She beamed with pride. “That sounds good.”
I winked. “Good.”
Suri singsonged as she came into the room. “Guess who brought pizza?”
Aurora leaped off the couch. “Pizza?”
My head fell back against the couch cushions. “That snuggle didn’t last long.”
Suri ignored my quip. “Guadalupe, this is my best friend, Leslie. Leslie, this is Guadalupe.”
I held up my wine glass again. “Set the pizza anywhere, and hello.”
Suri swatted the back of my head. “Get up and hold out your hand, you doofus.”
I got to my feet and glared at her. “I’m not the one who asked to have company over. Remember that.”
Suri giggled. “She’s a hoot, isn’t she?”
But, this Guadalupe woman didn’t seem impressed. “That bad, huh?”
I blinked. “What’s that bad?”
Suri sighed. “She thinks it’s that bad. But it’s not that bad.”
I held out my arms. “What’s not that bad?”
Aurora scooped up a piece of pizza. “Mom, can you get me a plate?”
I didn’t even look at her. “Just eat it off the empty cardboard top. Sorry, what’s not that bad?”
Then, Guadalupe came to stand beside me. “Suri says you’ve found youralto, oscuro, y guapo, but you are uncertain where to go from here.”
I cocked my head. “Suri?”
She scurried up to my side. “Yeah?”
I slowly looked over at her. “Am I having a stroke? What did she just say?”
Suri smiled from ear to ear. “I told her that you’d found your tall, dark, and handsome man that you seemed to enjoy, but you won’t do anything about it.”
I threw my hands into the air. “Because he’s my boss, Suri!”
Aurora shoved pizza into her face. “No yelling, Mommy. That’s not nice.”
I clenched my teeth together. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure what my best friend has ingested to make her hallucinate such a thing, but I can assure you—”
This Guadalupe woman held up her hand, silencing my words before she sat down. I furrowed my brow tightly as she sat on the edge of an oversized chair that faced the television that I fell asleep in more than my bed. She offered for me to sit like I wasn’t in my own damn home, but for some reason, I obliged and sat down anyway. And after draining the rest of my wine, I crossed my legs so I could settle in for whatever insanity Suri had signed me up for tonight.
“So,” Guadalupe finally said, “you slept with your boss before you knew your boss might be your boss.”
I licked my lips. “Can we keep this down? My daughter is kind of over—”
I looked toward the pizza, but I didn’t see Aurora. And when I heard giggling filtering down the steps, I knew she had gone upstairs to play.
“Maybe not, then,” I murmured.
Suri leaned into my ear. “I put her in your room so she could watch more cartoons while we talked.”
