Page 32 of Top Shelf

Ivy draws everyone’s attention, thank God, when she lets out an outraged little noise from upstairs, followed quickly by Reid’s low voice murmuring. A moment later, the noise stops.

Carina glances toward the ceiling, then back to the table. “He’s got her.”

I’m in awe of the total trust between them. It’s the kind that lives in the bones of this house.

The kind I’ve never had.

By nine-thirty, the coffee table is covered in paper, wineglasses, pistachio shells, and the torn corner of a cracker box. Nothing is solved permanently yet, not really. I still need money I don’t have, and the landlord still wants a deposit by next Friday. The Botox people still have better capital and probably fewer empty bottles of wine in the middle of their planning sessions.

But my spreadsheet has new columns, and I have a plan to raise the deposit, which mostly includes some professionally disguised begging to prospective suppliers and sponsors.

Nia yawns on the screen, then points at me. “Send me the spreadsheet tonight before you go to bed.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Zoe closes my laptop halfway. “You’re done for tonight.”

Carina stands and starts collecting plates, and I reach for one, but she moves it out of my reach. “No stress-cleaning for you.”

“Rude.”

“You’re tired,” she says. “Go sleep, Heid.”

I pause, because yes—I’m fucking tired. But they all are, too. Zoe’s eyes are a little glassy from staring at a screen most of the night, and Nia’s in a completely different time zone that has her up way past her usual bedtime. But they’re all still here. With me. For me.

“Thank you. All of you.”

It comes out quieter than I mean it to, and Lulu’s hand reaches out and squeezes my ankle through my sock again. “We know.”

“Spreadsheet,” Nia reminds me.

“Then sleep after,” Zoe adds.

Carina holds out a Tupperware container to me. “And pasta first.”

When I leave twenty minutes later, I’m sent home with the pasta and a look from Carina that suggests she’ll know if I don’t eat it. Zoe has emailed herself the pitch notes, and Lulu has two possible names to chase for community fundraising.

This is not how I usually spend my Fridays, but the deadline is a week away, and the deposit is still too much. Once I’m in the Uber, pulling away from Carina and Reid’s, I open my notes app and start a list. It won’t solve all my problems, and it sure as shit won’t get me the studio.

But it will get me through the weekend.

Chapter six

Viktor

Gremlin has been staring at me for eleven minutes. I stare back at her, because I am not weak.

The cat sits on the arm of Reid and Carina’s couch with her paws tucked beneath her chest, her fur sticking out around her like a ginger dust cloud, and yellow eyes narrowed as though everything wrong in the world is my fault.

Ivy toddles past my legs with a wooden block in one hand and a cracker in the other. Gremlin tracks the cracker.

“No,” Reid warns from the kitchen, walking in with two mugs of coffee. “Do not feed the cat, bubba.”

Ivy looks at him for a beat, and then the cracker disappears into her own mouth, much to Gremlin’s dismay.

“Good choice,” Reid says, and hands me a mug.

“Thanks.” I take it and watch Ivy.