Phantom rolled his eyes after glancing at the text. “This shit is ridiculous. I’m not reading it out loud.”

To my surprise, Phantom handed over his phone. And there I found the “ridiculous” message from Victor: Tell her she’s worth it.

Okay, did I say I was all the way over Victor?

I guess I was wrong about that. Nearly a whole day of anti-Victor reframing dissipated into the ether as I floated back into my now Pinterest-worthy living room.

And that only left the truth, glaring and bright.

Despite the last ten years…despite my get-out-of-prison date being so close….I was falling for him. Again.

30

“Whoa, look at this spread!” Wallis, the only other black person in the grad animation program, exclaimed. He grabbed a plate as soon as he entered the living room and saw my Pinterest board-worthy thesis rehearsal party.

“Dawn, you really shouldn’t have gone through all of this trouble!” Asher said, grinning as he, too, grabbed a plate.

Rebecca, one of the character animators from Group A, nodded in agreement. “I mean, you even put out sushi! Most of these parties are just pizza and a couple of Costco fruit and vegetable trays.”

“There’s pizza down here!” one of the other grad students called to her from the far end of the buffet table that Phantom’s guys had set up underneath the living room’s bay window.

“Don’t expect this when you come to my place next Sunday for the Group C presentations,” Harlow, a hard-edged stop-animation genius, groused at all of us.

Wallis pretty much spoke for all of us when he answered, “Girl, if we get out of your place without you feeding us spiders, Imma consider that a win.”

Nobody expected Harlow, with her love of all things dark and creepy, to be a perfect host. Or even a decent one.

Everybody except Elizabeth Ann Margaret laughed at Wallis’s joke.

“Is your husband still here?” she asked, eyeing the stairs just beyond the living room. “We haven’t seen him since he showed up out of the blue that one time. You should have invited him to help us eat all of this.”

“I’ll bring him a plate later,” I answered noncommittally. I was deeply aware of Asher openly staring at us, now that the subject of my husband had come up.

“Is he the one who arranged all of this?” Elizabeth Ann Margaret asked. “The last time we came to your house for a group project, it was just chips and dip.”

Wow. Nosy much? “Yes, actually. It was a surprise. I would’ve just ordered pizza and two Costco trays, like Rebecca said. But he likes to go all out.”

“How generous, if a bit wasteful,” Elizabeth Ann Margaret said with a little moue of concern. “I hope you have plans to deliver whatever we don’t eat to the homeless after we’re done here.”