Page 52 of The Spice Play

Again, she nodded.

“All right.” I pushed off the glass, hopeful that she’d say something, anything, now — hopeful she’d ask to talk about what happened, hopeful that she’d ask me to stay. Even with her acting like this, even with how much she’d stressed me out and hurt me with her frigidity these last few days, I still wanted things to be okay. I wanted her to be Nelly again.

Not whatever shell of a person this was.

And I knew that I’d created it. That was the worst part. I’d forced this to happen with what had gone down at the arena. But she’d shot down my attempt to apologize and right the wrong, and now we were here, stuck in limbo, stuck in this never-ending argument that felt like someone had dropped a goddamn ocean between us. I wasn’t sure what we’d been before, but it didn’t even feel like we were friends now.

I pulled on the door, sliding it open easily.

She still didn’t look at me.

“For what it’s worth, Nelly, I’d been planning to give itto you for weeks as athank youfor all you’ve done for me and Matty,” I said, watching as her thumb traced the side of the mug with theSurvivorlogo on the side of it. “I do appreciate it. All of it.”

Her mouth started to move, and all I wanted her to say waswait,orstop, ordon’t go. But all that came out was the quietest, “Thank you.”

Chapter 21

Nelly

“Nelly, listen to me. That’s fucking insane.”

“I know,” I sighed, shrugging off the blanket I’d brought with me outside. At ten in the evening, with Matty safe and sound asleep upstairs and no chance of Sebastian being back for another few hours, I’d figured it was safe enough to hang out on the back porch while I spoke to Rosie. If he’d felt comfortable leaving him alone in the house for an hour when he came to the guesthouse last week, then Matty was fine for twenty minutes while I spoke to anyone who wasn’t myself about the situation.

And Rosie was the only real option.

“I just don’t know what to do now,” I added.

“I… don’t know what you should do either,” she said, a hint of chuckle lilting her words. “I’ve never had an employee tell me that they’reinvolvedwith a client.”

“I wouldn’t say we’reinvolved.”

“No, of course not, you’re just, I don’t know, sleeping with him.” Her delivery dripped with sarcasm as she typed something, the clack of her nails against the keyboard givingit away. “Why on earth did you think it was a good idea to romantically involve yourself with the man you’re working for, Nelly?”

“In my defense, I kind of, uh, got involved with him before I was working for him,” I said, chewing on the end of my thumbnail as I stared at the hot tub on the other end of the patio table. It was so,sotempting.

“Youwhat?”

I wonder how you turn the jets on in that thing.“You remember that guy I met the night we went to Smokey’s and I found out about the Morris thing?”

Rosie went quiet on the other end of the line before an exasperating groan filled my right ear. “You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not.”

“For fucks sake, Nell?—”

“If it helps,” I interjected, leaning back in my seat and glancing over my shoulder to make sure there weren’t any little eyes or ears eavesdropping, “I didn’t know it was him until I showed up at the rink for the first meet. And the money was too good to walk away at that point.”

She groaned again, her frustration clear as she typed something else, but the sound of angry clicking over and over told me she was either backspacing or stabbing a single key in irritation. “You should have just told me then.”

“So you could give the gig to someone else? You know I needed the money,” I sighed. “And this is honestly the best situation I could have asked for, if we don’t include Sebastian.”

“Your current gig would not exist without him, so we can’t just pretend he isn’t a part of the situation here,” she snapped. I couldhearher breathe in, counted in my head as she held it—one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five—and then came theexhale, heavy and long and exhausted. “I’m not mad at you. I’m just frustrated that you didn’t tell me, at least as a friend.”

I picked at a ball of lint on my bike shorts, trying to dislodge it absentmindedly. “Would it make you feel better to know that everything’s fucked now?”

“Well, what doesthatmean?”

I pulled my knees up to my chest, throwing the blanket I’d abandoned on the back of the chair over my legs instead. It was muggy tonight, and the last bit of spring was leaving, which would mean there wouldn’t be much of a respite from the heat and the humidity when the sun went down from here on out, but for tonight, at least, the blanket would be a comfort thing instead of unneeded warmth.

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