Page 11 of An Unexpected Home

“So you don’t think he’s hot?” Carly asked with a sly smile on her face.

God it had been so long since she’d had a girlfriend to goad and joke with that she almost forgot what it was like. “Shut up,” she said and threw a piece of pepper at her.

“Since he’s my cousin and one of my best friends, I'm just going to say eww to you thinking he’s hot. But as my friend who I know has been through a lot of shit the last few years and hasn’t had any time to think about hot guys, I’m going to say you go girl.”

“Is it bad that I totally understood that?” Leah laughed and started chopping peppers again. “You’d think that after years apart I would have lost the ability to grasp your crazy sentences.”

It had taken Leah over a month her freshman year in college to follow along with Carly’s thoughts. She rarely said just one thought in a sentence and half the time the thoughts didn’t even go together.

Carly called it her best and yet most annoying quality.

“Once you know the way of Carly Graham, it never leaves you.”

“It’s a good thing or else when I’m ninety I’ll never know what the hell you are talking about.” She finished chopping the peppers and threw them into the dish with the already cooked chicken.

“Back to you thinking Brandon is hot,” Carly said. “Are you looking in that direction?” She raised her eyebrows.

Leah added cheese to the dish and slipped it into the already warm oven. “No,” she said, turning to face her friend. “I just –” she didn’t know what she just, and couldn’t finish the statement.

“You just what?”

She sighed and got a wine glass down from the cabinet. “I don’t know, Carls. I think I just think he’s hot because it’s been so long since I’ve even looked at a guy. That being said, if I don’t have sex soon, I might actually forget how it’s done. And it’s not like I’ve had experts along the way. So my information is already outdated.”

“I can’t be sure about this because, you know cousin, but from the way women throw themselves at Brandon, I'm assuming he has a very new manual with all the updates.”

Leah stared at her friend and giggled. “I know I started it but can we please stop talking in technical terms?”

“Pour me a glass of that wine, will ya? Seriously though, I think you need to get back on the horse or in your case the chicken.”

“Chicken?” Leah asked, confused.

“Yeah, you know...a cock.”

Her laugh came out of nowhere and from deep inside her. She laughed so hard that she had to sit down on the floor right there in the kitchen. When she was finally able to gain some control, Carly sat down next to her.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” her friend said. “Life hasn’t been the same without you.” Carly laid her head on Leah’s shoulder.

“Thank you for forcing me to come.”

“I think this place is going to be good for you. Fresh air, people who are genuinely nice, and me.”

“You would have been enough but the other two are nice bonuses.”

They stood up and Leah poured herself a little more wine. “Where has Melanie been all day?” Leah had only seen her for like thirty minutes that morning before she’d left again. She’d met her dozens of times over the years when Melanie had visited them at NYU. She had gone to school at Juilliard which meant that their schools had been close.

Carly waved her hand in the air. “Who knows. She is so OCD and afraid that we aren’t going to be ready to open the studio, that she is running herself ragged.”

“Well I’m ready to start working. So tell me what you need and I’m in.”

“Tomorrow. Tonight we drink and catch up.”

“Sounds good to me.” They toasted and their glasses clinked.

––––––––

After a long night of girl talk and way too much wine, Leah awoke surprisingly refreshed. When she entered the kitchen to make her morning coffee, she found Melanie already up and making breakfast.

“You were starting to give me a complex,” Leah said and grabbed a mug.

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