Page 12 of Myla: The Hawthornes

“What does Myla want?”

“How the hell would I know?”

“You’ve never talked about it?”

“Uh, no.”

“Interesting.”

“Me and Myla aren’t together.”

“Yet.”

“Say what?”

“You aren’t together,yet. And honestly, I don’t know what you’re waiting for.”

“She’s a friend.”

“She’s a friend who sleeps in your tent at the club parties,” Noel teased.

“That happened once,” I clarified. At least the tent part of it, she’d slept in my bed more times than I could count.Sleptbeing the operative word.

“Sure.”

“She was drunk.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I woulda done the same thing with anyone else,” I argued. “Well, probably not Frankie, ’cause she gets handsy when she’s hammered. But Lou, definitely.”

“You would not.”

“I would.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Noel said, pausing in the middle of the kitchen to look at me. “And you know you wouldn’t—because you wouldn’t want to give Myla the wrong idea by having one of her best friends spending the night with you.”

My mouth snapped shut.

“Now, ask yourself why that is,” she wheedled.

I just looked at her silently until she burst out laughing.

“I’m no expert at relationships,” Noel said as she went back to setting the table. “But evenIknow that you and Myla have been circling around each other since before Titus and I got back together. What the heck are you waiting for?”

Thankfully, I didn’t have to answer her because the sound of little feet came pounding down the stairs just as the back door opened and our other roommate, Bas, stepped inside.

“Where are my best friends?” he asked as he toed off his boots.

“Uncle Bas!” Ariel screamed from the living room. She and Diana came racing in, hitting him at a run. He lifted them both up and roared.

Ruth didn’t even stir in my arms. We were all used to the chaos that happened the moment Bas got home.

“Why don’t they do that shit for me?” I asked the room.

“Because Bas is the one that wrestles,” Noel said, grinning at me from across the room. “You’re the one that sits with them for hours doing puzzles.”

I scoffed good-naturedly as Ruth squirmed in my arms.

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