Chapter Eight #3
“You don’t know me at all,” April said softly. Her eyes searched Daphne’s, the brown so dark, pupil and iris blurred together. “And what you do know is a clusterfuck.”
Daphne pressed her lips together.
“You know it’s true,” April said.
“That’s not all you are though,” Daphne said, and April’s eyes widened, her mouth parting just a little. Daphne swore her lower lip trembled a little too, but the next second April had looked away, her jaw steeled. “And I need a cluster…whatever right now.”
“First order of business,” Sasha said, “you need to use the word fuck.”
Daphne cracked a smile but stayed focused on April. “Please.”
April looked at the ceiling as though trying to see the stars again.
“Your cat already loves me,” Daphne added.
“Bob’s a traitor.”
“Bob is an excellent judge of character.”
April blew out a long breath. “This is a few too many bright new opportunities to grow if you ask me.”
“What?” Daphne asked.
“Nothing.” April knocked back the rest of her pink lady, then slammed the glass down onto the bar. “Fine. I’m in.”
Daphne felt like someone had set off a sparkler in her stomach. She squirmed on her stool, clapping quietly. “Okay, so what do we do first?”
“First?” April asked. “As in tonight? Aren’t you exhausted?”
“No time like the present,” Sasha said. “I’m off at eleven.”
“I have to do something now,” Daphne said, sliding off her barstool and bouncing around on the balls of her feet. “If I don’t, I’ll lose my nerve.”
“After two martinis, I don’t think it’s the time to go cliff diving,” April said.
Daphne stopped moving and paled. “Cliff diving? People actually do that? It’s so dangerous.”
“A true adventurer, this one,” Sasha said.
“One step at a time,” April said, taking Daphne’s arms and guiding her back onto the stool.
“Maybe I should make a list,” Daphne said, taking out her phone. She opened her Notes app, but then just blinked at the cursor.
“You don’t need a list,” Sasha said. “You just need to feel it.”
April gave Sasha a look. “My best friend lives by a list. Lists can help organize emotion.”
“Sounds horrible.”
April cracked a smile. “You’re an Aquarius rising,” she said to Sasha, tilting her head. “Am I right?”
Sasha lifted a brow, but she just grinned.
“Oh, I’m right,” April said.
Sasha turned her attention back to Daphne. “What do you want to do?”
Daphne’s shoulders dropped a little. There was so much, though to her, it all sounded either too immature or too wild. But she wanted to be brave—that was the whole point here—and maybe that started with verbalizing desires.
“I want to change my hair,” she said.
“Slow down, rebel,” Sasha said, winking.
Daphne laughed, but she didn’t feel embarrassed. Sasha’s teasing tone was sweet and supportive somehow, so she typed her idea into her app and kept going.
“I want to go skinny-dipping,” she said. “I want to kiss someone I barely know, and I want to get high, and I really do want to get a tattoo. I want to make out at the top of a Ferris wheel like in all those gay teen movies, and I want to have—”
She cut herself off, cleared her throat.
Sasha leaned closer. “Go on.”
Daphne laughed nervously, glanced at April for a split second, meeting her dark eyes, which glinted with curiosity.
She wasn’t sure why she looked April’s way—April was such a force, such a strange person in her life.
A surprise, that was for sure, but Daphne felt a pull toward her she couldn’t explain.
She looked away, focused on Sasha.
“I want to have a fling.”
Sasha’s brows lifted.
“Easy, tiger,” April said.
“Hey, I’m a helper, not a lover, in this whole adventure,” Sasha said, presenting her palms. “But I think we can definitely help you achieve those goals.”
“Yeah?” Daphne said. Her cheeks were on fire.
“Yeah,” Sasha said. “Teenage and young adult rebellion, here we come.”
“Are we going to TP our history teacher’s front yard too?” April asked.
Daphne gasped. “Oh my god, I’ve never done that.”
“I was kidding,” April said, but she was smiling. God, she really was gorgeous. Dark and brooding and a little scary, but gorgeous. Daphne stared at her for a second, while April fiddled with her full tequila glass, those lavender and teal streaks through her hair catching the dim bar lighting.
“I’m ready now,” Daphne said, sliding off her stool again.
“I don’t think we can gather that much toilet paper in time,” Sasha said. “Mia would surely notice.”
Daphne laughed. “No. I want to dye my hair. Tonight, before I can talk myself out of any of this. Are you with me?”
She looked at April again. Her stomach swooped with nerves or excitement or exhaustion, she wasn’t sure—maybe all three. Maybe everything. April watched her, then lifted her shot glass into the air.
“I’m with you,” April said.
Daphne smiled, and they clinked glasses before tossing the liquor down their throats. It burned all the way down, and Daphne loved it—a wild and queer baptism by fire.
Daphne and April shared one more shot of tequila before they headed outside into the warm summer evening. Since Sasha had to work until eleven, she couldn’t join in the hair dye extravaganza, but they all exchanged numbers for future Wildling Events, as Sasha called them.
Daphne’s head was gloriously fuzzy, the world blurry, like everything was underwater. She might be drunk.
She was definitely tipsy.
But it felt good, her whole body like rubber, her mind, her heart.
“I’ve got a ton of hair dye in my trunk,” April said, heading toward the parking lot behind the lodge. She popped her car’s trunk, then started rooting around while Daphne leaned against the cool back door. “You sure you’re up for this?”
“I’m sure,” Daphne said, her words only slightly slurred. She knew she should feel tired, but she only felt exhilarated, adrenaline and tequila cocktailing together in her blood. She not only wanted to be wild, she felt wild.
And she never wanted to feel anything else.
Never wanted to feel weak or scared or stupid again.
Never wanted to feel like a hungry kid begging for crumbs.
She took her phone out of her back pocket, stared at the blank screen for a second. No notifications. No texts or missed calls. But in this moment, that didn’t feel like a bad thing—it felt like freedom. Like a new start.
But if she was really going to start over, she had to finish something first. She needed closure, needed to be seen and heard.
So even though her head was fuzzy, and somewhere in the very back of her mind there was a tiny, reasonable voice telling her to slow down, put her phone away, she unlocked it anyway.
She tapped on Elena’s name in her text app.
Then she thumbed two tiny, devastating words into the message box.
April Evans.
“Purple or turquoise?” April said, emerging from her trunk, her eyes a bit glassy too. She held up two bottles of hair dye, shaking them in Daphne’s direction.
Daphne hesitated, but only for a moment.
“Purple,” she said, then hit send, catapulting her text message into the ether.