While all around her neighbors and friends milled.
She gave a start when her wineglass was gently removed from her hand by Casey.
“I hope you plan to replace that with a more interesting drink, Casey Carson. Otherwise you’re just stealing, and that’s not nice.”
Sometimes she forgot to use grown-up words when talking to adults.
“How many of those have you had?” Casey asked suspiciously. On a semishout. Pretty close to her ear.
“You know I can’t do more than one on a school night. Why?”
“Because you’re just kind of standing there by yourself staring into space with a sort of loopy smile on your face. I’ve never seen you stand still for longer than a second during one of these events. I was beginning to wonder whether Greta laced the brownies with pot again.”
Eden gave a guilty start. WherewasGreta? She owned the New Age Store, which was thriving in this era of uncertainty for bookstores, which Eden thought must be due to some kind of magic spell and also because people will nevernotbe willing to pay for a shot at hearing their futures predicted. But Greta had a way of reading auras at inconvenient times. She was a little worried hers might be pulsing red and pink, sporting long, vaporous cartoon arms looped around Gabe Caldera.
Her phone vibrated, saving her from making something up to tell Casey. Eden might be good at secret keeping, but she was bad at lies.
It was Annelise. Her heart gave a little jump, half fear, half joy, like it always did, and probably would for the rest of her life when her daughter called or texted her.
Mom, I can’t find the glue stick!
This was followed by an emoji of a cat with wide, horrified eyes.
Uh-oh. Tonight’s homework was doomed without the glue stick.
P.S. I even looked under the fridge!
Peace and Love had once stolen the glue stick and batted it all over the house, finally deliberately whapping it under the fridge like a fuzzy, dickhead David Beckham.
“Glue stick emergency!” She flashed her cell phone at Casey like an FBI badge. “Gotta run.”
And while Gabe’s head was bent attentively to listen to Meredith Blevins and her husband, she made a break for it, like Cinderella.
Because like she’d said that day in the hallway at school, she was onto him.
And if he knew how to fascinate a woman like her... she was pretty sure she knew how to fascinate a man like him.
If that was something she wanted to do, that was.
Because she didn’t have time for that sort of thing, after all.
Cinderella stopped off on the way home from the ball at the all-night Walgreens in search of a glue stick.
When her head finally hit the pillow that night, instead of counting sheep or listening to some soothing, tweedly, New Age–bird song hybrid music, which she actually often did and quite enjoyed, a different refrain ran through Eden’s head.
... sing in the...
She was pretty certain that last word wasshower.
But it could becar. Or it could bebackyardorbathtuborkey of GorMormon Tabernacle Choir.
But just as though it were a particularly fabulous book, the notion of missing the ending suddenly seemed untenable.
She had a hunch Gabe’s strategy was to administer himself in potent little doses that released, stealthily, throughout her days. So that their conversation never really ended. So that in some way, he was always subliminally on her mind.
Which likely also meant she was always on his mind.
Diabolical man. She smiled to herself.