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“I keep having nightmares about them murdering me by pecking me to death.” I laughed.
Lark’s rental was a tiny little house owned by an elderly woman with a chicken fetish, I was convinced. Chickens on the rugs, chickens on the walls, chicken tchotchkes on every available surface. Excessive was an understatement.
“Maybe it’s time to move,” I said.
She sighed and sipped aggressively at her drink.
“I would, but I’m pretty much broke. I’m sure Layne has told you about my situation,” she said, frowning.
“I mean, I know you’re working part time and you took a break from school,” I said carefully. I didn’t want her to feel shitty about her life. I had no room to judge. I’d barely, and I meanbarely, gotten a marketing degree only to come back home broke to manage my mom’s pottery studio, which I could have done even without the degree.
“You can say I dropped out,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“If you were just wasting money and it wasn’t going toward anything, then dropping out was smart,” I said.
She leaned her elbow against the bar and rested her head on her hand.
“You think so?”
There was a twinkle in her eyes that only spelled trouble. With a capital T.
“I do,” I said, leaning closer.
* * *
“I can barely standto be around them,” Lark said. “Like, I’m very happy for my sister but seeing her go from someone who didn’t believe in romance or even having feelings to being so in love that she’s almost a completely different person is a trip.”
“I know what you mean,” I said, working on my second drink and wishing it was a shot or several shots instead. “Only Joy didn’t completely change personality. She believes in romance even more now, if that was possible.”
I loved Joy. I was thrilled for her. But losing her as a roommate was fucking me up more than I wanted to admit. If she asked me how I was doing with it, I told her I was fine. What a shitty friend would I be if I told her the truth? I wasn’t going to piss on her happiness, bottom line. So here I was, sober at a bar in a random town.
At least things had gotten less depressing when Lark showed up.
She sighed.
“How’s your job?” I asked.
Lark put her hand out and tipped it from side to side. “It’s fine, honestly. It’s a good job. I’m very grateful to have it. I’m just not so grateful when someone asks me to make a frankendrink that they created in their mind that has twenty ingredients.”
I cringed. “Customers can get so entitled. Believe me, I know. I’ve had people straight up break something and demand a refund a year later. I’m sorry, pottery is fragile and if you let your kids play tackle football in the living room, something might get broken.”
Lark snorted.
“You work for your mom, right?” she said.
“Yup,” I said with a sigh. “Don’t recommend it.”
Lark stirred the ice left in her drink. “My mother doesn’t believe in working. She only believes in other people working for money and then marrying them. Or marrying someone who didn’t work for the money and inherited it. That’s the best-case scenario.”
I shook my head. “Your mom is something else.”
“Believe me, I know. It’s taken quite a bit of therapy to get where I am now.”
“And where is that?” I asked.
“To a place where I don’t think about how much I hate her every single second,” Lark said. “I’m a work in progress.”
“Aren’t we all?”
