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“No,” I interjected. “I have Jude.”
There was a moment of silence where everyone looked to Rhodes for an answer, but he merely shook his head.
“You can’t bring my brother as emergency equipment,” Rhodes told me.
“He can pick locks!” I exclaimed.
“Elevators don’t have locks,” he countered.
“He’d figure it out.”
“That’s an alarming amount of faith to put in Jude,” he replied, and I didn’t miss the doubt in his voice. Oh, how little he knew his brother.
“You didn’t hear the confidence with which he told us he could probably crack a safe,” I said.
“Your brother can crack safes?” Sariah demanded.
“No!” Rhodes waved her off.
“No, he said he could probably figure it out,” I corrected.
“That’s not better,” he scoffed, shaking his head.
“Okay, next question,” Billie jumped in before the conversation could derail over Jude’s safe-cracking abilities. “Hot dog. Is it a sandwich, or no?”
“What?” I laughed. “It’s not a sandwich.”
“Why?” she pressed.
“Because a hot dog is a hot dog.”
“That’s circular reasoning,” Billie replied.
“No, that’s just classification,” I retorted, trying to sound more confident than I was.
“You’re just saying words with confidence,” she said as she caught on.
“That’s how most arguments work,” I shot back, and Rhodes snorted beside me.
“Don’t you encourage him, Starboy,” Billie snapped, pointing at him accusingly.
At the other end of the table, Grady leaned around Asher to get my attention.
“If every animal could suddenly talk,” he began, “which one do you believe would be the rudest?”
“Cats,” I answered without thinking. Half the table objected almost as quickly.
“Absolutely fucking not,” Frankie replied heatedly as if she was personally offended by my answer. That didn’t stop me.
“You can’t tell me cats wouldn’t be assholes,” I said.
“They’d be honest,” she countered.
“That’s what assholes say when they’re assholes,” I told her, and Sloane nearly choked on his drink. Rhodes’ hand tightened on my thigh as he laughed hard. When he glanced at me, I merely shrugged.
“Okay!” Sloane announced loudly as he stopped coughing. “It’s the zombie apocalypse. You’ve got everyone at this table. Who dies first?”
“Rhodes,” the whole table answered in unison. The sheer volume and agreement floored me, and I fell silent to watch how it played out.
