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I don’t know if he’s okay.
I wish I knew where he was.
Before I can decide whether or not I’m going to try calling him again, Chip plops onto the step beside me holding an overcrowded jar of scrambling hostages. With his short, curly hair swept up into a tiny bun, he looks ridiculous, and I don’t know where he, his wife, or Briar get all their energy from.
“You gonna catch any, Boss?” he asks.
I lift my jar. “I have my best man on the task.”
Chip watches me for one, long, chilling moment, then he whispers at his jar of fireflies, “Should we tell him Bossette isn’t a man? No? Fair.” Reclining, he drops the conspiratorial tone in favor of a brilliant smile. “Always best to let the delusional remain in their merry worlds for as long as they can.”
Delusional, huh?
I wonder how much of last night got back to him and Lace. They’re all close. Really close.
A kind of close I don’t think I’ve ever dreamed of.
The more I get to know Briar’s friends, the more I understand why they work so well together. They operate on the same wavelength, bursting with the same inexplicable energy. Each of them carries this just escaped from an institution edge that I can’t explain. And I’m not certain I want to try.
Somehow, they’ve figured out how to be themselves without a single drop of shame.
For someone like me, being around people like them is comforting.
Even if I am all the horrible things Briar said last night, if they don’t have to be ashamed of their horrible things, why should I be? It’s like Briar told me, once. Here, there’s no wrong answers. If we’re all bad, we don’t need to fear being worse.
My eyes trace back to Briar, who’s leaping for a firefly that drifted out of her reach. The tiny creature slips through her fingers, and her expression turns distraught a moment before Lace’s hand falls on her shoulder. The taller woman nods. Then she bounds into the air, swipes, and presents her quarry with the smuggest look I’ve ever seen etched across a person’s face.
Beside me, also watching, Chip sighs. “My wife is amazing, and I love her.”
In a field full of fireflies, she caught the least convenient one. Eyeing him, I mutter, “Yeah, she’s something else.”
Still bright and lovesick as ever, Chip tilts his head my way. Conversationally, he says, “Just so you know, I’ll do worse than murder for those girls. If you hurt my bossette, I’ll strip layers of your skin off to make hyper-realistic dolls, slowly surrounding you with them until you go insane.”
What…the f—
I exhale the swear in my head and release it. Nope. Not even surprised. Disturbed, sure, but not surprised. I should commend him on the creativity. Most of the threats I hear fall somewhere between mundane and tired. Props to him for threatening outside the box. Scrubbing my eyes, I murmur, “How’d you get tied up in this world?”
He hums. “Took my oath ten or more years back. I was seventeen. On the streets. Briar’s father pulled up where I was panhandling and told me to get in. I met Briar and Lace in the backseat where Lace told me she’d remove my liver if I ogled the young bossette. I’ve been smitten ever since.”
I trace the raised line of a letter on my mason jar. “Homicidal tendencies is an interesting trait to favor.”
Chip grins, all dimples, and rustles his curly hair as a warm breeze drifts by. “I can still picture them in that moment—night and day. Lace done up with curls in ivory. Briar hardly wearing two scraps of leather.”
My brow furrows as I take in the stark opposite descriptions before me now. Even though I gave Briar the least frilly of her dresses to wear this morning, it is still pastel and elegant. While, beside her, Lace looks like a punk rocker. “What?”
“Oh, sure. Briar’s always gone back and forth between being a pretty princess and an emo nightmare every other day, but Lace goes through phases. At one point, she opted to look like a porcelain doll while making grown men cry.”
…girls will be girls, I guess.
Chip swears. “I got addicted to the way she explores being alive. I still am.” Setting his jar down, he rests back on his palms. “When you have nothing, you fall easy. If someone catches you—even for just a moment—you don’t stop falling.” Chip’s smile fades. The last glow of dusk catches and holds in his eyes, drawing on the lightest shades of green in his irises. “Briar’s never been in love before, Boss.”
My fingers flinch against my jar.
“Please trust that she’s kind. No matter what happens. She’s a good girl. She does her very best. But, in a lot of ways, she doesn’t have a clue.” Breath fills him, releasing slowly. “Just look at her.”
I do. The sky’s darkened since we came out her. The world’s laced in lavender shadows and navy trim. In the inky space broken only by glittering flecks, she’s gold.
Right now, last night didn’t happen.
