Page 34 of The Devil Wears Tartan

If I see stoic and icy Kenzie Andrianakis break down and cry after every other insane thing that’s already happened this morning, the planet might experience a complete reversal of its poles, so I don’t ask anything else about him.

“Are you looking up your bus route?” I say instead.

She glances at me. “Huh?”

I nod at her phone, my neck getting hot as I realize what a ridiculous weirdo I’m being. “On your phone. Are you, uh, looking up how to get home?”

“Oh. Uh, no.” She turns to stare out the strips of glass in the church doors. “I guess I should, though. Margerie seemed pretty serious about not letting us back in.”

I chuckle before I can stop myself, and the corners of Kenzie’s mouth lift. “Are you taking the bus home?”

“Me?” I ask, as if she could possibly be talking to anyone else.

One food fight and maybe-kiss later, and I’m acting like a teenager with a crush, not a grown-ass woman interacting with another grown-ass woman who’s been nothing but insufferable since the day of our first encounter.

“I’m gonna walk, actually,” I answer. “I live pretty close.”

“You live with your parents?”

The heat making its way up my neck starts creeping into my cheeks. When I’m there, I don’t feel bad about living at home. It feels like the right choice for me at the moment, but I know how it looks to take off as some intrepid world traveller only to crash and burn all the way back to where you started.

“Yeah,” I say, staring through the door’s window now too. “I do.”

Kenzie probably has a house full of cool roommates like Lydia does, or some stylish unit in one of those student-only high rises downtown. I can picture her in some trendy studio that’s as fashionable as the outfit she wore to meet me at Starbucks a few weeks ago.

“I do too.”

I jerk my head to look at her. “You do?”

“Yeah. Well, just with my mom. It’s...I mean, she...yeah.” She presses her lips together after she trails off.

I want to kick myself in punishment for everything I just thought. Of course it would make sense for her to live at home if her mom has some kind of illness.

As I stare at the sharp angles of her face, at the beauty I’ve always thought of as cruel, I realize I’ve spent years constructing an image of Kenzie that’s based only on the tiny sliver of her life I’ve gotten to see.

To me, she’s only ever existed as an opponent on stage or an annoying conversation to deal with after a dance event. I’ve let the people around her—namely, Catherine and the rest of the Stewie crew—become her back story, but she’s more than that. She’s more than them.

She’s fascinating.

The word drifts into my thoughts as I watch her blink, and I realize it’s the perfect one to describe how I’m feeling—and maybe how I’ve always felt.

I’m fascinated by her. She may annoy the hell out of me, but she always leaves me wanting more. I always come back to this, and so does she.

“Hey, um, I have an idea,” I say before I chicken out.

She tilts her head, inviting me to go on.

“We were both planning on being at this thing for another few hours, so I know we have the rest of the morning free, and since the other applicants are clearly going to score the, uh, brownie points for this event, if you will...”

She squeezes her lips together, her cheeks going red as she tries so hard to hold back a laugh it ends up exploding out of her as a snort.

“Oh my god, Moira,” she says, shaking her head and letting a real laugh out.

I laugh too. “I couldn’t resist. The muse struck.”

“Just continue with your idea,” she tries to command even though she’s still grinning.

“Right, right.” I clear my throat. “So, it seems our interview is going to need to be extra good, and since we have the time, and we’re both already wearing tartan, we should just do it today.”

---