Page 36 of Down Bad

Stamp.

Then to him pressing my wrists to the wall.

Stamp.

Diving onto my mouth with his own.

Stamp, stamp.

His body against mine.

And then suddenly I stamp a card too hard, blotting the ink.

Ugh, crap.

“You good?” asks Cash over his shoulder.

“Super.”

“Your eyes are so baggy. You should do, like, a skin regimen, or something.”

“A skin what …?”

“Nico brought these skin masks over once, and we did them, and it was so funny.” Cash chuckles to himself, then goes gloomily quiet. “Now he does them with Savannah.”

“My eyes are always baggy when I don’t sleep well. I … I don’t need a regimen.”

“Something keep you up last night?”

A flash of Diego again.

His furious eyes opening, then closing as he goes for my lips.

And the whimper I let out into the night when he kissed me.

Wait. Did I whimper?

Am I misremembering that?

“What keeps me up or doesn’t ain’t your concern,” I say in as polite a tone as I can manage.

Cash shrugs. “Fair.” Then he sighs. “I guess I just keep thinkin’ maybe one day Nico will stop being weird. Just be himself. Just be the guy that I know and … and …” He grips a rose and goes silent.

I look down at the ruined delivery card.

There’s nothing wrong with hoping someone becomes kinder.

Even if it seems utterly hopeless.

But that feels a bit heavy for a Thursday afternoon chat, and I’m not about to pretend like we’re still talking about only Nico if I were to say that out loud, so instead I tell Cash: “Maybe give him a little less access to you for a while. Might make him think.”

Cash still clutches the rose for a moment, as if in thought. He turns to me and points at a petal. “This one okay?”

I come around the counter to check.

The petal he’s pointing at is soft at the edge, a little off, not a lost cause. Salvageable if handled carefully.

Aren’t we all?