Page 6 of Bean
She held the door when I tried to close it. “I’m not sure you should.”
I managed to get her hand off the edge of the door, and then I slammed it, hitting the locks before turning the car on and rolling the window down. I leaned out toward her. “I’m fine.”
She raised a perfectly sculpted brow at me. “You’re fine?”
“Okay, I’m not fine, but I’m holding it together and will until I get home. Then I’m going to get really fucking drunk, fall apart for a while, and then get a job so much better than this one, I’ll forget you even existed.”
She smiled softly. “I think that’s a good plan. But before you forget me, make sure you use me for a reference.”
I wouldn’t. Fuck this place. Fuck everything about this part of my life. I wanted to burn it down. I was so goddamn done. But for her sake—and how kind she’d been—I just smiled and nodded.
That would have to be enough.
“Purple or blue polish?”
“Is that all we have?”
I rummaged through the little plastic bin of supplies Ivy had brought over, but nestled in her sea of pedicure supplies were only four bottles of polish and all of them were either purple or blue. “Looks like.”
“Blame my bi phase,” she said.
I was pretty sure she was missing a color on that flag, but what did I know? I was definitely not hip enough to know what the hell I was talking about. I pulled her foot onto my lap and squinted with one eye. I was buzzed, not drunk, but my eyes always crossed from the first sip of wine.
“I’ll take purple, babes.” She settled against the cushions with her arms behind her head and looked down before bursting into laughter. “Look at my tits!”
“You have lovely tits, Ivy.” I kept my gaze on where I was trying to position her toes so I didn’t smudge the crap out of them.
“Jarek! You’re not even looking.”
“Tits aren’t my thing,” I told her, but I glanced at her for a quick second anyway. “But yoursarelovely.”
She hummed happily. “I know.” She gripped them and shook her arms. “I always kind of thought that getting on HRT at my age, I’d miss out on this kind of stuff without breast implants. Imean, when you’ve been pumped full of testosterone for twenty-six years, you know?”
I looked up at her, and she smiled at me. “I get it. I mean, I don’tgetit, but I get it.”
“You’re drunk.”
“A little. I’ve had a bad fucking week. Sue me.”
She pulled her foot off my lap just before I was about to put on the first swipe of polish and took the bottle, capping it and setting it on the table. “Have you spoken to your brother?”
I sighed. “Briefly. I told him about the court thing.”
“Let me guess…he was pissed?”
“Ten points to you. He tried to come over, but I couldn’t deal with his brand of comfort right now. He would have taken away my wine and made me talk about my feelings.”
“The horror,” she said sarcastically and sat up straight. The space between us disappeared, and she cupped my face between her hands. “I love you so much. You should talk about your feelings, but you should definitely also have wine.”
My chest ached. I’d known Ivy for years. Back when she was still using her deadname and working weekend drag shows while telling everyone it was just a part-time thing for fun. I was there for late-night breakdowns and, eventually, the quiet confession that it wasn’t just the clothes. It wasn’t the performances. It was who she was.
Nothing had changed between us and never would.She would always be my best friend.A platonic soulmate I couldn’t live without.
I supposed it was only fair that she let me cry in her lap now that my world was turning upside down. I closed my eyes as her thumbs brushed over my cheeks. “I feel like I did something really bad and now karma is kicking the shit out of me.”
“Or you did nothing out of the ordinary and we live in a universe built around chaos and cruelty.”
I looked at her. “Let me live in the delusion that I did something wrong because it means, at some point, I can either undo it or do something to fix it.”