Page 37 of A Conflict of Interest

Chapter 12

Veronica

Come to think of it, that latte was hot.

I hadn’t even noticed I’d spilled the latte until I was home and I realized I smelled like a bag of coffee-flavored jellybeans, and I realized my chest down to my waist were tender and sensitive to the touch, the clothes feeling itchy on them. Guess I’d burned myself a little. I’d been too busy looking at a blue-eyed goddess.

What kind of irony was it where I’d have done anything for a chance to see her again, but then when I saw her again, I ran away as fast as I could? It was just… she hadn’taskedto see me. That was the important part. If she didn’t, then I was just being like I had been at the party, overriding her consent. She didn’t want to see me at the party, and she didn’t want to see me in a café.

Just… why was she at that one? I didn’t know how to live my life if I had to worry about accidentally invading her space no matter where I went, even to all my own regular places.

I peeled my clothes off to get in the shower, wincing at the warm water on my skin—it at least didn’t look burned, which meant it would probably go away before long, but it felt kind of symbolic. Go near Kelcey and get burned. Only fair after how many times she’d gotten burned on me.

I wrapped myself in a towel after the shower, stepping out into the apartment still spinning, trying to place where I'd putdown my laptop--I fumbled around the apartment muttering to myself, and I didn’t have any patience when there was a knock at the door, probably Mom forgetting everything I’d told her yesterday and coming to tell me to get together with Kelcey. I groaned, marching over to the door, and I flung it open with a, “What—” that turned into a heart attack when I saw Kelcey Huntington there in the doorway, clearly summoning her nerves and gone instantly, wide-eyed and flushed in a blink at the sight of me in a towel.

“Oh… uh… um…”

“I-I am so sorry,” I blurted, shutting the door in a rush, my hands shaking, and I turned around and leaned back against the door, every part of me shaky.

She was here. Kelcey Huntington. Here at my apartment. She’d… told me to wait when I was leaving the café.What?Had she been there to try to find me? Why wouldn’t she have texted? No, forget that—why would she want tofind me?

“K-Kelcey?” I said through the door, turning my head to face it, trying to sound cool and cursing inwardly at the stutter. “What… are you doing here?”

“You… you forgot your laptop case. At the café.”

I paused. “You know, that would explain why I couldn’t find it.”

“It’s a pretty plausible explanation.”

I took a while trying to put thoughts together, my heart racing faster than it had when I was forced to do laps in PE. “What a world, where Kelcey Huntington is reminding someone else not to forget their laptop.”

“Oh my god, fine, you don’t want it!” she laughed. “I’ll just throw it down the stairs as hard as I can, jump on it, since that’ll make you happy.”

She could throwmedown the stairs and jump on me and it would make me happy. I’d gotten to hear the sound of her laughagain… god, it was beautiful. Had I really gone all that time not realizing I was in love with her? Thinking that I didn’t want to have a girlfriend?

The wordgirlfriendhad changed so quickly from disgusting to something so brilliant it made my heart race, and thoughts of Kelcey’s shining blue eyes were the first, second, and last thing to mind when I thought the word.

“Better not,” I said. “You apparently have the throwing force it’d take out the laptop and the staircase in one go.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s me. Musclewoman Kelcey.”

I laughed. Oh my god, she was talking to me. Through a door, trying to hand me back my laptop, but either way, I’d gotten this conversation. Even if she handed me my laptop and I never saw her again, I could live on this conversation forever.

But I also—well, I guess maybe I just wanted to hope. That maybe this conversation could go on a little longer. I wasn’t ready to let go of a beautiful thing.

“Are you just here to return lost-and-found,” I said, “or… do you want me to put some coffee on?”

“I, uh, I just had coffee.”

“Oh yeah.” I’d forgotten where I’d even been. “Hot chocolate?”

She was quiet for long enough I thought maybe I’d offended her before she said, in her small puppy-dog pleading voice, “Yes please.”

“Okay, great. You can come in. I’ll… actually, I’ll—put my clothes on first.”

She mumbled something from the other side. I wasn’t sad that she liked the sight of me in a towel… this just wasn’t the moment for it. Not unless Kelcey explicitly and enthusiastically consented to see me in a towel.

Jesus, she’d really done a number on me.

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