Page 10 of A Love Most Fatal

“One of the kids started shit-talkingMacbethtoday, and I should get faculty of the year for not failing him,” she says as soon as I’m settled in at one of the desks.

“Bravo,” I say and then cut right to the chase. “Will you go with me to Rex’s wedding?”

I can’t see Jenna’s face, but I already know what she’s doing.

“Don’t roll your eyes, say yes.”

She turns back to face me after taping the last of her students’ chains, this one neon pink and green, and with a sigh, comes down from the step stool to sit across from me.

“You’re my best friend,” Jenna says.

“Thank you.”

“But I will not go with you to that tool’s wedding.”

“He’s not so bad.” I throw my hands up and lean back in my chair. “And you can’t punish me for the crimes of my family. Attending weddings together is our thing.”

Calling it ‘our thing’ is maybe a stretch, since we’ve only been to three weddings together in our five years as friends, and we have many other things we do with a much more frequent cadence: begrudgingly training for a 5k she signs us up for every October, not-so-silently judging parents when our students reveal secrets about their home lives, taste testing ice cream flavors at every shop in the city. But weddings are one of our things, and if they aren’t, then I am officially trying to make them one.

“One, I love you, but I do not want to go. Two, I think I’m seeing someone,” she says.

“Who?”

Jenna doesn’t answer right away, but a bit of a smile tugs at the sides of her mouth and she schools it to be neutral.

“Jenna. . . “

She leans on the table like she’s sharing a secret. “Do you remember the woman from the gym who we thought was checking you out because she kept staring at you when we were on the stair stepper?”

“Leopard leggings? And a kid?”

“Yes. She came up to me last week?—”

“When?” I ask.

“Thursday, you were lesson planning—anyway, hand to God, she asked if you and I were seeing each other.”

“And you said. . .”

“I said no, you’re actually my strange little brother, and then I told her that I like girls, to which she said that she’d love to take me out for drinks.”

“No fuckingway,” I slap both palms on the desk.

“Way. So we went to drinks on Friday.”

“How did you not tell me this?Dayshave passed. Did you make out?”

“Yes,” Jenna ignores the first question.

She and I have slightly different understandings of the term “best friend.” Namely, I believe we should talk on the phone once per day, even when we already have plans to see each other, and that she should send me texts when the slightest inconvenience happens. She, on the other hand, prefers to not touch her phone for sometimes tens of hours at a time.

“Hot?” I ask.

Jenna nods solemnly. “So hot.”

“This is the biggest thing that’s happened to us all year, why are you just telling me?”

“Because I knew you would react poorly when I also told you that I really can’t go to that wedding because I’m seeing her again this Friday.”