Page 183 of Wild Card 13

“Thank you,” I told her. “Excellent timing.”

Bea: Lucy needs therapy.

Lucy needs better friends.

Freya: Too late. We’re emotionally invested now.

Bea: Eleven. North Line. Don’t be late.

Then my screen changed. Bea changed the group name.

Group Name: SHORTCAKE SUPPORT GROUP

I stared at it. The little park remained quiet around me. Snow gathered along the shoulders of my coat. The sunset thinned farther behind the warehouses until the sky looked bruised at the edges, blue folding into violet, the last gold trapped in the upper windows of the buildings across the street.

Freya: Beautiful.

I’m deleting this chat.

Freya: No, you aren’t.

Bea: You love us.

I tolerate you.

Freya: That’s Lucy for “I’d be lost without you.”

Bea: See you at brunch.

Goodnight.

Freya: Goodnight, Shortcake.

Bea: Love you, Shortcake.

Shut up. Both of you.

I locked my phone and shoved it into my pocket. Dottie had finished her investigation and now sat in the snow beside my boot, looking up at me like she had been waiting for me to conclude whatever deeply inferior human activity had interrupted her evening.

The group name was harassment. Bea and Freya were menaces. Lo would only make it worse tomorrow because she had never once met an emotional boundary she could not soften with charm and perfectly timed pastry. Arlo would probably overfeed us and pretend he had not built an entire rooftop dining experience designed to make people feel safe enough to tell the truth.

All of that was reason enough to dread brunch.

And still, as I turned back toward my apartment with Dottie trotting beside me and snow falling quietly over Northbend, something inside me felt less alone than it had when I stepped out of the building.

By the timeI reached rooftop igloo three, brunch had already developed factions.

Bea was fighting a poached egg.

Freya was stealing potatoes with the silent commitment of a woman who believed possession was a flexible concept.

Lo sat between them in cream cashmere, gold earrings, and sunglasses pushed into her glossy hair, looking entirely too elegant for a transparent heated dome currently filled with pastry crumbs, mimosa glasses, and one deeply suspicious breakfast protein.

“No,” Bea said, pointing her fork at the egg on her side plate. “I don’t trust it.”

“It is an egg,” Freya said.

“It is pretending to be cooked.”