Jessie set two overly full fountain drinks on the small table and flopped down into the empty chair. “Rock climbing is thirsty work.”
Cat Chen, her new friend from Seahaven Academy of the Arts, smiled around her straw and took a long drink as she adjusted her harness. “Fun though.”
Jessie took several long swallows and nodded. “I’m glad we did this today. It’s been a rough month, and like half my house is in mourning. I feel bad for them and everything, it’s just…”
“A little much sometimes?”
“Yeah, a lot much sometimes. It’s good to get out of the house someplace that’s not school or the store.”
Cat grinned at her over her enormous Styrofoam cup. “I love the store. I can’t believe I’ve been going shopping in the Historical District my whole life and never noticed it before. Winter makes the best stuff.”
Jessie took another sip to figure out how to react. Cat had never noticed Curiosity’s because without a magical spark, she wasn’t supposed to notice it. Jessie could actually get into some trouble with the Servants of the Eldest for letting Cat in on any of the thousands of secrets Seahaven’s preternatural community hid from the humans all around them, but it wasn’t fair. Cat was her friend, and Jessie didn’t want to hold her at arm’s length. Winter had given her cautious permission to let Cat in on some of their lives. She’d been to Curiosity’s last week, and they were planning for her to come out to the house next weekend. If she took the moving woodwork and obvious bits of magic okay, and Jessie was pretty sure she would, then she would become a human in the know, under Winter’s supervision and protection. If she freaked out, then Winter would have to use her forgetting potion, and Jessie would have to keep Cat away. But she couldn’t tell Cat any of this just yet, so instead she sucked down a generous amount of her drink and waved at Cian, who was back down on the ground and looking around for them.
His return smile had enough wattage to make it seem like the rest of the climbing gym dimmed in comparison, but he didn’t mean anything by it. He smiled at all of his friends that way. It wasn’t his fault he had a smile that could stop traffic. He was gone on Winter and Etienne and maybe Alerich, too? Jessie had noticed that those two were spending an awful lot of time together reading at night, but she hadn’t asked Cian about it, yet. Then again, she’d been pretty busy herself with Rick’s friend, Fitz. Thinking about Fitz made her lips turn up and things low in her body move.
Cat grinned at her from the other side of the table. “Is that he’s-so-sexy smile for Cian or someone else?”
Jessie blinked. “Cian? No, we don’t see each other that way. He’s more like a brother than anything.”
Cat’s grin widened, and she looked over to where Cian and Brian were getting notes on their last climb and advice for their next one. “Someone else over there, then?” She bit her lip and wiggled her dark eyebrows in suggestion.
“Stop it. You know I’m dating Fitz.”
Cat’s face fell into something a little more glum. “I don’t see why, when that amazing boy,” and here she gestured across the food court to Brian’s muscular back, “is right here.”
Jessie scowled. It wasn’t the first time Cat had mentioned her preference of Brian over Fitz for Jessie’s romantic dance card. Not even the first time today. “There’s nothing wrong with Fitz.”
Cat snorted. “You mean besides the alcoholism, the snark, and the him being almost thirty?”
Jessie shifted a little in her chair and her expression turned mulish. “He’s twenty-eight, not thirty, and I’m snarky, too.”
“Oh yes, ‘cus that particular two years makes all the difference when you’re seventeen.” Cat’s eyes practically rolled out of her head. “It just seems a little creeptastic to me.”
“So, you’ve said. A number of times. Fitz makes me happy.”
Cat narrowed one eye and tilted her head. “Does he, though? Just last night, you told me he was driving you crazy, picking at what he thinks of as your ‘faults.’” Her fingers made air quotes to emphasize the word. “I don’t see how a guy who is trying to drink himself into an early grave has the right to criticize anyone else.”
Jessie felt her face redden. “You don’t know him. You don’t know what life has been like for him. What his father was like. Fitz drinks because he’s in pain.”
Cat looked at Jessie with something like pity in her eyes. “And now, so do you.”
Jessie slammed her palm down on the table, making their drinks and other patrons jump. Brian and Cian looked their way and Jessie waved them off. “You don’t know everything about me, either. You don’t know what I’ve been through.” She could hear herself screaming while that red-headed freak tortured her over and over. She shuttered her eyes over the tears that threatened to escape. “You don’t know.”
Cat took Jessie’s hand and held it carefully, her voice quiet and soothing. “I know enough to know that drowning whatever happened to you is only going to cause problems, especially with what you’ve told me about your parents. Jessie, if Fitz cared about you, he wouldn’t want you drinking yourself stupid every night.”
Jessie snatched her hand away and glared at Cat. “I don’t drink myself stupid. I can handle it. Fitz loves me.”
Cat sighed and leaned against the back of her chair. “Does he, though?”
Jessie cut off whatever Cat was going to ask. “Yes, he does. Can we please have a new topic?”
Cat nodded, but Jessie knew this would not be the last time her friend questioned her relationship with the deaf wizard. Cat and Winter, hell even Cian had said he was surprised by her choice. They would all be happier if she dumped Fitz for Brian. But she wasn’t good enough for Brian, and none of them could see that. Brian was special. He was a Hero for god’s sake — strength of ten men because his heart was pure and all that. And she was just…
Damaged. She was damaged in a way Brian wouldn’t understand but Fitz did. Fitz didn’t ask her what was wrong when she woke up screaming in the night. He didn’t have to. He had been through similar things himself. His and hers traumas. Jessie wasn’t sure if that thought made her want to laugh or cry. Maybe both. She took another long sip from her drink. “Let’s go climb again, okay?”
Cat looked like she wanted to say something, but instead she just nodded. “Sure. Let’s climb.”
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