I clench my jaw, not prepared to hear it first thing in the morning.
“Did you sleep with her?” she asks.
“No.”
She glares like she doesn’t believe me. Her eyes glance down again and then back up. “Swear to me.”
I keep my voice steady. “I swear. We didn’t.”
“Swear on something.”
“We didn’t do anything.”
“Swear on something.”
“I swear on my grandmother’s grave. We didn’t sleep together.”
She looks at me. She’s reading my face the same way she always has. “Did you kiss her?”
“No.”
Her eyes flare. “Didyou?”
“No.”
“Blue,” she warns.
I stare at her. “We didn’t do anything.”
She exhales. Some of the fury comes out of her shoulders. Not all of it. She crosses her arms across her chest and looks at me with the rest of it. “Do you know what you did to her last night?”
I shrug. “She has a boyfriend. I know what boundaries are.”
She stops. The fury goes out of her face all at once and is replaced by something else, something I don’t know. Now she’s staring at me. Her expression changes again.
She peeps out a nonchalant, “Okay.”
That’s the end of it. I look over at Percy, hoping that he’s catching this entire interaction, so that I have a witness. He looks at me while sipping his coffee. I look back at Mila.
“Which room is yours upstairs?” she asks.
“Last door on the right.”
She climbs up the stairs without looking back.
I stand in the kitchen archway watching the back of her head disappear up the stairs. Then I walk back to the island. Percy hasn’t moved. He’s still leaning against the counter with both hands around his mug. He watched the whole entry exchange, and his face didn’t do anything.
I hear the murmur of their voices, but I can’t make out a word. Then the footsteps approach. The stairs creak as they come down, and my heart does something my chest doesn’t ask permission for.
I turn toward the doorway and look through.
Mila comes into view first. She has Melly’s white costume folded neatly over one forearm.
Melly walks after her. She’s still in my hoodie. Her feet are bare, and her hair is still in a perfect wave from last night. The mustache I drew on her is mostly rubbed off, but a faint dark smudge sits under her nose and across the right side of her chin where she’s tried to wipe it and given up.
She doesn’t look in the direction of the kitchen, but there’s no way she doesn’t know I’m standing right here. I walk to the doorway and open my mouth.
“Melly.”
