She bent down and buried her face in her hands. "What's the point? It's not like you can help."
That sounded bad.I closed the distance and sat down beside her. "But why not? I mean, I can try, right?"
With a shuddering sigh, she sat up and turned to look at me. "You know that old saying, curiosity killed the cat?"
I did, but it wasn't my favorite. "Sure, why?"
When she answered with only a shrug, I snuck a quick glance at the cats on the windowsill. Most of them were still looking out through the glass, although for the life of me, I couldn’t imagine why.
Outside, it was still dark, and the guys were long-gone – Drake to who-knows-where and Cole to his office. Turns out, that was exactly where he'd been heading becausehe'dbeen having sleep issues, too.Funny how that worked.
At the thought of Cole, I almost smiled. He'd caught me on his porch how long ago?
An hour? Maybe less?
And yet, it felt like a lifetime considering how much had changed between then and now. To think, he'd been avoiding me only because he'd thought I was seeing somebody else.
Considering that I wasn't – and that his reasons for thinking such a thing actually made sense – I was feeling happier than I had all week.
But I wanted Gwen to be happy, too. She was normally so optimistic that to see her like this was more than a little unsettling.
I gave her a sympathetic look. "So…with the curiosity thing, who's the cat? Do you mean you?"
She practically groaned, "Oh, yeah."
"And…you were curious about what?"
She sighed. "Okay, you know, I'm not the most spontaneous person, right?"
"Yeah, but that's agoodthing. I mean,someone'sgotta keep us sane."
"See? That's just it," she said. "Sometimes,Iwanna get crazy, too."
Gwen was a lot of things, but never crazy. She was the most grounded person I knew. "So, is that where Drake comes in?"
With a humorless laugh, she replied, "Actually,he'sthe crazy one."
Somehow I wasn't surprised. "And he made you curious?"
"Yeah,toocurious." She rolled her eyes. "Obviously. And you know, he brings out the worst in me."
In truth, I didn't know much of anything. "He does?"
"Totally." She glanced down at her robe. "Just think about it. I was outside in my bathrobe.Yelling.Who does that?"
Actually, her mother did that – quite a bit from what I'd seen over the years. Probably, this went a long way in explaining why Gwen was so responsible. She was the oldest of three kids, andsomeonehad to be the grown-up.
I reached out and squeezed her hand. "You'renotyour mom. You know that, right?"
"IknowI'm not." She yanked her hand from my grip. "That's the whole point."
I drew back. "I know. I just said that."
"Yeah, becauseyourmom is perfectly normal." Gwen sank lower on the sofa. "I bet she bakes Christmas cookies, too."
Her mom andmymom were sisters. Over the years, Gwen had eaten plenty of my mom's homemade cookies. She'd helped bake some, too, mostly when we were kids. "Uh, yeah," I stammered. "Youknowshe does."
"I know," Gwen snapped. "That's the whole point."
