“Internetic relationships. Her boyfriend botted her, yesterday. She keeps telling me to make sure you stay away from my men.” “Like I’m some crazy threat. Has it ever crossed her mind that maybe she’s just a bitch?” She snaps like Victoria is there to receive it. “Does she know about you and—” Hand up to silence the thought. After the fifth ‘fingers-up-her-skirt-in-the-alley’ encounter, Aia and Eve figured their lives could stand some semblance of a ‘relationship.’ “We’re girlfriends,” Aia lent during pillowtalk, “if you want to assign a label on it that badly.” And Eve did. ‘Girlfriend’ rings better than any other. “She’d have a stroke if she found out. Then, she’d stop talking to me completely and you’d have to find someone else to brief you on all the shit she says.” Fair enough. Cada smiles. “Is Aia coming today?” Innumerable employment opportunities made themselves available to the grey-eyed woman. She took one up in a warehouse only one block away from the café, which Eve had hoped would make visits more frequent than once a night. Somehow, though, the new job reduced Aia’s presence to one check-in and one coffee a week. “Hopefully.”
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