Nodding enthusiastically, Cora let out a breath. “Yeah. Good. I like that plan.”

“You manage to talk to Frazer?”

“Uh…”

“Did you just kiss her and hope she’d get it?”

“Um…no.” Cora busied herself by finding a knife to cut the cake.

“Cora! That was a joke. You so did, didn’t you?”

Cora waved the knife in her hand around. “She was ranting and angry—”

“With pretty good reason…”

“Yeah, okay. With good reason. But I couldn’t get a word in edgewise, and I thought she’d just, you know, get it once I kissed her.”

“How’d that go?”

Cora sighed and walked back over to cut cake. Changing her mind, she went back to the drawer and just held up two forks.

Lisa smirked. “That well, huh?”

“She told me to stay away from her and stormed out.”

“Cora…”

Stabbing her fork into the cake, Cora looked at her hopefully. “Yeah?”

“You’re an idiot.”

She sighed. “I know.”

Lisa sat opposite her and starting attacking the cake as Cora chewed on her bite. “Did you get your keys to the new place?”

“Yup. Want to come to Ikea with me? It only occurred to me an hour ago that all my furniture is at the old house.”

Lisa’s eyes lit up. “Can we have lunch there?”

“Of course.”

“I can buy plants.”

“You have a thousand plants.”

“And I need more.”

Cora scoffed. “Yeah, okay.”

“So. What’s your plan?”

Groaning, Cora dropped her head on the table. “I had an epiphany today. Can’t that be enough?”

Lisa’s hand patted her head.

“Yeah. It can be.”

* * *

The smell of chlorine still clung to Frazer, and she was starting to regret showering at the gym rather than at home. Sometimes she wondered if they sourced the shower water from the pool. Glaring at some guy sleeping with her sister as they carried on an inappropriate affair—not that Frazer was one to talk—would pack less punch if she smelt like a swimming pool.

Parking her car on a residential street that would probably get her a fine, Frazer walked to the restaurant. The swim had left her with aching muscles and an ache in her stomach. The pounding of her arms through the water and the silence only swimming brought still hadn’t been enough to defuse the choking anger at Cora.

Or the situation in general.

The breeze from the ocean washed over her. As she often did, she wished she lived closer to the beach. She was only a thirty-minute drive away, yet it would be so nice to be a walk away, to drive past it every day to and from work and remember that she wasn’t surrounded by people but really by a huge stretch of water. The salty air was intoxicating.