Page 72 of Windlass

“Therewerenames.”

“I can’t control what I dream about.” She tried to wipe away the defensive note in her voice. Stormy was teasing her good-naturedly. It wasn’t her friends’ fault she was an emotional teeter-totter, especially after her confrontation with Lana.

“I’m not judging.”

“And you think Stevie wants to hear that?” Angie asked.

“Depends on the name,” said Lilian, slyly.

“Don’t even.”

The conversation drifted away from dating and turned toward the facts of their lives. She considered telling them about her roofing dilemma, but as always something stopped up her throat. She thought, too, of Stormy’s comment. Was she teasing, or had Angie actually had a sex dream the last time she fell asleep on Stormy’s couch? Worse, had it been about Stevie?

The good ones usually were. The bad ones invariably featured her exes, and the worst featured family and friends, people she had thought she could trust.

She didn’t need a therapist to analyze those. There were reasons why she had not kept in touch with most of her old friends, and there were reasons, darker still, why she spent as little time as possible with her family. She didn’t need nor want to be thinking about the past. True, she could not control her dreams, or the occasional intrusive thought, but she’d gotten pretty damn good at suppression over the years.

Besides, the upcoming weekend had just become a lot more interesting. An image of Stevie fucking her with a quieting hand over her mouth washed away the momentary insecurity brought on by Stormy’s words and washed away, too, the slick, oily feeling of half-glimpsed trauma. She took another sip of her drink. It had cooled beyond her preference.

She drank it anyway.

Stevie fiddled with a piece of broccoli, ostensibly helping Angie prepare a salad for dinner, but in reality sitting on the counter next to the cutting board. Angie’s phone sat beside her. Stevie’s eyes kept returning to the screen, which periodically lit up with notifications. That fucking photo. Could she live without knowing? And what would she do if Angiehadsent that photo?

She didn’t know. Three days had passed since the incident with Lana, and despite her best efforts she had not been able to forget about it. Nor had they had sex. Angie seemed determined to either teach Stevie a lesson or murder her. She wasn’t sure which. The combination of lust, suspicion, and hurt made her stomach ache.

“Are you going to chop the broccoli or play with it?” Angie plucked the stem from Stevie’s fingers and nestled into the space between Stevie’s legs where they hung off the counter, waving the broccoli in front of her face. Stevie snapped her teeth at it, a smile coming on even with the stomach ache.

“Is playing with it an option? You ever have to make those dioramas in school, where everyone used broccoli as trees and it was a huge waste of food?”

“Probably.”

“Mine had a volcano. Vinegar and baking soda, baby. And food coloring. It was awesome.”

Angie held the vegetable in front of Stevie’s lips. She ate it obediently, cheeks bulging, wishing that she had chopped the pieces into more manageable sizes and that Angie’s fingers had lingered.

“Slaughtering innocents.”

“They had it coming,” Stevie said, though the words came out garbled. She chewed a few more times and swallowed. “I had some tiny dinosaur figurines I added, and some of my brothers’ army men. The dinosaurs survived.”

“I love you,” Angie said easily, then stilled. Her tone had been the sort she reserved for friends, the way she might tell Stormy or Lilian she loved them: affectionate and amused. She’d told Stevie the same a thousand times, but things were different now.

“I know what you meant,” said Stevie.

“I just . . .”

“Hey, do you know what you should do right now?” Stevie waited for Angie to look up before continuing, not wanting to pursue this particular topic for a moment longer. When Angie did, Stevie cupped her cheek.

“This?” Angie took Stevie’s hand and drew her thumb into her mouth. Stevie’s body, charged with several days’ worth of direst need, lit up along every neuron.

Stevie groaned. “Not what I was going to say, but that’s a much better idea.”

“Too bad I have to make dinner.” Angie nipped her thumb and released her. “Can you read the recipe to me? It’s on my phone. Here.”

Stevie accepted the unlocked phone with a nasty kick to her ribs that might have come from her heart or the universe. The recipe was pulled up on the screen. She read off the first line.

“’Of all the salads I’ve made over the years, only one screams ‘summer’ as loudly as . . .’ Is this one of those long introductions that turns into someone’s life story and you have to scroll for a million years until you get to the recipe?”

“Press the ‘jump to recipe’ option up top.”

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