Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 01
Sometimes, you look back.
He was coming out. I was going in. We moved by each
other, ships passing without fanfare the way hundreds of
strangers pass every day. The moment didn't last longer
than it took to see a bush of dark, messy hair and a flash
of dark eyes. I registered his clothes first, the khaki cargo
pants and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. Then his height and
the breadth of his shoulders. I became aware of him in the
span of a few seconds the way men and women have of
noticing each other, and I swiveled on the pointed toe of
my kitten-heel pumps and folowed him with my gaze until
the door of the Speckled Toad closed behind me.
'Want me to wait?'
'Huh?' I looked at Kira, who'd gone ahead of me. 'For what?'
'For you to go back after the dude who just gave you
whiplash.' She smirked and gestured, but I couldn't see
him anymore, not even through the glass.
I'd known Kira since tenth grade, when we bonded over
our mutual love for a senior boy named Todd Browning.
We'd had a lot in common back then. Bad hair, miserable
taste in clothes and a fondness for too much black
eyeliner. We'd been friends back then, but I wasn't sure
what to cal her now.
I turned toward the center of the shop. 'Shut up. I barely
noticed him.'
'If you say so.' Kira tended to drift, and now she
wandered toward a shelf of knickknacks that were nothing
like anything I'd ever buy. She lifted one, a stuffed frog
holding a heart in its feet. The heart had MOM
embroidered on it in sparkly letters. 'What about this?'
'Nice bling. But no, on so many levels. I do have half a
mind to get her one of these, though.' I turned to a shelf of
porcelain clowns.
'Jesus. She'd hate one of those. I dare you to buy it.' Kira snorted laughter.
I laughed, too. I was trying to find a birthday present for
my father's wife. The woman wouldn't own her real age
and insisted every birthday be celebrated as her 'twenty-
