an hour?”
“God, you’re pissing me off,” she laughed. “You scared me to death. Stay here tonight. What do you want to eat?”
Oh, shit. I hadn’t had a proper hot meal in… uh… a long time. Disgustingly, the closest I’d gotten to a real meal in months was Tasty Slice. “I’m not taking your food,” I said, and she smiled.
“Listen to yourself. You’re not taking my food, you’re taking a restaurant’s food. We’re ordering in. Tell me what you want.”
“I’m not taking yourmoneyto obtain food that would otherwise go to you, Miss Loopholes.”
“Tell me,” she said, gripping her fingers into my hair and punctuating each word hard, “what you want, or I swear to god, I am going to tie you down and scroll Doordash with you until you pick something.”
“Uh. That’s not as threatening as I think you think it is.”
She smiled. My face burned.
“Let’s maybe pretend I didn’t say that.”
“We’ll see if we need to get the bondage tape involved.”
“Bondage tape? Why do you have bondage tape?”
She smiled wider, eyes sparkling. “Why do you think I have bondage tape, Houdini?”
“Oh. Uh.” I think I was overheating. She tugged lightly on a lock of my hair, and my libido was suddenly Godzilla tearing down the city.
“It’s for good girls who do as I say.”
“Jesus Christ. Um.”
“So now be a good girl and tell me what you want to eat.”
