my voice, looked around. “I need to make sure my friend and I are going to be safe. I’m still having problems.”
She peered back at me, paper-thin wrinkles bunched up around discerning eyes. “I understand nah, baby, but you may have somethin’ different on your hands. Somethin’ that won’t respond to these spells, ya hear? You don’ wanna be messin’ with--”
“Please, Vivienne. I need all the help I can get.”
What seemed a full minute passed before she looked down at the papers and smacked her lips together, nodded, led me to the shelves.
“Remember nah, this is just extra protection. This won’t take the place of a good ol’ fashioned jail cell, ya hear?” She placed bags of herbs and roots in my hands.
I nodded and handed her the last of my money.
“Somethin’ just not right,” she mumbled, but I was already rushing toward the door.
At the airport terminal, I saw her first, so I was able to see her reaction when she spotted me through the crowds of people. Her face beamed with that same giddy look she got in middle school whenever I announced I was having a slumber party. With her around, I knew that seeing things through a child’s eyes again would be as easy as breathing.
I rushed over to hug her, nearly knocking her down in collision. She laughed, pulling away from my embrace to look at me. “I just got here and you’re already trying to kill me, woman!”
“Can you blame me?” I shot back. “You nearly killed me, making me wait a year and a half to see you! I was having panic attacks down here, ya know.” As pure as she was, Audrey had a sarcasm I appreciated, something I believed made our bond even tighter.
“Well you know you could’ve come to Seattle to see me too,” she said. “You’ve practically written the place off!” She stopped at my expression. “Cam, you know I’m just giving you a hard time. I know Seattle’s the last place you’d want to visit. I get it.”
She tapped the side of my arm and picked up her luggage from where she’d dropped it. “Now, can we please get out of here? It’s giving me a headache!”
“Absolutely,” I said.
“Good. I’m starving, and I have so much to tell you! But I need to eat something, like right now. Can we pleeeeease hurry up?”
I had to laugh. “Sure. We’ll stop on the way to the house. That is, if you can control your appetite for a whole twenty minutes.”
She rolled her big blue eyes. “Don’t start with me. It’s not the smartest idea to mess with a cranky, hungry woman who’s been on a plane all morning. Let me get something in my stomach before you start giving me attitude, so I at least have some energy in me to fight back!” She nudged me with her elbow as we headed to leave.
I nudged her back. “It’s good to see you, too.”
Before we knew it, it was almost dusk. After breakfast we’d shopped, so we decided to hang out at home that night. Once we finished dinner, we headed out to walk around the neighborhood like we used to back in Seattle, to reminisce and catch up. Though there was no one on the planet I would confide in except her, I still didn’t want to tell her the truth.
“So you know I’m bound to ask,” she began while we walked down the rugged road past a sugarcane field. “You might as well just come out with it and save me the trouble of prying it out of you.”
I tried. “Audrey, there’s nothing to tell.” Then I sighed, realizing I was already defeated. “Can we please talk about what’s going on with you some more? You never told me about what happened with Brian, or how your spring classes went.”
She gathered her dirty blonde hair into her hands and tied it up into a ponytail. As she did, she said, “Brian’s history, good riddance. Classes were good. Same old, same old. Now. Who is he? And why won’t you talk to me about him? I mean, all the times we’ve talked on the phone, and you just dance around the subject.”
She raised her eyebrows at me, waiting. I watched a family of ducks waddle by, crossing the street in front of us. “You know, I really admire their simple lives,” I said. “Eat, sleep, repeat.” I glanced up to examine the soft palette of colors in the sky.
“Yeah, the