Just when I thought I couldn’t take the suspense, the bubbles appeared.
Jacoby: I just looked it up but I can’t find anything about what each color means.
Giggling to myself, I replied, my fingers tapping the screen faster than usual.
Me: That’s because I made it up.
Jacoby: OK, so what color comes after purple?
Me: Blue is strictly platonic love. Dave always gets blue hearts. Yellow is like having a crush on someone…you like them but it’s a mild like. Then comes orange, it’s yellow with a little heat to it. Next is purple, which I’ve already explained. After that is red.
“Who’s got you smiling like a love-struck teenager?” Serenity asked as she approached me from my right.
I pulled my phone closer to my chest and turned to face her completely so she couldn’t see what was on the screen. Oddly enough, there was no mannequin next to me like I thought there was, just a rack of cardigans.
“No one. I mean, Adam. With him being away so much, this is how we keep the spark alive.”
“That’s cute.” She was a pro at taking a genuine phrase and making it sound condescending. “I thought it might’ve been one of your side pieces.”
Well, that caught me off guard. “Excuse me?”
“Oh, was I not supposed to know?” She glanced over her shoulder and then took a step closer. Lowering her voice, she said, “Don’t worry, I didn’t say it in front of the crew. Your secret’s still safe.” And with that, she walked away.
My phone buzzed again, for the second or third time—I was too busy trying to maneuver through Serenity’s landmines to count.
Jacoby: Wow! We got through a few colors and I didn’t even know it! So the next promotion would mean we’re the real deal?
Jacoby: That was a joke, BTW
Jacoby: The first part, not the last
Before I could respond to any of those, another one came through.
Jacoby: You must be busy. Text or call when you get done.
That one made me both sad and happy. Sad because I wasn’t ready for our flirting to end, and happy because he ended it with a single purple heart emoji. He was right, though. No matter how badly I wanted to keep the banter going, it was too dangerous to do that around this crowd.
Thankfully, the day was almost over. After one more shop, we all said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. It was the strangest thing. The only two people who seemed to have a genuine friendship were Jeannine and Lauren, yet we all hugged each other like we some super close foursome.
The fakeness was so thick I was in danger of choking.
As soon as the car door closed, I called Ty. I didn’t even wait for the driver to pull away from the curb. Ever since that little run-in with Serenity, getting ahold of Ty was all I could think about.
“How’d it go?” he asked in lieu of a greeting.
“Wonderful, especially the part when I learned that I’m cheating on my fiancé.” Thanks to Jacoby, I could no longer use the word especially without smiling, and this was no laughing matter. It was rude of him to do something that could cheer me up, even when he wasn’t around.
The line was dead silent for a long moment, so long that I wondered if we had a bad connection. But then he cleared his throat, which answered that. Now all I needed was an answer to the question I had asked him.
“Your silence tells me you know something, which pisses me off. You’ve done nothing but lecture me about how I act and what I say, yet you keep this from me, allowing me to be ambushed by it. You can’t have it both ways, Ty. You can’t expect me to pull this off and keep stuff like this from me. It doesn’t work that way.”
He cleared his throat again, but this time, he actually spoke. “To be honest, Tasha, I really don’t know much. I didn’t see the point in telling you what I did know, because it’s irrelevant. She swore to me that it’s over, has been for a while, and that no one knows. So why would I open that can of worms?”
“Well, clearly, someone knows, because Serenity just informed me.”
“That’s who told you?” His heavy exhale—which was mixed with a bit of a grumble—wafted through the line. “The chances of her actually knowing anything are slim. Serenity is a pot-stirrer. I wouldn’t take anything she has to say as being credible.”
I’d already assumed that she was two-faced, but there was something about the way she said it that made me believe this was more than her starting trouble. “Obviously I can, because she was right about me sleeping around, wasn’t she? And for all you know, it’s not over. She said, and I quote, ‘I thought it might’ve been one of your side pieces.’ One of them, Ty. Meaning there are others.”
“Don’t freak out just yet. Let me call your sister and see what I can get from her. I’ll let you know what she says.” He didn’t even say bye before disconnecting the call. Then again, I hadn’t gotten a hello, either.
* * *
“I’m not touching your feet until you wash them.”
Jacoby laughed at me, but I was dead serious. If he wanted me to pay up on our bet, he would have to thoroughly clean his feet—with bleach and a scouring pad—before I even began to think about rubbing them. “I literally just took a shower.”
“And then you put on shoes, ones that have been worn by dirty feet. Plus, if you took a shower, then I’d be willing to bet that you didn’t clean them properly. It’s a known fact that most people don’t wash their legs, and the majority of those who do, don’t get their feet. Now, if you look at the tiny percentage of the
