Page 95 of A Dead Girl's Guide to Living
Or was she feeling something too?
I hated this.
I’d sworn this sort of thing off when my ex, Sarah, and I ended. I’d vowed to keep things light and flirty. Simple. Because I didn’t want mess again. I couldn’t deal with the pain where someone ripped out your heart and stomped on it before prancing off into the sunset, leaving you with the broken remains of who you used to be.
I’d stopped building futures with people in my head because I was tired of having them yanked away, or never quite living up to whatever unfair bar had been set for me.
Never being good enough.
Well, Ellis wasn’t a fling or a crush. She was just... complicated. Worn and frayed at the edges. Layered in ways I was only starting to understand.
She’d clearly had it rough in the relationship department. This Alexis girl intrigued me to no end. I was dying to ask more questions, to dig into that scar tissue she carried. God, I wanted to learn everything about her. I wanted her towantto tell me.
The most dangerous fucking thing I could do was want a girl like Ellis Langley, because I’d known from the moment she walked into my shop that she wasn’t a safe bet. And the more I got to know her, the more I dealt with her prickliness andconstant urge to keep people at arm’s length, the more certain I was that she didn’t know how to let people stay.
So of course I was attracted to her, I thought grimly. I was the girl who always fell for people who left.
“It’s ready,” she said suddenly, looking up with a satisfied grin. “This’ll have to be a selfie, can you do it again? You got the better angles last time.”
As she handed me the Polaroid camera, her fingertips grazed mine. Her full, soft-looking lips stretched into a smile, and that dangerous little flickering spark inside me grew just a bit bigger.
I already knew once this photo developed, the terror would be clear in my wide eyes.
I took my time scattering Margaret here, biting back a smile as Ellis discreetly positioned herself behind me, trying to check the wind without my noticing. This small piece of Kansas now held the spirit of a small piece of Margaret, and my heart felt a little lighter as I watched her disappear on the breeze into Kansas.
As always, Liv took the ceremony seriously, head bowed and eyes closed. Ellis joined in with more of a pained expression, her eyes darting around for anyone who might catch us in the act. The Chain of Rocks fiasco would forever be on her mind.
I grinned to myself at the memory.
Margaret would have loved it.
My heart had sloweda little as we began the drive to Catoosa, me behind the wheel so Ellis could work on editing some videos to post once we stopped for the evening. Music hummed low through the speakers, the soft, sultry voice of Lana Del Reyfilling the car. Ellis muttered, “About an hour and a half to Catoosa, give or take.”
I drummed my fingers against the wheel as I reminded myself to do a card pull for TikTok soon. I couldn’t let my channel fall by the wayside and lose the progress I had been making.
Liv was stretched along the back seat, once again using Maraget’s bag of ashes like a pillow, and she stretched like a cat soaking in the sun, and I half expected her to ask for the roof to come off again.
She didn’t.
Instead, she said, “Dove, I want to know more about you.”
I glanced into the rearview mirror with a frown. “Me?”
Liv arched a brow, and I could practically hear the sarcasm in her expression, like she was saying,Yes, obviously you.
Ellis looked up from her screen with a slight frown, green eyes flickering with interest.
“Well, what do you want to know, then?” I asked, feeling anxious. I mean, I’d spoken to Ellis before about the shop, answered her tentative questions about my art... What else was there that Liv wouldn’t already know, or hadn’t somehow overheard in her ghostly way? “My credit score?” I added with a snort. “Or my star sign? Gasp, my body count? Liv,inappropriate. Even for you.”
Liv snorted. “No. Tell me about that weird uncle, for a start, the one who was cheating on his wife while we were stealing the ashes.”
I groaned loudly and shook my head. “God, not Bill.” His name sat in the air for a moment, and I allowed myself to sit in the usual soaked bitterness that gathered in my mouth whenever I had to say it. “The man is a judgmental douche who could learn a thing or two from the book he clings to. He literally acted for years like Margaret didn’t exist, and then the moment she died,he was suddenly all about tradition and ‘honoring her properly.’ His idea of that was to stick her in a jar next to a man she hated in life, and probably in death, too.”
“That’s psychotic,” Ellis mumbled, wincing.
“Yeah, well, it felt like anI wonmove more than grief. Like he finally had the control over her he’d always wanted. He made me sick.” My voice was sharper than I meant it to be, and I huffed out a breath and shifted gears. “And my mom? Pfft. Don’t get me started. She was never Margaret’s biggest fan. She was never into the ‘woo-woo,’ as she called it. She hated the shop. Hated that I loved it. She’s a corporate lawyer. She was climbing the ladder before I even hit middle school.”
Ellis was watching me now, her phone forgotten in her lap. Liv rested between the two seats, eyes on me.
