to, right?”
She smiles. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have hope. When are you going to open up to me, Toni? I’m impossible to resist forever, you know.”
The strongest man I know has found that to be true, so she might be right, but I’m in no mood for it right now, and I can’t imagine ever being there. “Not in this lifetime.”
“Do you think Lucky’s okay?” She’s trying another tack, but I can’t ignore the worry her words cause me.
“Why wouldn’t he be?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. He has issues. And I don’t think Sunny is doing so well.”
My grip on the wheel tightens. I can’t believe I’m suddenly worried about a stupid fish. “What’s wrong with it?”
“You mean with him. Watch your pronouns, girl. Sunny is a boy, he’s not an it.”
“Whatever.” I roll my eyes. I’ll never get the fish thing.
“Jenny and I had a long talk about Lucky and his relationship with Sunny. We figured out some pretty interesting things.”
I have a short laugh at that. “With no effort or input from Lucky, I suppose.” I can just see the two of them, psychoanalyzing everyone on the team, assuming a bunch of crap that isn’t there, making everything seem way more interesting than it actually is.
May sounds very satisfied with herself when she responds. “Actually, I’ll have you know that Lucky and Jenny have shared a lot of information with each other. They’ve become pretty good friends.”
I hate that this makes me jealous. They work together all the time. It would be totally natural for them to talk when they spend so many hours on the job with no one else around. Besides, the relationship between Jenny and Dev is totally solid. She’d never cheat on him.
You’d think with all this rational thought going for me, I’d be fine with the little story May is telling me, but I’m not. I’m ready to cry like a big, fat baby. I must be totally PMS-ing. My attempt at calculating my next period’s arrival date is drowned out by May’s musings.
“Lucky told Jenny that he really misses his sister, and Sunny is like his only connection to her now. I hate to think what’s going to happen to Lucky when Sunny dies. I don’t think he’s going to handle it well.”
“Lucky’s strong. He’ll be fine.”
She shakes her head. “Just because someone is strong, it doesn’t mean that they handle loss well. And it doesn’t mean they won’t fall apart when bad things happen.”
I pull up to a stop sign, annoyed at May and the stupid shit she’s talking about. I shake my head but say nothing.
“Don’t you agree? Or do you think that a strong person has to be tough a hundred percent of the time?”
I tap my thumbs on the steering wheel, not sure I even want to answer. All it will do is encourage her, and May doesn’t need any encouragement to run her mouth at sixty miles an hour.
“What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”
I shake my head. “Nope. Just not in the mood to chitchat.”
May shrugs. “That’s okay. I can chitchat enough for the both of us.”
The light turns green and I take off, right along with May’s mouth.
“Did you know that Lucky takes his fish to the vet? Could you imagine? Him sitting there in the waiting room surrounded by cats and dogs and his bowl with the goldfish in it?”
“I doubt he brings the fish over in a bowl.”
“Huh. You might be right about that. Too splashy. What do you think he uses? A Ziploc?”
“Who cares? It’s just a fish.”
“Uh-oh. You’d better be careful.”
I look over at her because she sounds genuinely concerned. “Be careful about what?”
“Be careful about blowing off things that are really important to somebody you care about.”
Now I’m genuinely angry, but I don’t think it’s May causing this emotion to well up in me. There’s a tingle of truth coming through with her words that I can’t deny. It’s just that I’m not good with the stuff she’s talking about.
Despite my misgivings, I take May’s bait. “I don’t see what the big deal is about a goldfish, even if it was his sister’s. It’s not like it’s warm-blooded. It’s not like you could cuddle up in bed with it or take it for a walk.”
May sighs. “I agree with you; dogs are much more interesting pets from my point of view, but it’s not my point of view or yours that matters, is it?”
She’s definitely waiting for