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I felt my shoulders relax. “You’re right.”

“What did you talk about with Mr. Perfect?”

“It was weird, Sue. After everybody left, Kai made me feel like I was the most important person in the universe. He listened to me. Really listened.”

“As he should have. And what did you talk about?”

“We talked about his brother Beau, of course.”

“Of course.”

“He wanted to know what I knew about him, and I explained I didn’t know much, but how grateful I was that he seemed to care enough about Chaos that it was okay for me to install a doggie door for her. I also told him that Beau insisted on paying for it as a modification for his house.”

“What did he think about that?”

“He was okay with it, I guess.”

“And?”

I really wanted another glass before I started talking about Kai’s near-death experience.

Fuck it.

“Are you pouring yourself another glass of wine?”

“Yes I am. Get over it. I need one.” I took a sip, not a gulp, and started talking. “Kai told me how he got injured. They thought he was going to die. He had multiple surgeries on his neck in Germany, then they sent him to Walter Reed in the states. He stayed there for eight months. They told him he wouldn’t walk. He sure proved them wrong.”

“God, Marlowe. I don’t know what to say.”

“I know, right? Then he told me how his bastard of a father had him working on those dangerous crab boats out in the Alaska ocean when he was ten years old.”

“No way.”

I nodded, then realized she couldn’t see me. “Really. Ten years old. His father was evil, Sue. Pure evil. But at least some of the crew was watching out for him.”

This time when I took a gulp of wine, Sue didn’t give me any shit.

“I asked him if anything good happened after he started working on the boat, and he told me about this one time that some of the crew members took him on a flight to a place called Sitka, and they saw some fjords. He made them sound magical.”

“You mean like in Norway?”

“Yes, with glaciers. Anyway, they also took him regular fishing, like with a rod and reel.”

“How sweet. That’s incredible that they did that.” Sue sighed. That’s why we were such good friends. When I had been busy hardening my shell after Denny, Sue was there to add big poofs of emotional cotton candy to my life. I pressed off the timer.

“Yeah, it was.”

“But Kai did do one kind of Denny thing. He looked at me whenever I drank my sweet tea. He would get all intense and stare. I’ve never felt so self-conscious sucking on a straw before.”

Sue’s laughter rang through my phone.

“What?”

“He was so imagining you sucking his dick.”

“What?” I screeched.

“You heard me. Every time you sucked on your straw, he was imagining you sucking his dick.”