Willa & the Extraordinary Internship

CH. 8

"I still say you shouldn't have done it." Maryam's voice was level, like she was trying very hard to keep the judgment from her tone.

Willa's hands tightened on the steering wheel, beginning to regret asking her friends to go to the Little Sunflower with her for dinner. When she'd gotten off work, it had seemed like the perfect way to mend things with Maryam, break the news to Cyn, and eat dinner at the same time. Three birds, one stone. Cyn didn't tend bar tonight, and she'd been at home filming her newest makeup tutorial for YouTube, so Willa had decided to swing by Maryam's first to pick her up. From the moment Maryam had gotten in the passenger seat, Willa could feel the Cold War between them.

"The similarities you're seeing are also the personality traits of thousands of other people. Zooey Deschanel and the mom from Gilmore Girls," she pointed out, striving to match Maryam's calm.

Maryam shrugged, a patented you're-going-to-do-what-you-want-so-why-should-I-waste-my-breath shrug that Cyn was often the recipient of, but never Willa.

It stunned Willa to her very core. Like an icy-cold blast of winter air, it had sucked the oxygen from her lungs and made her throat tight and scratchy. "We're here," she said needlessly as the compact Honda Civic pulled in front of Cyn's apartment building. She had a ground floor apartment, which was good because with all the raucous dancing Cyn enjoyed, downstairs neighbors would have reported her to the super right away.

Cyn must have been peering from the window, because the blinds immediately scrolled upward and Cyn's hand pressed to the glass, her pointer finger in the air. It was the universal gesture for "just one minute!" and Willa nodded feverishly, hoping her friend saw the motion. "Looks like she just needs a sec," Willa said just to fill the silence.

"Yeah," Maryam replied, crossing her legs at the ankles. "I think she's on the phone."

Willa nodded mutely, the two girls falling back into silence, broken only when Cyn finally slipped out the door on one foot, pulling a shoe on with the other. "Sorry, ladies," she said as she slid into the backseat. "Grayson dumped me."

Immediately Maryam awwwwed. She shot Willa a look, reminding her to be a little more charitable. "That sucks," Willa said lamely.

"Ohmygodright?" Cyn said without missing a beat, words joining together breathlessly.

"What happened?" Willa asked after being prompted by a subtle cough from Maryam.

Cyn rolled her eyes. "He was such a drama queen. I guess he found out I was still on Tinder? And the guy flipped! I mean, I really thought I'd have to beat him up or something. It was so pathetic. Like c'mon, dude, where's your manhood?"

Willa sent Maryam a pointed look. There, let her feel bad for Cyn now, she thought savagely.

"You were still chatting with other guys when you had a boyfriend?" Maryam asked, the disbelief in her voice astounding Willa. When would Maryam learn that nothing Cyn said or did should surprise her any more?

"It's not like I was sexting them or anything," Cyn said defensively. "I'm starving, can we get a move on?"

"Did you try to work things out?" Maryam asked as Willa put the car in reverse.

Instead of looking in the rear-view mirror as she backed up, Willa was looking at Cyn. As usual, not a worry or a woe wrinkled Cyn's airbrush-smooth skin. She didn't look devastated or even vaguely upset. She looked as cool and unflappable as always, a modern-day Lady Mary from Downton Abbey.

"What was left to say?" Cyn said simply, settling into the backseat, dumping the contents of her purse on her lap. She didn't even need any more makeup, the exaggerated face contouring and sweeping false eyelashes already over the top for an upscale bistro. The cotton-candy pink lipstick she pried out of its tube was garish, even more so when she slicked it on her lips, the glossy finish making her cupid's bow lips look even poutier than normal.

In that second, Willa thought she hated her. "Seatbelt," she said shortly, waiting until Cyn cinched it around her waist before peeling out of the parking lot and onto the main street. No one noticed that she didn't say a word as she weaved in and out of traffic. Maryam was being frigid and Cyn was too self-involved to notice. Willa didn't mind; she liked the quiet, especially when dealing with rush hour traffic.