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“What’s the deal with this Jason character?” Naamah asks.
“Oh my God, such a douchebag,” Cassidy exclaims. “Sophia must have thought she could save him from himself or something. Actually—he kind of showed up near the tail end of your nineties rap metal phase, didn’t he?”
“Maybe,” I mumble against the rim of my glass. I take a long drink, knowing I’m going to need it for this conversation.
“Either way,” Cassidy continues, waving it off with a flap of her hand. “This guy’s a total douche. Always spending his money on drugs and useless, self-indulgent shit, and manages to sweet talk her into a relationship. Then immediately needs to crash on her couch for ‘a minute.’ Everything went downhill from there.”
“Ah, I can already tell where you made your first mistake,” Naamah informs me with a tut.
I eye her warily. “Oh?”
“Yup. You were listening to rap metal instead of rap ballads, so you never got the ‘no scrubs’ message.”
Cassidy throws her head back and laughs, and I can’t help but chuckle.
The conversation moves on to other things as we work our way through dinner. Naamah keeps our glasses topped up, and I’m feeling pretty good by the time we take our dishes to the kitchen. Cassidy gushes over the décor for a few minutes, which Naamah takes with good humor and no hints whatsoever that she bought everything originally at the height of the time when it was in fashion.
“It’s no wonder you know so much about nineties music with a kitchen like this,” Cassidy snorts.
“Cass, this is from the fifties,” I tell her.
She sighs at me. “Yes, I know that. But it’s the same style, the same taste family. Think about it. In the fifties, candy-colored cutesy stuff was the trend. Cutesy music, trendy rock, hyper sexed for the time. The idolization of teens. The fifties had way more in common with the nineties than the sixties, and more than the eighties did with the nineties. Pop culture isn’t really linear, it’s more like a braid, with the same strand popping out every few decades a little farther down the line.”
Naamah gives her an assessing look, clearly impressed. Then the demon looks at me and shrugs. “She’s right. It’s been that way forever, as far as I know. I’ve never heard it put like that, though.” She glances at Cassidy. “You’re pretty smart too. Must be genetic.”
My sister scoffs drunkenly. “If I was as smart as Soph, I’d be the one getting paid to go dress shopping.”
She snickers, nudging me with her elbow. I shove at her lightly, embarrassment making my cheeks heat.
“I wasn’t paid to go shopping! Well, okay, I was. But only because my clothes weren’t suitable for Lucas’s stuff. His appointments and things.”
“Oooh, calling him Lucas now. What happened to Mr. Hale? First name basis with the boss, huh? You sure that business trip was all business?” My sister grins at me in a joking way, but some part of the truth must show on my face, because her eyes widen. “Wait a second.Are you serious?”
“I haven’t even said anything!” I protest.
“Yes you did,” she says, waving a hand in front of her own face. “With your eyes! What happened? You didn’t even tell me! I called it, I called it! I knew he wouldn’t be buying you all those clothes and things unless… Wait, when did it start? Is that the real reason you got the job? Speak, woman!”
“I will if you let me,” I say, exasperated. “So, okay—”
“He kissed her earlier, right in front of the office,” Naamah tells Cassidy out the side of her mouth. “I mean, hekissedher.”
Cassidy squeals and grabs my shoulders, shaking me. “Tell me everything!”
“Sto-o-o-p sh-sh-shaking m-me!”
“Sorry, sorry, I’m just—you didn’t say anything! And I mean, come on, this guy definitely won’t be crashing on your couch. He probably owns, like, a million couches. Does he own a million couches? No, don’t answer that, tell me what happened!”
“Okay, okay, shut up,” I tell her, laughing. “So first of all, we never made it to our meeting.”
It’s Naamah’s turn to shoot me a warning with her eyes, but I know what I’m doing.
“We had to make an emergency landing, just a stupid technological failure or whatever, everything was fine.”Sorry, Carlin—I don’t mean to trivialize your death.“But we were nowhere near where we were supposed to be, so we had to stay in this Air B&B. Together.Alone.”
“Ooh,” Cassidy says, accepting another splash of wine in her glass. “Scandalous.”
“You think that’s scandalous, just wait till I tell you what we did in that poor kitchen,” I tell her. “That fridge might never be the same.”
They both laugh.
