her rear. My face is in her neck, and as I breathe in, the scent of Natalie floods my brain. I’ve never been this close to her, and she smells exactly like I’d expect her to. Fresh. Clean. Like sunshine.
Like I’m lying in a hammock in the yard, the grass newly cut, and she wanders over as the golden light of late afternoon halos her face. She slips into the hammock, yanks off her shirt, tugs down my zipper, and we fuck. A lazy, unhurried afternoon screw, with this woman who smells like sunshine.
I inhale her one last time, and her breath catches.
She makes a little sound, a soft oh , and that sound does something to me. Makes me start thinking. Start wondering. Start tripping down the dangerous trail of maybe Natalie’s hot for me, too . Maybe I’m not the only one nursing some lust. I swear I feel a shudder move through her body like a ripple in a lake.
“Be careful,” I whisper, and I’m not sure if the directive is for her or me.
“I will.”
“No face pancakes on the job, okay?” I say, and now I’m the one trying to make light of things.
I lower the cupboard door to the counter and back away. She turns around, looks down, sweeps a lock of hair from her forehead.
Neither one of us says anything more as we finish.
I reason if I can survive a day with her working beside me, I can handle a weekend trip.
What could possibly go wrong on a business trip to Vegas?
4
I ’m counting down the days till we leave, but I’ve got enough to keep me busy. Like seeing my little sister and brother on the way to my volunteer shift at the dog rescue the next morning.
“It’s time to nix Elizabeth Lecter,” I tell Josie as I bite into the seven-layer bar she gives me.
Josie’s green eyes widen, and she slashes her hands through the air. “Does that mean you’re done? Like totally done?” She takes a seat across from me at a lemon-yellow table at Sunshine Bakery. This is our mom’s bakery, but Josie pretty much runs it now.
I point at the bar. “This shit is good,” I tell her.
She hands one to Nick, my twin brother, and shrugs happily. “I know. I rock at baking.”
“You might even be better than Mom,” Nick says out of the corner of his mouth, as if he’s whispering. “But don’t tell her that.”
Josie mimes zipping her lips, then points to my phone. The Facebook profile of one fake “Elizabeth Lecter” is on the screen. “You’re really ready to get rid of our pretend friend Elizabeth? Even considering what she accomplished after Sunday night’s episode?”
I slash a finger across my throat. “Time to kill her off, and all the others, too.”
“Go out on a high note,” Nick says, agreeing, as he rips off a chunk of the evidence of Josie’s unparalleled talent in the kitchen.
“It won’t ever get better than this. Look at that.” I point at the phone. I grip my face and drop my jaw open, like Edward Munch’s The Scream . “It’s like my ex is melting from the pain.”
Josie reads out loud the response my ex, Katrina, wrote earlier this week on her page: “Is nothing sacred? Does anyone know how much spoilers hurt? Might as well take a knife and rip it through my chest.”
Nick mimes wiping tears from his eyes. “Wah, wah, wah.”
I lean back in the chair and stretch my legs out in front of me. “This might have been our greatest accomplishment ever. I’m quite proud of our factory of fake Facebook profiles. But I’ve got to hand it to little Miss Elizabeth. She really owned it when it came to her Game of Thrones final episode spoiler.”
Josie holds up one finger. “But let’s not forget our made-up friend Emma Krueger’s spoiler. Remember when she posted about the Hold the Door death? Katrina’s tears were all over her wall that night.” Josie high-fives me for that one.
“Only to be topped by Elinor Bates’s epic message that Jon Snow was alive,” I add, pride suffusing me at the memory of that greatest hit. “But even so, it’s time to say good-bye.