Page 18

The next day, tired from a sleepless night, Sullivan stood on her porch watching a massive pickup tow an orange and brown RV down her driveway.

Sullivan had lived alone since Aubrey left.

The house was her safe space. Now she’d be living with an influencer again.

Sullivan would be innocently gardening or talking to a melon she was carving into a swan because…

what else did she have to do when she wasn’t working?

And there’d be Kia live streaming herself.

At least Kia wouldn’t be filming Sullivan.

It’d be like living on a movie set. There’d be cameras, lighting, lamenting about angles, but she wouldn’t be in the shot.

And she knew that if Kia did want to get her in the picture and Sullivan said no, Kia would respect that.

For all that Kia was destroying her life like a kitchen fire, Kia hadn’t knowingly done anything to hurt her.

She’d been honest and—from her pleading expression, Sullivan guessed—extremely sorry about all of it.

Aubrey had been sorry that Sullivan broke up with her.

She’d never really been sorry that she put their life on display.

The truck stopped. Kia leaned out the window and pointed to a strip of grass near the house.

“I’ll pull in there.” Kia still looked shell-shocked.

Sullivan felt sorry for her. Kia had gone from the top of the world, to losing everything, to getting it back, to getting sued, and now she was moving in with a woman who wished Kia hadn’t come back into her life.

(Although it was getting harder not to appreciate Kia’s sincerity…

and her golden-brown eyes.) Sullivan saw the wistful expression on Kia’s face when she’d said, I’d love to be them .

Maybe Kia had her own sadnesses she’d rather not put on display for Sullivan.

It made Sullivan want to call out, I really don’t hate you .

The thought died as Kia began backing her RV toward the vegetable garden.

“The garden!”

Kia was going to drive over the vegetable garden and back into a tree. It’d fall on the house. Maybe the tree would hit Sullivan. How poetic. Kia swiveled her whole body around and put the truck in reverse, pointing the RV in the general direction of the house.

“I’m really good at this.” Kia hung out the window, one hand on the steering wheel.

“Could you at least measure?” Sullivan called out.

Kia stopped the truck. She flipped up the lenses of her turquoise sunglasses.

“Yes, of course. Sure. Anything you want.” She sounded desperately eager to please and like it had never occurred to her to measure a parking spot before wedging her RV into it.

Before Sullivan realized what Kia was doing, Kia projected herself out of the truck window Dukes of Hazzard –style.

She grabbed hold of something above her head and boosted herself onto the roof of the truck.

Kia had changed into a puffy white vest—too wintry for May and too sleeveless for the rain.

It showed off well-defined muscles in her arms. It was distracting, as was the way she’d let her short Afro puffs grow into a glorious 1970s Black Power Afro.

Even wearing a T-shirt reading I TURSNICKEN she looked like a powerhouse.

The fact that she was driving a truck so big it’d give Texas an insecurity complex didn’t hurt the image, even though trucks like that destroyed the environment.

At least Kia was towing something with it.

Sullivan couldn’t stand seeing people driving trucks to pick up their dry cleaning.

“Why not use the door?” Sullivan called out.

“I’m showing off.” Kia looked down at Sullivan with a hopeful smile that said, Play along. Please?

“Trying to hold on to your point six percent?”

“I own my point six percent.” Kia held up her phone and pointed it at the tree she was about to displace.

“Are you live streaming already?” Sullivan asked.

“I have a measurement app,” Kia said, as though explaining that her truck had windshield wipers.

Kia grew still, her eyes flicking from her phone to the too-narrow space beside Sullivan’s house.

“I got it,” she said after a moment.

With that she clambered off the truck, hopped back into the driver’s seat, and as fast as if she were pulling a sedan into a parking spot, backed the RV between a tree and the vegetable garden.

“Mic drop,” she said when she got out.

Sullivan was not impressed. Not at all.

“I don’t even use the backup camera.” Kia smirked, but her smile faded as she approached Sullivan. “I’ve been backing Old Girl up for years.”

“Old Girl?”

“The RV. Because she’s vintage. I wouldn’t back her in if I wasn’t absolutely sure I knew what I was doing. Want an official tour of Old Girl?”

Sullivan would have said no except that Kia looked shy and proud, like a kid holding a drawing to her chest, eager to turn it around and share it.

Sullivan had been too fixated on the lawsuit to appreciate the RV before.

The space was much tidier than Sullivan expected.

The walls were eggshell blue with accents of a light brown around discreet crown moldings.

The door led into a sitting area with a couch and small dining table, folded out from the wall.

Across from that, a kitchenette featured white cabinets and glossy, white enamel appliances.

There were succulents in the windows, their pots anchored to the sill, and framed postcards that must have been souvenirs from Kia’s travels.

“Like it?” The way Kia asked said the answer meant a lot to her and she kept talking like she was afraid to hear what Sullivan had to say. “I bought Old Girl on eBay. She needed work. The electrical wiring was a mess.”

“Please tell me you hired an electrician to fix it?”

“Don’t worry. It’s not going to catch fire.” Kia put her hands on her hips. “Unless you come in here to flambé something in the middle of the night.”

“Because I do that all the time.”

“I don’t know. You lit my crème br?lée on fire.”

It sounded dirty, although Sullivan had literally lit her crème br?lée on fire.

They’d been standing in front of the professors, ready to exhibit, and Kia’s torch had run out of butane.

Sullivan had whisked past her, setting the rum on fire before anyone noticed.

Kia now turned and then looked back over her shoulder flirtatiously.

She looked adorable, and she looked like she was trying on an unfamiliar persona, like she didn’t know how to flirt but she’d seen people do it on TV.

Sullivan raised an eyebrow. Kia’s face morphed into embarrassment.

“Sorry.” Kia pushed her hands into her pockets. “I made that awkward.”

The space felt too small. Kia looked too pretty and too earnest. Her vest was too tight, her arms too muscular, and the desire to look at her—just to compare Kia now with Kia then—was too strong. She gave Kia an obviously appraising look.

“What do you mean? What’s awkward?” She hoped her look conveyed that’s your dirty mind, not mine .

“I collect art from all over,” Kia said, obviously changing the subject… the subject they hadn’t actually been talking about. Kia pointed to a postcard of a painting of cacti. “This is from New Mexico. They’re barrel cacti in bloom.”

The pink flowers on top of the round cacti made them look like breasts.

“Are they now?” Sullivan said.

A pretty rose glow flushed Kia’s cheeks.

“What about this one?” An accompanying photograph looked like a Georgia O’Keeffe–esque orchid which, of course, meant that it looked like a vulva. “What’s this one of?”

Kia started fussing with a loose drawer pull.

“It’s just a flower with petals that… It doesn’t look like… That’s not why I bought it. I like the purple.” She looked like she’d die from blushing.

Sullivan wasn’t sure what game they were playing, but Kia wasn’t good at it.

“You can dish it, but you can’t take it.”

“Dish what?”

“Light my crème br?lée on fire,” Sullivan said, as if to herself. “Tsk. Tsk.”

Sullivan had definitely won this round.

“The thing I really want for Old Girl is the 1968 Wind Searcher Pop-Up Pavilion,” Kia said too loudly.

“They only made them for one year. They’re these pop-up pergola-type things that you mount on top of the RV.

Then you can sleep up there or just sit and watch the sunset, and there’s no way anything can get you. ”

“Like people?”

“Like snakes. And you can hang netting to keep out bugs. I’ve been looking for one for years.”

“If you don’t want the snakes and the bugs, why do you go camping?” Sullivan had to ask.

“I don’t camp.”

“So this RV is for…?”

“My home.”

Kia hadn’t had a chance to study Sullivan’s house when she’d stumbled in covered in mud and determined to secure an engagement, like some odd version of a Jane Austen heroine.

Now she followed Sullivan in. The house definitely said old money, but in a cozy way.

Miele appliances gleamed in the kitchen.

The marble counters were spotless. White ceramic trays in the windowsills held a variety of greens that blended into the greenery outside the windows, giving the space a springlike feel.

“That’s the kitchen,” Sullivan said, although it was obvious. “Don’t cut directly on the marble. Knives are hand-wash.”

“Chef Sullivan, you dragging me? That’s low.” Kia stepped in front of Sullivan, smiling to let her know she was trying to play. “As if I would cut on your marble and then throw the knives in the dishwasher. I was not raised in a barn.”

A smile twitched at the corner of Sullivan’s mouth.

“I don’t know. Someone who’d forget to calibrate the dough sheeter before running their puff pastry dough…”

“That was one time,” Kia complained.

“And who saved your ass before you ruined the whole batch?”

“You did.” Kia pretended to huff. “But who saved your ass every time you forgot the aromatics in your beef bourguignon? How could you forget every time?”

“I was just testing you to see if you cared,” Sullivan said.

“I cared.”