it, but she wasn’t ashamed to say she was a total chicken. Wings and all. She hated horror movies, hid under the covers and stayed there whenever Igor had indulged in his love of them by watching a marathon filled with gore.
“Yes, Lite-Brite. There are really bad guys. Lots of them. There’s a Boogey Man, too.”
She crooked her neck to look at the vampire, her lips pursed in disapproval. “You stop. You’ve gone too far. There is not.”
Nina leaned forward, letting her elbows rest on her knees. “You’re glowing and I have a zombie named Carl. Are you really gonna poke holes in my flippin’ words?”
Oh, my Jesus. There was a Boogey Man. “This is crazy.”
Nina nudged her with her shoulder and snorted as if the Boogey Man was one big joke. “He’s an okay dude. Just misunderstood, and if you don’t get on with this shi…crap, I’m gonna text his ass and tell him to make a camp under your Barbie bed.”
She closed her eyes and gulped. She didn’t ever, ever want to meet the Boogey Man. In fact, today, she rued the day she’d met Ingrid.
But Nina gave her a light thwack on the shoulder. “Stop freaking out, Princess. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Instantly, that warmed her. “Why are you doing this?”
Nina scrunched up her pretty face. “Because you’re Ingrid’s friend and she asked me to, dipshi…dork. She’s a good kid. I want her to be happy. If babysitting you makes her happy, then I’m all in. It’s not like she hasn’t taken a hit for us. Not to mention, she won’t let us pay her tuition for college. She said she’d earn it by working for us. Also, you helped her pass the first semester of art history, and even though you two schmoes are like ebony and ivory as far as age and anything in common go, you work. She told us you do. That’s why.”
Nina’s loyalty to Ingrid stole her breath. For all the times Ingrid had taken a stand for Nina, for all the times she’d defended her poor language and cantankerous behavior, she hadn’t been kidding when she said you had to witness Nina at her best. That was no exaggeration. Her best was like no other.
“You offered to pay her tuition?”
“Yeah, we did. Not that she’ll let us. She wants to do something with her life, and she wants to damn well earn it. I want her to have what she wants because somebody has to be her GD cheerleader. So I snatched Marty’s worn-out, Mesozoic-era pom-poms and Wanda’s stupid-ass skirt, and this is me all cheerin’ her on.”
Quinn cocked her head, dipping her chin into her scarf. Ingrid didn’t talk a lot about her home life. In fact, looking back, she’d talked more about the women of OOPS than anyone else. “What do you mean somebody has to be her cheerleader?”
“Jesus, you’re nosy. Ingrid doesn’t have any biological family. It’s just us, and Katie and her husband and kids. She’s just a kid, and no way in hell was I going to let her move to New York without someone to look out for her. So we look out for her. I look out for her. That’s why I wanted to meet you after she told us you’d offered to tutor her for free. No one does jack for frickin’ free.”
Except Nina and gang. How wonderful to have these people in Ingrid’s corner.
“I didn’t know,” she murmured, still astonished someone so outwardly callous felt something so deep.
“You don’t need to know anything else other than because she asked me to help you, I’ll do it. That doesn’t mean you and me are fuc—” She paused, clenching her teeth to keep from using foul language. Also another testament to how big Nina’s love could be. “It doesn’t mean we’re friends. So knock that girlie crap right outta your head or I’ll knock you on your ass.”
Quinn smiled when she shook her finger in reprimand. “I thought you were trying not to swear?”
“Ass isn’t a cuss word. It’s a donkey’s GD—”
But Quinn suddenly wasn’t listening. There it was again. That feeling.
And it tugged her—yanked her hard, up and toward an enormous oak tree where leaves fell in soft multicolored flutters to the ground and a couple stood, leaning against it, holding each other close, almost as though they were posing for a picture.
They were beautiful together. Long, lean, perfectly dressed against the backdrop of the overcast day.