Daniella was still wearing the vestiges of last night’s eyeliner. Though most of the mascara was probably now deposited under her eyes. And she kept reaching out for the nearest piece of furniture in order to get ahold of her body’s delightful waves of nausea. Her peroxide-blond hair was fuzzy all over—the effects of having thick, wavy dark brown hair that had been bleached to hell and back. She usually smoothed oil or cream through her strands to keep them from fluffing out in all directions. But Daniella hadn’t had time to do that this morning. She didn’t know why she was so acutely aware of her hair right now. She could picture it—bleached and fried and pointing out in all directions, with no discernable wave pattern left. She was resisting the urge to smooth it out, to pull it down or back. Resisting the impulse to lick her fingers and wipe the makeup from under her eyes.

She was a hot mess that had cooled off, leaving behind ashes and sludge.

She wanted to look anywhere other than at Eli. Maybe the desk or the bookshelf or the piles and piles of boxes that were now all around them. She was talking about something serious, and he was avoiding giving her the truth. About the store closing. About the fact that he’d gone through Jo’s emails and found out that Wild Nights was being sold out from under all of them, without so much as a notice until it was far too late.

She wanted to be mad. She wanted to yell. She wanted to shake him until he told her what the hell was going on.

But instead Daniella was staring at Eli, wondering why she couldn’t look away. Wondering if she could just pull her hair off her neck and if this flushed, heated feeling would go away.

Somebody needed to turn up the air-conditioning.

Eli took a step forward. It was so soft and so gentle a step that Daniella wondered who he was worried about startling. And then the door to the break room slammed open and Daniella jumped, practically out of her own skin.

A delivery woman came in, toting boxes in on a dolly. “Where should I put these?”

Daniella stared for a moment. Her voice sounded a little faraway when she said, “Anywhere.”

The delivery woman shrugged, then started unloading boxes close to the door. Daniella and Eli stood there as the woman carted boxes in and out.

It took an age. It took no time at all. Daniella couldn’t have said, which was odd, because she normally had a very good sense of time. The delivery woman dropped the last box from her dolly, and she was off, out of the room, and probably back into her truck. She had been so quick with the delivery that it startled Daniella again that the woman was already done.