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“Mm-hm.” She kicked her feet up, looking down at her rainbow socks. “What do you think the ideal form of you is like?”

“Ugh. Cooler and more interesting.”

“More interesting than the person who runs a lizard breeding camp in her spare bedroom?” She laughed. I scowled.

“Who even spilled the deets about the Ultimate Lizard? That was supposed to be a top-secret ultra-confidential high-security containment situation only verified top-clearance secure intel could pick up.”

“Emberlynn told me.”

“Damn.” I slumped back against the door. “For real, though, I don’t know. And I think it’d be too weird to try doing anything about it.”

“How come?”

“Because—this is how Iam.Like, everybody knows me. I just have my reputation, you know? And people get weird if you go back on your reputation.”

“Mm… no kidding.” She dropped her gaze to the ground. “I get that. Totally.”

“So you admit all I can do is be a weird loser for the rest of eternity.”

“That’s a really remarkable leap. I don’t think that, actually, but I’m really impressed by the leap, so I have to give credit where it’s due.” She smiled softly at me. “I feel like you shouldprobably talk to Emberlynn, you know? Like… she gets you in a way nobody else does.”

“Ugh, that’s theproblem.She’s all caught up in how shethinksI should be. She’s got years of me already catalogued in her mind, and plus, she’s a permanent fixture now, too, which means if I make any weird random changes then it’s going to be something stuck there in our memory forever, and oh mygodKay you’re a genius,” I blurted, standing up, a hot rush in my head all of a sudden. She stood up with me, blinking fast.

“I—what?”

“Oh my god, you’resoright. You are just like Benjamin Franklin because you areon the money.”

“Th-thank you?”

I clapped my hands together, spinning on my heel, and I threw open the door back into the house. “Okay, great talk, Kay! I gotta go. I’ve got stuff to do. Places to do. People to do. Ew. Never mind that last part. I’m gonna run.”

“Paisley—your food!”

I paused next to the table and scraped the last third of my strawberries and cream into my mouth, and I slammed the tea back before I took off.

Chapter 7

Harper

The noodles were great. Lance, a man with the world’s most intense expression and a glass eye, cooked them to exacting perfection in the open kitchen every time, that sterling-silver masculine glare of his lit in stark contrast by licking flames, and whenever I saw him in the kitchen I knew the noodles were going to be good. He didn’t disappoint.

Emberlynn had clearly been looking for an outlet—she dumped topics on me for about thirty solid minutes without me getting a word in, not that I could have if I wanted to, knowing nothing about everything she was saying. Mixer standards and licensing for samples and an argument about vocal chops, inane crossfade presets, and an irrational amount of anger at Ableton—like a good friend, I listened along, nodding, agreeing with whatever the hell she was talking about, and she looked like she could breathe again once we got to the end of her rant.

“I’m so sorry, I got so carried away,” she laughed nervously. “Do you want to listen to what I have so far? It’s hot garbage, but at least there might be a line in there somewhere.”

“Hit me.”

It wasn’t hot garbage at all, no surprise Emberlynn was underselling herself. Unlike last time she’d taken a gig with this label, she hadn’t lost herself—her style was still clearly there, a clean and classic beat that was danceable through and through, even if it was still basic and underworked. Still, she looked like she was confessing to a murder. Poor girl was up in her head something major.

“Before I tell you what I think,” I said, “I’m curious what you think.”

“I don’tknow.Maybe it’s brilliant, probably it’s all trash.”

“If you had to guess what I was going to say about it…”

“Youkind of like it, in a way?”

I smiled wryly. “Much more enthusiastic than that. I think it’s good. I think you’re doubting yourself too much.”