Page 49 of The Devil She Knows
SHOWERED, DRESSED, AND out the door in thirty minutes, Sam hopped on the 1 train at Seventy-Ninth Street and rode it twelve stops to the Houston Street station. A short walk later, she stepped inside the Nook & Cranny, her favorite hole-in-the-wall coffee shop located just two blocks from Glut.
“What can I get for you?” the barista asked, rather than theYour usual?Sam was used to hearing.
“Can I get a medium coquito latte and a”—she glanced at the glass case of pastries and breakfast sandwiches—“spiced apple croissant?”
The barista tapped away at the tablet in front of him. “For here or to go?”
“To go,” she said, and he reached for a paper cup.
“Name?”
“Samantha.”
He sharpied a giantSon the side of the cup followed by a trailing scribble. “That’ll be $14.70.”
Sam tapped her card against the screen to pay for the order, then slipped a few dollars into the tip jar before sidling over to the bar to wait for her drink.
So Hannah’s dream girl didn’t frequent the Nook & Cranny. Another difference to add to the growing list. Maybe Sam should start jotting these down in her notes app.
Before showering, she had poked around the apartment a little, taking in the changes she hadn’t noticed before her first cup of coffee hit. Like how the shelves in the living room that had once housed her favorite cozy mysteries now neatly displayed abstract pottery and low-maintenance plants, air ferns and string of pearls vining down into long tendrils that had to be a nightmare to keep Nacho and Pumpkin from batting at or chewing on.
Or how, when she’d stripped down to take a shower, she was bare where previously there’d been neatly trimmed curls. And she was about two pants sizes smaller, able to fit into a pair of jeans she hadn’t been able to squeeze herself into in more than two years. And she was pretty sure her teeth were whiter. And her brown eyes were definitely lighter, shot through with gold and flecked with green. And the tattoo on her hip? The one she’d gotten with her sister of an adorable little stick-figure girl holding a Dixie cup phone, the string trailing off as if to connect to the matching tattoo her sister had? That was gone. And so was the little fine-line toque blanche on her ankle.
And, and,and.
Sam was trying not to take any of it personally, but it was hard not to think that for two years, each time Hannah had looked at her, there was a part of Hannah, realized or not, that wished Sam were thinner, more polished,prettier.
She would be well within her rights to be upset if Hannah had told her to lose weight or shave, but she hadn’t; these changes were Hannah’s private, personal, unvoiced preferences,appetitesmade manifest. She had wished to be the woman of Hannah’s dreams, her perfect partner in all ways; of course she looked different. She was the incarnation of idealized attributes plucked from Hannah’s fantasies. Everyone was allowed to have those.
Knowing that didn’t change the fact that waking up in a body different from the one she was used to, even in mostly subtle ways, was … disconcerting. Throwing her off-kilter and kind of fucking with her head.Definitelydoing a wicked number on her self-esteem.
But maybe she was looking at this the wrong way. Maybe that Sam, the Sam she was, had been good,lookedgood; she just hadn’t been goodenough. And now she was. Upgraded. Sam 2.0.
Shehadalways loved these jeans.
“I’ve got a medium coquito latte at the bar for a … gosh, this is hard to read. I think it says …shenanigans?”
Her whole body tensed, left eye twitching spasmodically.
Shehadto be fucking kidding.
Sam whipped her head around and glared at the all-too-familiar barista sliding her drink across the bar.
“What the hell?” Sam asked, leaning over the counter, voice dropping to a harsh whisper as a cold knot of dread formed in her stomach. “What do you want now, Daphne?”
Daphne’s brows drew together in a look of put-upon confusion. “I’m sorry, I think you have the wrong person.” Shetapped the name tag pinned to her polo shirt. Her nails were short, painted a soft shade of bubblegum pink. “My name is Cassandra.”
“Cassandra?” Her lips pressed flat. “Seriously?”
Daphne had sure pulled that out of her ass.
“Seriously.” Daphne turned and made eye contact with the barista who’d taken Sam’s order, exchanging a look that screamedget a load of this chick. “It’s my name.”
Mm-hmm.Sure.“So your parents named you that?”
“Thatisusually how it works,” Daphne/Cassandra said, nudging Sam’s coffee closer to her. “But I’m pretty sure you shouldn’t ask people that. It’s invasive and, no offense? It’s kind of rude.”
Invasive? Rude? Don’t make her laugh.
