Nuri: Good coffee.
Prudence: Wow, really? Good coffee? THAT is surprising.
Nuri: It is, right?
Nuri: So did you talk to Tham?
Prudence: Yeah. I’ll call you sometime this week.
Prudence: I’m not sure how I feel about it.
PRUDENCE
I think I’m going to die of guilt.
I said I wouldn’t, but I should tell him, right? I mean, what if Tham doesn’t call him? What if Jack believes until the day he dies that our siblings did turn their back on him like our parents said? What if he misses the opportunity to reconnect with all of them?
But it’s not my place to tell him.
Okay, if Tham doesn’t call him by the end of the week, I’ll tell him. It seems fair, right? Tham said he was going to call Jack. I shouldn’t be the oneto tell him. But won’t he be mad at me for not saying anything? No. He’ll understand. We have that unspoken agreement that when they manage to reach me, he doesn’t care what they say, whether it’s about him or not.
“You’ve been awfully silent,” Jack muses, not lifting his head from his computer screen.
“Just wondering if you washed your sheet after doing the nasty with Ikram in there.”
His shoulders shake from silent laughter. I smile, shaking my head as I focus back on my tablet.
“I told you we didn’t.”
“Friday night, yes. But what about Saturday? You guys stayed in there for a while before you both left.”
He turns then, rolling his eyes. “We didn’t either. We’re taking things slow, remember?”
“How slow?” I wiggle my eyebrow and he throws a ball of paper in my face. I don’t bother avoiding it and it hits my forehead with a soft thud. “Okay, okay…” I laugh.
“The character I’m thinking about likes to fly,” he says, turning back to his computer.
I frown. “You said it wasn’t a fantasy.”
“Do with the information what you want, Sunshine, that’s the whole point of the game.”
I groan, staring at what I have so far. A forty years old hippie woman with short blond hair and large butterfly-shaped glasses, camping in the forest.
She likes to fly. Alright then.
I add fake paper wings to her arms, and change her posture so it looks like she’s running, shaking her arms, an exhilarated laugh on her face.
“So, how were your first few weeks at the precinct?” he asks, straightening up to stretch his back.
“Good. I successfully avoided Raphael, and his girlfriend is hanging around a lot. He does… glare at me most of the time we cross paths.”
“I still can’t believe he tried to make you leave. What an ass. I hope you burned the drawings you made of him.”
“Of course not. But I did draw a new one of him stepping onto a doughnut and falling, spilling a whole cup of boiling coffee on himself.”
“Nice.”
We fall back into a comfortable silence, the only sound is his fingers tapping on the keyboard and my pen sliding on the tablet.
