Page 95 of Groupthink

I softened.

She… she said some poetry.

Maybe she could see underneath things in the same way I could.

And, as a bonus, she’d used that poetry to invite me into a banter. This was an area I was familiar with.

And more importantly, the banter was directed at me, not Noah.

He reappeared in the kitchen, wearing his thick white zip-up hoodie with the black stripes on the shoulders, his backpack slung over one of them. Fuck, he looked like a cross between a high-fashion model and a lead singer.

“I’m heading out,” he said as he passed. “See ya Sam, see ya Grace.”

I didn’t like the way her name came out of his mouth.

“See ya,” Grace and I both said in tandem.

We shared a look, and she smiled at me.

Okay, maybe everything was in my head.

Noah closed the door to the garage behind him with aschlick,sealing us in here together.

Finally. We were alone.

But it was quiet in here. Too quiet.

“Can we listen to more Dear Hunter?” Grace asked.

“It’s like you can read my mind,” I said with a smile.

I gave the command to Alexa, and the house suddenly filled with the harp chords of Regress again. “Hope you don’t mind starting over.”

“Not at all,” she said.

“About what I said in the car,” I said, peeling the potatoes at the sink. “I didn’t mean to insult you.”

“I’m not insulted,” she said, braiding a strand of her dark hair.

Was that another nervous tick? Was she still worried about her ex?

“You just caught me off guard, is all.”

?Off-guard’s better than on-guard, I’m a fighter,

?Guard duty got us pulling all-nighters,

?Hit me low, hit me high, I won’t get bored,

?Raise your shields, baby I’ll raise my sword.

Fuck. I thought the music in the background would make the flow of words stop, but clearly, it did not. I just had to refrain from saying anything insulting…

“Seriously though… how can you just be okay with… with everything?” she asked.

“I do it by being okay with everything.”

“That’s not a real answer.”

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