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For years, I’ve told myself it’s because neither of us wants the questions.

Wow, friends that long?

How did you meet?

I mean, innocent enough questions for most people. Not for us. Not when they involve that red night in the red room.

It’s not exactly casual conversation material.

There’s more to it than that, though.

Ari belongs to this little sealed-off part of my life. She knew me before all the armor. Before I was forced to face what I was and embrace the darkness inside.

She was there the night I did that, too.

She’s never asked me to explain any of it, or to rip myself open and show her how inky black my blood and guts really are.

Maybe that’s why we work.

“You did, trust me,” I grin. “The world is a better place now that I, and you, know that he can, in fact, fuck.”

“Oh my God,” Ari groans, squeezing her eyes shut. “Make it stop?”

“Seriously, like a god. Huge cock, too.”

“BELLA!”

I cackle. “Dude, I mean huge. Like, I struggled at first.”

Arianna loses it, jamming her fingers in her ears. “La-la-la, I am not listening!”

I slap my forearm down on the table between us with a heavy thwack. “Actual size reference.”

Ari makes a pained face and shakes her head. “I will seriously never be able to look your secret husband in the eye ever again. I mean it.”

I wink. “Sorry.”

“You are so not,” she grins.

I grin sheepishly back.

We’re sitting in the small back garden behind Bubble Trouble, the boba tea and comic shop in Hawthorne Hollow that I love. Which is great because A, boba, duh. And B, it’s as if nobody knows about the cool Japanese tea garden seating area out back, so it’s always empty, peaceful, and private.

Ari takes a sip of her drink, and the question I’ve been absently wondering about since she recommended we meet here of all places comes tumbling out.

“Okay, I thought you hated boba?”

She frowns. “I don’t⁠—”

“No, I definitely remember you trying mine a while ago and you said it made you want to puke.”

Her face heats a little as she shrugs. “I…don’t know? Tastes change, I guess?”

“Fair enough.”

My hand strays to my phone that I deliberately put face-down on the bamboo table. I stop myself just in time, and my hand retreats to my lap.

I don’t care if he’s texted me back yet.