Page 148 of Scars Like Wings

It was perfect.

I was tying a scarf around the top of my locs to the style of an early 2000s female rapper or singer when I heard my door crack open. In the reflection of the mirror, I made eye contact with Maisie before she opened the door completely with Simone in tow.

“Ah, there you are!” Simone said. “We were wondering where you—Oh, cute outfit! Your ass looks amazing in that!”

“Thanks!” I said, grabbing a pair of sandals to match the outfit and slipping my feet in them.

“We were both looking for you this morning. We had so much to dish about, but we couldn’t find you!”

Maisie snorted.

“Okay,Icouldn’t find you,” Simone corrected. “Maisie thought you were having sex downstairs, which I thought was absurd. Byrd is like a nun at this point! She would never have sex in the kitchen, especially loud enough for her besties to hear. I mean, there was no way?—”

Simone made eye contact with me then. My face was so hot I started to sweat. Gods, I might as well have had a neon sign above my head. Simone gasped.

“Brydgette Fallon Pierce, you had sex downstairs in the kitchen!”

“You should definitely say it louder, Sea, I don’t think the neighboring islands heard you.” I shook my head, grabbing some large hoop earrings.

“Also, it isn’t a game of Clue,” Maisie teased. “But Ididtell you so.”

“How are you not shocked by this? I mean, Byrd got fucked right next to our French toast and coffee!”

“Simone.” I didn’t think it was possible for my face to get hotter than what it already was.

“I like to think that our little Byrd got her wings. By the sounds of things, she soared, too.”

“I fucking hate you both.”

“Besides, have you seen her and Quinn together?” Maisie pointed to me while looking at Simone. “With that much chemistry between you two, your dry spell being as long as it was, and your love of cliterature, I really thought y’all would have fucked ages ago. Aren’t y’all lesbians?”

“I don’t even know where to begin unpacking that.”

“Well, you can start by unpacking all the dirty details,” Maisie demanded.

“What about y’all? I thought you said you had tea?—”

“She fucked Cole, and I fucked Cody this morning. There is no news there. It’s the same shit, different day. I need your hoe storynow.”

Like they had done to me for their sexual exploits before, I recounted my own salacious story of this morning. They listened intensively, cheering and hollering at Quinn’s moves. By the end, I was in tears from laughing so hard. There was nothing like being able to talk to my girls like this. I loved them so much, my heart screamed.

“All jokes aside,” Simone said, wiping away tears in the corners of her eyes. “Your sexcapades oddly help to narrow down what kind of shifter you might be! There are only certain ones that do claim bites on their mates. It is actually very rare, something that only happens in predatory shifters.”

“So, scales and a predator who bites? I’m going to say alligator shifter,” Maisie guessed.

“That would be my luck, honestly. I would be the most Southern Georgian kind of shifter possible.” I rolled my eyes at the irony before tilting my head. “But my scales are, like, holographic, though?”

“Sweetie, you are as gay as the day is long. You think your shifter form wouldn’t reflect that? I mean, the fact that you are a black magical girl from an anime bleeds into everything else in your life.”

“I mean this with all the love and respect in the world. In a room full of crutches, Marceline Repond, I still would not be able to stand you.”

“While a gay gator would make some sense, Byrd is not built like any gator shifter I have seen or met. Plus, she can’t swim to save her life. Literally. She can barely float.”

While I flipped Simone off, I said. “I’m kind of happy that I’m not a gay gator because y’all would never let me live that down, which is obvious from how many times we have said gay gator?—”

Suddenly, I caught a whiff of something that made me pause. I sniffed the air, aware of a shift in it that I hadn’t noticed before. Actually, I was aware of a lot of things now that weren’t there before. There were three distinct smells that were strong in the room right now: an ocean breeze with an undercurrent of fruit, herbs and expensive skincare that was made to artificially smell good, and something sweet yet tangy while also smelling like cocoa butter, like my body wash.Wait. These must be Simone’s, Maisie’s, and my scents. I could even catch the wafting smell of citrus, chocolate, and smoke that I knew could only be Quinn. I inhaled deeply.

There it was again. That smell that was unlike the ones that I was deeply familiar with without ever truly scenting them. It smelled like one of those candles I hated that Uncle Everett adored: the manly scents like sandalwood and nighttime, that always smelled like someone had doused themselves in men’s cologne before a date. It was enough to give me a headache.

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