“If you ever need to talk about… stuff.”
“Oh, I’m all right.” I patted his shoulder. “Just figuring things out. You did all the figuring-out in high school. I never got to. Did you know that I’d never even been to a party with alcohol before this year?”
“Really? Never?” He raised his brows. “Fine. Just don’tmake a mess. Please. This is more than a theme park. It’s my actual life and my actual friends. And don’t get thrown off the horse.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be buckled in.”
“I feel like you’d somehow find a way around that.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Don’t you have to go slip into a tasseled vest or something?”
He shot a look at his watch. “Dammit. Come watch the show later?”
“Sure.”
He gave my arm one more squeeze before tearing off through the crowd.
I had to eat something before the show. And I had to sit down. Preferably in that order.
The showwas a children’s play on a small stage between the coffee cart and the candy store. It was a watered-down version of the bank robbery and the showdown between the outlaws and the sheriff.
Sanny stood in one of the front corners of the stage and interpreted everything. He’d introduced himself as Carl, explained his role and a few words in sign language, like sheriff and bandit, before the actors had come onstage. He translated the whole show with more energy than a single person should have, with big movements and dramatic facial expressions. The kids were eating him up.
Out of all the other people on stage, I only recognized Kit Holliday, the sheriff, aka the guy who had selflessly accepted my thigh-Dorito when I first arrived.
At least I was spared another encounter with Noah. I had yet to see him in his costume, and I wasn’t sure my brain would survive the clash of Ace Ryderswaggering across my screen and winking into the camera, and Noah goddamn Young with the broomstick up his ass.
“What are you doing?” My concentration was shattered by a voice that sounded an awful lot like its owner had a broomstick up his ass.
I set my jaw and refused to look up from where I was bent over the washing machine, trying to decipher the faded instructions above the detergent drawer. “Reading.”
“Scoot over,” he grunted and set down his laundry basket.
“I can do my own laundry.” I scowled. “I watched a tutorial. I separated by colors, and I checked all the labels to get the temperature right.”
The tutorial had been for a washing machine with a little glass door in the front though, and this one opened on top, and had a completely different detergent compartment. I didn’t even want to admit how long it had taken me to figure out which one of these contraptions were washers and which ones dryers.
“Give me a break,” he muttered, earning himself a withering look. “Move before you end up flooding the entire house.”
“I’m pretty sure that only happens in the movies.” Although, to be fair, I’d only seen gunslinging cowboys in movies up until a few days ago. “Right?”
Noah raised his dark brows in response, that one streak of white hair falling across his forehead. Ugh. Fine. The alternative was another tutorial, but my phone was inmy room, charging. And my hips would prefer to avoid another upstairs trip from this tiny laundry room in the basement and back.
Grimacing, I stepped aside and gave Noah control over my washing machine.
“Pre-wash detergent for heavily stained clothes, regular detergent, fabric softener,” Noah explained while pointing out the different boxes in the drawer. He plucked the bottle from my hands and pulled a different one from the floating shelf above the row of machines. “You’re washing colors, so you use this detergent. One cap of it in the middle slot.” He poured the soupy blue slime into the detergent compartment, then grabbed yet another bottle from the shelf. I tried to mentally catalog all of that. “A splash of fabric softener is enough.”
“Not that one.” My hand jutted out to cover the detergent drawer as soon as I recognized the dumb purple flowers on the bottle. Lavender threw me back to the hospital, to being poked and prodded and scanned. They may have intended the scented pillowcases to be calming, but there were only so many nights you could spend alone in the children’s ward before the smell started to elicit Pavlovian nightmares. “I don’t like the smell of lavender.”
“All right,” he sighed and switched to a different fabric softener with pictures of honeycombs and milk on its label. Better. “Is this one to your liking, princess?”
“Yes, peasant boy, that’s agreeable,” I bit back. I hadn’t even asked him for help. He had absolutely no right to give me attitude.
“Shut the drawer, hit start, set a timer on your phone.” He rattled the instructions off as he started the machine forme. “Come back on time and put your stuff in the dryer, or someone will throw your wet clothes out to use the washer themselves.”
“Stop talking to me like I’m stupid. I’m doing this for your benefit. You have to get up close and personal with me tomorrow morning. I’m just making sure I don’t reek of sweat.”
“You’re a grown woman. You should have enough self-respect towantto wear clean clothes.”
