Sleet Banshee by S.J. Tilly
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
MEGHAN
“K
atelyn…” I use my best scoldingtone.
“What?” she replies, full of false innocence.
“Don’t get cute with me, you whore.”
“How does one 'get cute' over the phone. Hmm?”
“What is wrong with you?! Don’t you think a little heads-up would’ve been the nice, friendly thing to do? '... Oh, hey Meghan,' ” I try to imitate her voice, “... since we just had an A&E -style intervention with you last week about keeping secrets, I figured I should probably mention that Sebastian’s twin-fucking-brother is my connection at the museum!” My imitation wears off as my voice raises to a yell.
There’s a pause. “Okay, but tell me you don’t love Samuel.”
I let my head fall gently against my kitchen counter in defeat. “Of course I love him. That man is pure happiness.”
“And would you have gone if I’d told you who he was?”
“It’s probably 50/50,” I admit.
“And aren’t you glad you went?”
“Ugh, yes mom.”
“See? No harm, no foul. It’s not like I set you up with Sebastian.”
My chuckle is muffled, since my face is still pressed against my counter. “Didn’t I mention? Sebastian showed up.”
Katelyn’s shrill sound of joy has me pulling the phone away from my ear and changing the audio to speaker.
“Holy crap, shut up!” she shouts. And I’m pretty sure I can hear her clapping. “You know what this means, right?”
“Like, yeah!” - I go full Valley Girl. “It means he’s going to be like, a total - like - pain in my ass.”
“Now who’s being cute?” I can 100% picture the smug face she’s giving me right now. “It means… that he likes you.”
“Likes me?” I scoff. “What are we, 12?”
“God, you can be such a dense bitch sometimes,” Katelyn drops all pretense. “If he didn’t like you. If he was all butthurt about you tossing that drink in his face. If his ego was sore about you blowing him off for three months. If he didn’t still jerk off to the memory of you two boinking. Then he wouldn’t go out of his way to crash your walk-through, with his brother, at the museum.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah, huh.”
“And did you seriously just say boinking?”
She ignores me. “Let me ask you this. Was he surprised to see you? Did you stumble into their weekly bro lunch or something?”
“No. Honestly, he didn’t look the least bit surprised to see me.”
“See?”
“Ugh. Yeah okay. You’re probably right.” I start to pace my kitchen. “Sebastian was waiting for us up in the event space.”
More shrill sounds from Katelyn.
“Alright,” I say. “I’m gonna need you to take it down about a thousand notches. Just because he was there, possibly looking for me, doesn’t mean anything spectacular. It’s not like it was some declaration of love or anything. He might just be trying to get a replay of the alley scene. And he didn’t say anything special to me when I left.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, there was no “let’s get together sometime," or “I’ll call you," or anything like that. He was dicking around on his phone in the lobby while Samuel and I were in the office looking at schedules. And when I left, it was just Goodnight, Banshee, nothing more.”
“Banshee.” Katelyn giggles.
“Oh shut it, Kitten.”
“Well,” she sighs. “You never know. Maybe he’ll call you. Or maybe he’ll just appear again.”
