Page 84 of Windlass

“Bullshit.”

Angie laughed, though in truth the English language lacked a word for the sound her body made. Laughter was its pale cousin, several times removed.

“She told me trauma makes me a slut.”

Stormy winced. “Bitch.”

“She’s not wrong.”

“Did you . . .” Stormy let the sentence hang awkwardly in the air.

Angie shook her head. The sting of rejection and shame prickled over her skin. And Stevie . . . She couldn’t think about Stevie yet.

“Okay then. Good.”

She did not tell Stormy that Lana had turned her down. She should have. It would have been one of the first times Lana had done something obviously laudable, but her throat was too tight to form the words.

She should tell Stormy Lana cared and that Angie had hurt her. Used her. Treated her like a thing instead of a person because Angie was fundamentally broken.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She shook her head again.

“That’s fine. I need to pop back in and see if Jenny can cover me until closing, and then I’ll be right back.”

“You don’t need to do that,” Angie croaked.

“Promise you’ll stay here?”

She nodded a third time.

“Let me get you a blanket. Lie down, love.”

Angie obeyed, the velvet of the couch soft on her bare arms and against her cheek. Stormy tucked a pillow beneath her head and draped a light blanket over her body, which curled in on itself, and planted a kiss on her temple.

“I’ve got you,” she promised, and then, like Lana, left.

Unlike Lana, Stormy returned. Or perhaps that was like Lana, for hadn’t Lana come back for Angie after all, guiding her through her panic attack as she’d done, she now realized, many times before? Hadn’t Lana known on some level that Angie needed her, and broken off her furious exit to make sure Angie didn’t hurt herself? Angie had cast Lana aside the moment she got what she really wanted. She made room on the couch for Stormy, who carried a cup of herbal tea and her TV remote, which she used to put on reruns of a show they’d both enjoyed a few years back. With Angie’s head in her lap and her nails gently scratching Angie’s scalp like she would a cat, Angie fell into something like sleep.

Her last coherent thought before waking was wondering how Stevie might look with that same hurt shining from her face.

“I’m really not the person you need on this,” Stevie said as Ivy ushered her into the tack stall and sat on her trunk, patting the polished wood.

“Sit.”

Stevie sat because Ivy wasn’t the sort of woman a person said no to unless they were willing to dig a few trenches around the hill they would probably die on. Stevie picked her battles.

“Just tell me which one seems most like Lil. Gut reaction.”

Stevie took the phone from Ivy, whose hand was noticeably shaking.

“Nervous much?”

“More like nerve pain.” Ivy rubbed the offending appendage. To herself more than to Stevie she added, “I should have grabbed a brace.”

“Flare?”

“I’m hoping not. Look at the rings.”

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