“Easy, Banks.” Kassidy’s soft, warm hand covered Arlie’s on the glossy counter.
Instantly regretful, Arlie dialed down her emotional thermostat and exhaled a long, slow breath. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just can’t think about that right now. Not with everything else going on.”
“Look, I know that things have been rough since you resigned Gastronomie.”
Since she’d resignedGastronomie.
Guilt added to the rapidly growing tar pool of self-loathing spreading in her middle.
She may have become an accomplished liar of late, but this was the first deliberate falsehood she’d ever told her best friend.
“If it’s the money—” Kassidy began.
“No,” Arlie interrupted, all too aware of the tears welling in her eyes. She thought of sprinting out of the shop before Kassidy could ask the inevitable question that would open the floodgates once and for all.
“Hey,” her best friend said, the constant undercurrent of lightly mocking humor giving way to genuine concern. “You okay?”
And with that, every ounce of pain, worry, fear and desperation came flying directly out of Arlie’s already stinging tear ducts. It wasn’t just crying, but back-breaking, hiccoughing, body-wrenching sobs.
On cue, Kassidy came around from behind the desk and wrapped Arlie in the first fiercely protective hug she’d experienced since her mother’s death five years ago. She’d lost her father to cancer only last year, but their bond had always been tenuous at best. The realization only made her sob harder.
“Shhhh,” Kassidy soothed, her hand making slow circles between Arlie’s shoulder blades. “It’s all right. Everything is going to be all right.”
Arlie could no longer remember a time when she believed those words. She simply stood there, letting herself be held, careful to keep her wet cheek away from the pristine fabric of her best friend’s dress.
“Anyway,” Kassidy said, “I know what this is all really about.”
Without warning, Arlie’s stomach took a roller coaster death drop toward her shoes. “You do?”
“Of course I do. You’re just trying to find a way to realize your misguided adolescent fantasy of jumping young Samuel Kane’s bones.”
“I am not.” Arlie pulled away, color flooding her cheeks because, ever since setting her eyes on him this morning, she’d been feverishly fanaticizing about that very thing. A flickering reel of lurid scenarios, interrupted only by intermittent panic attacks.
Her personal favorite had involved Samuel raking the items off his fastidiously organized desk to bend her over it. Even now, she could still feel his breath hot on her neck. The smooth, cool polished wood hard against her cheek. Hands that held so many books dragging her skirt roughly over her hips, pausing only to push her panties to the side before filling her with his hot, hard—
“Jesus.” Kassidy’s mouth twisted into a smirk as the dimple Arlie had always coveted appeared at the corner of her lips. “You’re doing it right now.”
“That’s totally unfair,” Arlie protested. “That’s like saying don’t think about a pink elephant.”
“Or Samuel Kane’s studious cock.”
Arlie snorted despite herself, some measure of the grief evaporating from her aching heart. “Point is, there was nothing between Samuel and me when we were teenagers and there’s nothing between us now.”
“Please.” Kassidy released Arlie, walking toward Retrospect’s entrance to busy herself fussing with the dramatic floral arrangement on the round table opposite the entryway. “I’ve never witnessed two humans trying so hard to not look like they like each other.”
A heady surge of unexpected pleasure heated Arlie’s ears. “Whatever,” she said, employing a term they’d passed back and forth in high school as often as sticks of gum and coded notes.
“I’m serious.” Kassidy plucked out the long green stem of a peony and relocated it two inches to the left. “It was pathetic. You side-eye humping him every time his nose was buried in a book.”
“There may be some merit to that assessment,” Arlie admitted. “But he didn’t even know I existed.”
Kassidy said nothing, but something in the way her posture stiffened made Arlie’s antennae twitch.
“Or did he?” Arlie joined her friend at the table, a cold ball gathering in the center of her chest. Though she was no match for her best friend in terms of raw mental prowess, she’d spent a decade studying her like meteorologists studied weather maps, and for the same reasons. Her immediate future had often been determined by a mischievous smirk, a stormy gaze. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Kassidy’s usually regal posture deflated. “This information is not going to help you.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” Now it was Arlie’s turn to cross her arms over her chest.