Like a Best Friend | ✓

chapter nineteen

"Face it, babe, you're an influencer," I say, teasing. I know she hates that word, hates being associated with it when all she wants to do is share the love. It makes her chuckle; she leans into me and I try not to stiffen at the contact, the pleasant weight of her against me.

The drive back to Las Vegas via Lakeshore Road, which overlooks Las Vegas Bay, takes us an hour. It's a quarter after seven when we pull up outside the Cascade, after having dropped Leila off at her hotel a few miles further up the Strip. She's staying in Downtown Las Vegas, not far from the Fremont Street Experience, and she doesn't leave without getting assurance from Kitty and me that we will see her again before we go home.

I can't believe we only have three more full days here before our flight first thing Sunday morning; I don't know how to feel about it. On the one hand, I'm not ready to say goodbye to the pool and the food and the sun, but on the other, I think my heart is in desperate need of some alone time, the normalcy of work and Sally and not sharing a bed with my unrequited love.

"I know you're probably not hungry yet," Kitty says as we haul our stuff to the express elevators, "but I'm ravenous. Wanna come watch me stuff my face at the buffet?"

"Sounds like a plan," I say, suppressing a yawn that threatens to take over my entire body. I may be more of an introvert than I initially reckoned because I am socially exhausted after three days of non-stop company, even though I really like Leila and I've spent the past eleven days with Kitty. I'm in need of a poolside nap and a cosmopolitan, and possibly a feelings transplant.

At the buffet, while Kitty piles her plate high with salad and fries and three different meaty dishes from the dairy-free section, I fix myself a plate of tomato and cucumber slices – I'm not sure I've had a single fruit or vegetable for the last three days – with a bit of feta cheese and an assortment of mini desserts that have my mouth watering. A miniature tiramisu; a raspberry blondie in a cupcake liner; a tiny pot of cheesecake. It's been a few hours since my burger in Seligman and there's always space for dessert.

"Thank you for that trip," Kitty says, shoveling hot, salty, mayo-covered fries into her mouth. "That was, like, beyond epic. I can't believe we got to see all that. I had no idea Utah and Arizona are so fucking cool."

"Immensely cool," I agree, crunching a refreshing wedge of cucumber and washing it down with a swig of soda. "Thank you for bankrolling it."

"My pleasure, my darling," she says, bowing her head at me.

"Leila is the sweetest, I'm so glad we met her," I add. Now that everything's out in the open, I'm tempted to take her up on the offer to go see her in Washington sometime and check out the state's national parks.

Kitty covers her face with one hand, shaking her head, and says, "God, don't, I feel so awful that we lied to her, god, what was I thinking?"

You tell me, I think, because I've yet to get to the bottom of that.

"It's fine, she was remarkably cool about it," I say. I'm not going to go into the details of my conversation with Leila, seeing as the main reason she's so cool with all the lying is because she knows my feelings are real and, at least in her overly romantic eyes, Kitty's are too. That is not a can of worms I need to open now, when I need to sleep for twelve hours straight before I can be trusted to have a coherent thought.

"Thank fuck for that."

"She's like if a puppy was a person," I say. "One of those adorable bouncy ones with incredible hair."

Kitty raises her eyebrows at me but says nothing as she devours her brisket and fries and I wrap the raspberry blondie in a napkin to take up to our room. There's something about an all you can eat buffet that makes me want to hoard food. Chances are we'll get to the airport in a few days and I'll find a damp, sticky napkin at the bottom of my bag with a smushed blondie that never got eaten.

We're both exhausted, which is for the best. After dinner, it's only eight o'clock and Vegas's nightlife is in full swing but we come to an unspoken agreement that we're going to take it in turns to wash the day off our bodies before we collapse into our oversized bed and put on a movie that we'll probably fall asleep to.

"Are you alright?" Kitty asks as we get back to our room and I sit on the edge of the bed, looking out of the window at the Strip.

"Yeah, why?"

"I don't know, you just seem a bit ... flat?"

Well, yes, I'm emotionally exhausted and the effort of keeping my crush on you from suffocating me is sapping all of my energy, and I'm still owed about fifteen hours of sleep from the last week, and I'm just trying to get through each day without passing out from how much I want to kiss you.

"Just tired," I say, flopping onto my back.

"Okay. I'm going to have a shower."

She's in there for almost half an hour. When she comes out, her skin pink from the heat and her freshly washed hair wrapped up in a towel, I go in. The bathroom is hot, the mirror steamed up. Except for the bottom right corner, where Kitty has drawn a heart in the fog. I draw a heart next to hers. The shower smells of her body wash, the purple bottle balanced on the faucet: Pink Pineapple Sunrise, another of her Bath & Body Works favorites. I turn on the water, a few degrees cooler than Kitty had it, and I squirt a dollop into my palm, lathering it into my arms until I smell like her. And then, under the powerful jet, I cry.

*

poor fliss is going through it :/