Page 42 of Best Served Hot

‘Well, you can turn sadness into anger pretty easily,’ Alex said philosophically.

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s like a colour wheel. Sadness goes into anger like blue goes into purple.’

Nicole considered that. ‘So what can you add to guilt to make it something else? Something useful.’

‘There’s nowhere good to go with it.’

‘So you have to subtract?’

Alex thought about it. ‘I guess so. But once you mix the colours, you can’t subtract one, can you? You can’t turn the purple back into blue.’

‘What if you add a shit ton of blue back into it?’ Nicole asked.

‘How would that work emotionally? What can we pour in massive quantities into our negative feelings to cancel them out?’

Nicole shrugged. ‘Love? I guess?’

Alex sighed and forked rice into her mouth. She chewed for a while, swallowed, and said, ‘Guess I’m screwed then.’

‘You’re not screwed,’ Nicole said.

‘The last time I met someone I thought might have potential, it was Ethan. So what does that tell you?’ Alex questioned.

‘Not a lot because that’s my answer, too.’

‘You’ll be OK,’ Alex told her, waving a dismissive hand.

Nicole frowned. ‘How so?’

‘Because when this is over, you’ll meet someone. And then you’ll weed out scumbags faster because you’ll have a better antenna. The next one will be a hell of a lot better than Ethan.’

Nicole had to laugh. ‘You seem sure.’

‘Of course I am. You’re a catch. You must knowthat, for crying out loud,’ Alex said casually, sprinkling soy onto a spring roll.

Nicole couldn’t think of a single thing to say to that.

***

Once the bill was delivered, they split it and headed out.

‘Hey, we never talked about the money thing this afternoon?’ Alex noted outside as they buttoned themselves up against the cold.

‘We didn’t, did we?’ Nicole replied thoughtfully.

It was strange. She’d been dying to pour over every detail of the scene. And it hadn’t happened. Stranger than that, Nicole wasn’t that interested in it now. Her vengeance wasn’t that big of a deal tonight.

She’d been too busy hanging out with Alex. They hadn’t talked like this before. It was a break from being angry, which was quite nice. But it wasn’t just that.

Nicole watched Alex licking a little soy sauce from the corner of her mouth, and it came. The truth. It arrived in the form of another question. But this time, it wasn’t, ‘What would it be like to kiss Alex?’ No. This time it was, ‘What would it be like toloveAlex?’

Nicole couldn’t deny her feelings any longer. This had nothing to do with Ethan or understanding him. She didn’t want to kiss Alex as some kind of experiment.

Nicole just wanted her.

She didn’t have a clue what she was supposed to do with that revelation. It was too big. She needed to step back from it to understand what it meant.