Page 12 of Lethal in Pink

“Amiyah.”

“Penelope.”

“I just—I feel like you’ve been overworking lately, in my opinion.”

I roll my eyes, though she can’t see me. “I’m fine.”

I can hear her clicking her tongue against her teeth, then, “Just…try to have fun while you’re at it, yeah?”

“Fun,” I repeat, as though she’s just suggested I take up competitive yodeling. “Define fun.”

“Fun. Noun. An activity that brings you joy and doesn’t involve a kill list or a practice essay. You know, the thing normal people do when they have three weeks of freedom.”

And I thought I was a smart ass.

I know she’s just worried and I love her so much for that. She truly is the bestest friend a girl could ever have.

“Fine,” I say, and I mean it, mostly. “I’ll try to have fun. I’ll even take pictures. You’ll get a postcard.”

“With a stamp? Like, a physical stamp?”

“I’ll hand-deliver it. I’ll break into your apartment at 3am and slip it under your pillow while your sleeping just like that one guy did to old girl in that one dark romance book you like so much.”

“That’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“I know. I’m quite the catch.”

We talk for a few more minutes and then say our goodbyes. I press the end button on my phone and pour myself a glass of red wine and take a sip. It’s dry, but good. Really good. I let it sit on my tongue for a moment before swallowing, savoring the subtle notes of blackberry and something earthy underneath.

I carry the glass and the bottle to my blush-toned sectional and I curl into the corner, knees drawn up, wine glass balanced on the armrest, and I grab my case law book that’s sitting on the coffee table where I left it two nights ago. I open it up, take the bookmark out, and continue where I left off.

Before I know it, I’m three glasses deep and my eyes are growing heavy. The words on the page have started doing that thing where they blur and swim and rearrange themselves into shapes that don’t mean anything, and I realize I’ve read the same sentence four times without absorbing a single syllable.

That’s my sign.

I put the bookmark back in the book, close it, and place it back on the coffee table for tomorrow me to deal with.

Right now, this girl needs her beauty sleep.

Chapter four

Jae

The silence that follows my request has a specific gravity to it, the kind that pulls at your sternum and makes your ears ring. I am standing, which says a lot—I started this conversation seated and polite and somewhere in the last twenty minutes, my body decided it needed vertical real estate to survive this conversation.

My dad is holding his planner, open and limp in his hands and my mother’s thumb is working slow circles against her wedding band. The tea between us went has long gone cold, though none of us have mentioned it.

The sitting room does what sitting rooms in houses like this are designed to do: it makes everything look deliberate. The huge windows that go from the floor to the ceiling make the Han River look like a work of art, even if it's not really that exciting. The water just lies there, flat and gray, like a big piece of metal in the afternoon sun. Over in the corner, the grand piano sits quietly, its keys covered in a thin layer of dust.

Nobody really plays it, except maybe when we're trying to impress some guests. Even then, it's more like a decoration than a real instrument.

Along the east wall, platinum records hang in backlit frames. Twelve of them. Crown & Throne’s greatest hits, the ones that built the empire, the ones that paid for this view. Each frame is precisely level, each record angled at exactly the same degree of presentation. I remember my dad using a laser level to hang them himself, making sure everything was just so.

Two velvet sofas face each other across a low lacquered coffee table. My mother sits on one. My father sits on the other. The space between us is approximately the width of everything we’re not saying.

I begin counting in my head.

One Mississippi.