Page 52 of The Devil She Knows
“Nothing, just that you’re wearing my top. Which is fine.” She paused. “What happened to that dress I got you from the L’Agence sample sale last week? I laid it out.”
Sam slipped into the chair across from Hannah. “A dress … and you … you laid it out.”
Like in most apartments in the city, closet space was limited, and Hannah’s wardrobe had always occupied closer to two-thirds than half. Which had never bothered Sam until this morning when she opened the closet and had a minor anxiety attack that she didn’tactuallylive with Hannah in this apartment because Hannah’s clothes had overtaken the space entirely. It was only when she had found these jeans, this pair she hadn’t worn in years, that she calmed.
Sam, who had never cared much about what she wore as long as it was clean and comfortable and not an eyesore (or, God forbid, Louisiana-Monroe Warhawks maroon and gold), didn’t mind upping her fashion game for Hannah. Not at all.
But dresses had always been where Sam had drawn the line, no matter who was trying to dress her and no matter their intentions. As soon as Sam pulled a dress on over her head, she was transported back to sitting on a too-hard church pew, lace itching her in places she couldn’t scratch, squirming inside, feeling anything but like herself.
“The olive-green one, remember? You told me you liked the boning in the bodice. The cleaners dropped it off yesterday, so I left it hanging on the back of the door because I thought you said you wanted to wear it tonight.”
“The boning in the bodice.” Sam could scarcely imagine words less likely to come out of her mouth. “Olive green …” She laughed. “Oh, duh. The olive-green one. Right. Completely slipped my mind.” She ran her fingers down the front of her—Hannah’s—sweater, smoothing a wrinkle in the wool. “I hope you don’t mind that I borrowed this.”
Hannah smiled. “How was your day?”
“It was, you know.” There was an open bottle of red wine on the table, a nice-looking Cabernet, and Sam reached for it, filling her glass. “It was a day. I’d rather hear about yours.”
And the less Sam talked about herself, the better.
“It was a day,” Hannah joked. “No, it was good. My meeting this morning went stellar, I swear the massage I had changed my life, and I had some really exciting phone calls,butI didn’t want to spring too much good news on you as soon as you sat down.”
“I like good news.”
“You’re so impatient. Later.” Hannah smiled. “How’d the croquembouche turn out?”
“What?”
“You said that’s what you were recording today, didn’t you?”
Recording, right. “Change of plans, actually. I … I actually stopped by Glut. To, you know, see how things were going.”
“And?”
After leaving Glut, the first thing Sam had done was look Coco up online. Her Instagram profile was set to private, and Sam wasn’t following her, so dead end there, but according to LinkedIn, she’d stopped working at Glut six months ago. No current job had been listed.
“And … I don’t know.” Sam hedged. She should probably count Coco’s absence in her life as a blessing, but she was curious. “Everyone got really weird when I brought up Coco. I mean, Melissa looked like she’d seen a ghost or something.”
“No shit.” Hannah lowered her wineglass, staring incredulously across the table. “My God, I’d be surprised if Melissadidn’tlook totally weirded out. Jesus.”
Holy shit, was Cocodead?
Sam hated her more than just about anybody on this planet; she’d love nothing more than for Coco Duquette to move somewhere far,faraway. To Timbuktu, maybe. Butdead? Sam genuinely didn’t want that.
“What she did to you was terrible, Sam. I can’t believe you brought her up.”
Not dead, then. Just a bitch.Stilla bitch. No surprise there.
Hannah pursed her glossed lips. “Why are you even thinking about her?”
Because there was an afterimage of the two of them tangled up in bedsheets imprinted on the back of Sam’s eyelids that she saw each time she blinked.
She took a sip of wine, trying to wash the bad taste out of her mouth. “No reason.”
Hannah reached across the table for her hand. “Coco is nothing more than a two-faced bitch, and you, my love, need to let sleeping dogs lie. Move on.”
What in the world did Cocodoto her?
“I mean, it wasn’t that bad. What she did.” She was fishing, living on a hope and a prayer that Coco might be a perpetual pain in Sam’s ass, but she didn’t have it in her to be truly heinous. “I mean, it’s not like she stole my recipes and pawned them off as hers or something.”
