Page 59 of The Devil Wears Tartan

My face is burning again, and I start trudging up the sidewalk so she won’t see how much I’m blushing. She falls into step beside me, and when she speaks, she’s so quiet I’m not even sure her question is meant for me.

“What could you have to be jealous of?”

From the corner of my eye, I see her glance at me like she really is waiting for an answer. We’ve passed the main area for bars, the street we’re on now mostly filled with the darkened windows of stores that have closed up for the night, but neither of us attempts to turn around or change course. The flirting is gone, the air between us charged with something else now, something deeper.

“Are you serious?” I ask. “You’re one of the best dancers in the country. A few years ago, you were one of the best highland dancers in the world.”

“So were you,” she counters.

“Yeah, but I was basically trained from birth for that. You started years later than me and still took everyone by storm. You’re also...I mean, you’re gorgeous, and thin, and exactly what people picture when they think of a dancer. You’re...you’re effortless.”

She stops in the middle of the sidewalk again, and when she laughs, there’s no warmth to it. There’s only a bitterness so harsh and pained it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“Moira, every single thing I do is so fucking full of effort it exhausts me. Everything. You’re the one who’s never had to try. You’re the one who just fits in, who makes people laugh and smile and want to be near you. All I have going for me is being a good dancer, and you even have that too. When I’m just being me, I’m...I have to work so hard to be enough.”

Her voice cracks on the last word, and her bottom lip trembles. I watch as she wraps her arms around herself, her shoulders curving inward to make her seem so tiny—and not in a way that fills me with envy. Instead, as I look at her small frame, another layer of whatever image of her I’ve constructed shatters into pieces and scatters on the snowy street.

I’m left looking at the girl I think my mum was trying to tell me about. In this moment, all I can do is agree that Kenzie desperately needs a friend and has probably needed one for a long, long time.

She’s staring down at the tips of her boots, and I’m about to step toward her, to tell her it’s okay, to give her a hug, to do something, when she swears under her breath and starts marching up the sidewalk again.

I have to jog a few steps to catch up with her.

“Forget I said that,” she mutters without turning her head. She’s staring straight ahead, her gaze pinned to the streetlight on the corner of the intersection we’re approaching.

“Kenzie, you don’t have to—”

“Please,” she interrupts, her voice so raw it startles me into silence. “Please just forget it, okay?”

I don’t want to forget it. I don’t want to watch her shut down and turn into the cold and distant person she’s been to me for years.

We’re so far past that we can’t go back, even if she’s going to try.

We reach the intersection, and she peers up and down both streets like she’s only just realized we’re not in the market anymore.

“Where the hell even are we?” she asks. “We should go back. I mean, if you even still want to do the—”

“I want to take you somewhere.”

I don’t want to sit in a bar with her and pretend this conversation didn’t happen, but I don’t want to get back on a bus and go home either.

More than anything, I want to be with her, just the two of us. I want to forget everything else and let this moment unfold into whatever it’s trying to be. I don’t want a chance to stop and think about it too much.

Kenzie goes silent and stares at me for a moment.

“Where?”

I didn’t have a place in mind, and considering we both live at home, our options for solitude are pretty limited. Then the idea strikes.

“Somewhere...somewhere special,” I answer. “You’ll see when we get there.”

She scoffs and rubs her hands up and down her arms. “Is somewhere special far from here?”

I pull my phone out. “I’ll get us an Uber. My treat.”

She starts to shake her head. “Moira, I think maybe—”

“Kenzie.” I step a little closer to her. “Can you just trust me for a minute here?”

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