Page 58 of Fluffed and Folded

“Most?” she asked, propping her head on her arm. He was very cute, she thought, standing at her stove, stirring the little pan of pot roast. He gave her a feeling she couldn’t pinpoint and then, to her extreme embarrassment, she realized what it was: Eli set her biological clock aquiver. It was all too easy to see him as husband and father material, and she didn’t think she’d ever had that thought about someone before, not even the man she married. But Eli was sopaternal.He would be that dad who coached his son’s teams and didn’t care if they actually won, who watched YouTube videos about how to braid his daughter’s hair. He’d be a helpful and patient partner, a solid provider. All in all, he was a walking life goal.

“I’ve had a couple of dates with someone, but…” He let that trail off, frowning as he stared at the melting contents of the pan.

“But what?” she asked, and her heart thumped. Why did her heart thump like that?

He turned down the stove and faced her. “If I really cared about her, would I be here with you?”

Her heart thrummed harder. “Oh,” she croaked.

He faced forward and turned the stove back up. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it, you don’t have to respond to that. I’m tired and hungry and probably blurting things I shouldn’t. Do you want to know my bank password? I’ll probably tell you.”

“Depends on how much is in there,” she joked, but he didn’t take the bait. She stared at his tense back a while, trying to figure out how to proceed. Did she want to proceed? She had sworn off men, possibly forever. Shouldn’t she stick to that? Shouldn’t she maintain her safe little life, free from encumbrances? The girl hewas seeing was probablyso nice,so sweet, so normal, so safe.It was a sure bet she’d never had a tumor that made her break into his house in the middle of the night, never accidentally involved herself in a murder, never passed out in a puddle of blood in his bedroom.

Yes, she should definitely let him go. It was the nice thing to do, the safe thing to do, the best thing to do. Why couldn’t she find the words, though? She opened her mouth and it hung there suspended, no sound coming out. She closed her mouth, took a deep breath, pressed her palms to the table, and tried again, “Eli.”

He turned to look at her, reluctantly, she thought, and then his eyes widened and his jaw slacked. “Darby,” he croaked.

Wow, okay, he wants to talk about feelings even less than I do.There was some comfort in that. Maybe he didn’t want to hear her rejection. Maybe she shouldn’t reject him.

“Isn’t this cozy,” a female voice said, and then the barrel of a gun pressed to Darby’s temple.

“Sheena,” Eli said.

Sheena? Who was Sheena? Wasn’t Sheena the name of a warrior princess? But when Darby peeked out the corner of her eye, she didn’t see a warrior; she saw a slightly chubby woman, holding a revolver in her shaky right hand.

“Didn’t expect to see me here, did you?” Sheena demanded, voice high and manic.

“Here in my landlord’s apartment?” Eli said. “No, no I did not.”

Darby resisted the hysterical urge to laugh. Was he trying to be funny in this tense, terrible situation, or could he not help it?

“I think there’s been some mistake,” Darby said. She tried to make her tone gentle and soothing, but it must not have worked because Sheena thumped her in the head with the end of the gun and OUCH.

“Shut up, just shut up. Of course he’d cheat on me with you. Ofcoursehe would.” She started to cry and used her free hand to wipe her tears, leaving a streak of mascara across her cheek, as if she needed to add a visual to the I’M CERTIFIABLE vibe she gave off.

Eli and Darby made eye contact. Darby wondered if they were thinking the same thing, that it would go well to do or say whatever necessary to placate Sheena. “Look, Sheena, you’re not my girlfriend,” Eli declared.

Darby winced. So, that was a no on keeping her placated.

“I saw you,” Sheena screamed. “I saw you kiss her.” She reared up like a wild mare. Somebody was about to get pawed by her sharp hooves, and it would likely be Darby, not Eli, who stood helplessly by. He opened his mouth, but before he could say whatever he was about to say that might make Sheena stabby, Darby intervened.

“He didn’t kiss me,” Darby blurted.

Sheena bestowed crazy eyes on her, a warning that whatever she said next better be good, or else. She put up her hands in surrender. “Ikissedhim, I swear. And I didn’t know he was seeing anyone, until just now, right before you walked in. Obviously I wouldn’t have kissed him, if I knew he had a girlfriend.”

“I,” Eli began, but Darby snapped her fingers at him to get him to stop talking. Now was not the moment to declare his singlehood, not when the bunny boiler was in her kitchen with a gun. He took a breath, as if coming to his senses at last. “That’s right. She kissed me. I didn’t even like it. Icky.”

Both women looked at him, and he shrank back under their combined disdain. Darby had no idea what Crazy McButterpants thought at that moment, but as for her, she didn’t exactly relish hearing that her first kiss in five years was “icky.”

“I should probably kill her, then,” Sheena said reasonably, as if they were discussing what to do with the mouse she’d caught.

“Here’s the thing, though, we’re sort of in the middle of tying up another murder, and my friend is actually a former cop. He’s definitely going to be suspicious if someone else gets killed,” Eli said. He was doing a good job of mimicking her tone, crazy and absurd. It would have been funny, if it weren’t so terrifying.

Sheena huffed, annoyed. “Fine. I’ll take her out into the country and get rid of her, keep your name out of it. That way it won’t leave any evidence here. Get up.” She motioned toward Darby with the gun.

“It’s going to take me a minute,” Darby said weakly. She pressed a hand to her abdomen. “I just had abdominal surgery. I’m very sore, can barely move.”

“Wah, wah, wah,” Sheena said, rolling her eyes.

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