Page 80 of Fox
“No, I mean, is he working for Dina’s?”
“No.”
“He must’ve really fucked up if he’s stayin’ here all day.”
“He can hear you, Henry,” I point out.
Fox raises a hand, not looking up from his screen. “I’m fine with whatever you have to say, Henry.”
“It’s nice of Dina to let him work from here,” Henry adds.
“Dina is a traitor.”
I say this with love, even though I understand that a traitor who is working in your best interest is not technically a traitor, but still.
Dina has clearly had a conversation with Fox—more than one, I think, based on the evidence—and whatever he said to her, she believes him, which I know because she has stopped making theI-blame-youface when she looks at him and has started making a different face, the one she makes when she has decided how something is going to end and is waiting for everyone else to catch up.
Two weeks into this drama, which Dina’s regulars are now following with great interest, Dina puts her foot down.
“You’re being stubborn,” she accuses.
“You and I decided when we were teenagers, chicks before dicks,” I cry out.
She waves a hand and lies back on the couch, where we’re eating a pint of peach ice cream that I made two days ago.
The restaurant is closed and quiet below us.
Fox has gone home.
“Tell me why you’re being such a hardass?” she demands.
“He lied to me for two years.”
“He was confused for two years,” she protests. “There’s a difference.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“Yours. Always yours.”
“Sounds like you’re on his side right now,” I grumble.
“He’s showing up for you every day, Lucy.” She opens the quilt that’s resting on the arm of the couch and spreads it over us. “He’s with you and for you. If you’d agree to quit your job, he’d carry you around on a silk pillow.” She looks at me. “When did any man ever do that for you?”
I don’t answer.
“When did Fox ever do that?” she challenges. “Before.”
I groan out loud and look at the ceiling.
“That’s what I thought,” she says smugly.
“He said he didn’t love me, Dina. I don’t know how to get past that.”
“Why is it that you believe what you heard him say once, but you can’t believe when he says he loves you every day, five times a day?”
I flip her the finger and turn on the television.
We watch the second season ofThe Night Managerand agree that Tom Hiddleston is the bomb, and then she says that Fox does look a little like him.
