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easy. There was nothing strained between them.

It was nice, being able to sit in Quinn’s place and do it

again. The banter. Like they used to. Without strain. Dallas

knew that she had to talk to Quinn about what happened the

night before and that did feel strained, but she couldn’t just sit

there and put it off. She didn’t have time not to talk about the

hard stuff.

“Quinn…”

“Dallas…”

Dallas laughed. “I guess we’re both thinking the same

thing.”

“Probably. You go first. I’ll listen. To the end this time. I

promise.”

“Okay.” Dallas shifted on the stool so she could clench her

hands between her bare knees. It reminded her that she was

wearing a dress and that she was slightly uncomfortable in it.

“I- when I got the call from the lawyer, I was literally walking

down the street and had to duck into an alley. Apparently it

might be my destination of choice when it comes to hard

conversations.”

“Did that one smell like ancient, deep fried socks.”

“No. No, it smelled fine. Um- I was really shocked when I

got the call. I know you think that I moved and I put

everything behind me and just forgot about my life here, but I

didn’t. I thought about you all the time. I thought about your

family. It made me really sad to hear about your grandpa,

especially because I never got to say goodbye and then he was

gone. I know I could have. I should have done a lot of things

differently, and that hit me hard. And then when the lawyer

was saying I’d have to come back to Topeka to get money that