Page 76 of Run To You
“Let’s do this,” she says, eyes a little wilder but voice steady. “But if you crash the car, Eden, I will haunt your future children.”
I refrain from telling her it’s highly unlikely I’ll have kids for her to haunt.
I salute. “I’d expect nothing less.”
We sneak out the front while Meena’s adopted grandparents step in to save Todd from any more bodily liquids ruining another shirt.
I make a note to find out where Gran and Grandad have scarpered off to. So much for wanting to spend time with their new great-grandkid. My bet is that they’re out shopping and sightseeing all day, only to come home and get the golden hours with Meena. To be fair, I think they’ve got the right idea.
We slip into my car, which has paint-splashed cloths draped over the seats. Pia just accepts it with a grunt, like she always has. I learned my lesson when I got my first car and managed to stamp a perfect ass print in white paint on the driver’s seat.
She cranks the window, sticks her head into the breeze, and for a minute, she’s the same sixteen-year-old who used to blast Bangra and call me a poser for wearing aviator shades as I drove.
Halfway down the street, she mutters, “You are a poser,” just to prove she’s psychic.
The spa is one of those new money places with a name like “Sanctum” and water features that look suspiciously like they’re about to birth a Celtic fairy. The moment we step in, the air goes quiet and cold, and a woman with an overly white set of teeth smiles before offering us ‘complimentary cucumber elixirs.’
“I see you and raise you two shots of espresso,” Pia whispers out the corner of her mouth, then answers the woman with a dazzling, slightly deranged, “Thank you.”
I want to hug her. Instead, I drink the cucumber water and immediately regret it. What in the bloody fuck is that taste? I’m a vegetarian, for fuck’s sake, but cucumber water is just too much. It’s like consuming a fusty glass of drain water.
They suit us up in matching navy robes and lead us to a relaxation room where all the furniture seems designed for Instagram, not spines. I bet it’s IKEA.
Pia immediately commandeers the pod-shaped chaise in the corner and flops onto it, phone in hand.
“I’m looking at pictures of Meena,” she announces.
“We are supposed to be disconnecting.”
“I am, I swear, but I just need to see her face for like a second.” She smiles.
We line up for the fancy ‘facial retreat,’ where a woman named Brandy plasters me in goop that smells like ass and eucalyptus. I can’t stop giggling at the tickle of the brush. Pia keeps up a steady stream of small talk with her aesthetician, drifting from Meena’s sleep cycle to why Americans don’t know what a proper cuppa is. It feels like the best version of old times: ridiculous, pointless, and safe.
Mid-mask, Pia turns her head and stares at me through a sheet of algae-green gunk. “You know you’re an asshole, right?”
“Historically proven,” I say, my mouth barely moving under the mask.
Her voice is softer, vulnerable. “I needed a break, too. I just didn’t know how to ask for it. Or who from. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful to Todd. Or to—“ She breaks off, eyes flickering ceilingward.
“Or to my parents,” I finish.
She nods. “Bit shit, isn’t it? Wanting time alone, away from your family.”
“It’s not shit. It’s human.”
I reach over the armrest and try to link pinkies with her, but the mask makes my whole hand slippery, andinstead I plant my green, sticky fist on the towel between us.
“You’re such a dork,” Pia says, and for the first time in weeks, I hear her laugh. Like, really laugh.
By the end of the session, we’re limp, greasy, and about three percent less anxious. We spend the rest of the afternoon in the spa’s sleep room, drinking overpriced tea and making lists of all the places we’ll never go now that we have mini-Pia to contend with. I keep telling her the kid will probably be a genius, exactly like Pia: smart, stubborn, and prone to friendship-based kidnapping adventures.
We talk about the advancement of mine and Sloane’s relationship, which earns me a dead arm because I didn’t immediately call Pia and tell her we were having sex again.
When the conversation is exhausted, Pia turns to me with a small frown. “Promise something?”
I brace for impact. “Sure?”
“Don’t leave me. Even if I’m being a bitch.”
