Say You Still Love Me(13)

I frown. “Why would it smell like cigarettes?” Neither Ashley nor Chad are smokers, and Chad is too much of a clean freak to ever allow others to smoke in the house.

“Zelda.”

My frown deepens. “Your psychic does house calls?” And smokes during them?

“No. In her house.”

“I am so confused right now.”

Ashley sighs with exasperation, and I can tell she doesn’t want to tell me whatever I’m about to hear. “I bought this couch off Zelda and she smokes in her house.”

“Wait a minute . . .” I hold my free hand up. “You bought a couch off your psychic? You told me it was brand-new!”

“Well yeah, brand-new for me,” she clarifies.

“Ashley . . .”

“What! Ugh. Okay! So, Zelda sensed I’d be needing a new couch in my life soon and since she had just ordered a new one for herself, she offered to sell me hers. And look!” She gestures at our sizeable space. “She was right! And she sold it to me for five hundred bucks, even though she paid almost three grand for it last year!”

“Because she knew she wouldn’t get more for it, reeking from smoke! Oh my God, this is making so much more sense now,” I moan, gulping my wine. When Ashley said she bought a new couch and promised it would look fantastic in my place and “please, please, please, can I bring it because I can’t return it,” I assumed she had bought a floor model on clearance.

I shake my head at my friend. “This is why you and Chad had a huge fight and broke up, isn’t it?”

“No, not exactly,” she says with a mixture of irritation and reluctance. “Chad was pissed, but I promised I’d get the smoke out and rearrange the living room to make it cozy. So he calmed down, and I thought everything would be fine. It wasn’t until the smoke smell faded that we started to smell the urine—”

“What?” I bolt upright, nearly spilling my wine all over my dress in the process.

“It’s all gone, I swear!” Her hands are in the air in surrender. “It was just one cushion and I replaced all the stuffing in it. But that’s when Chad blew up. He said that I was stupid for trusting Zelda, and that she had conned me.”

“And would you maybe . . . perhaps . . . agree that she took advantage of you?” I ask as evenly as I can.

“I don’t know? No! I mean, why would she do that when she sees me every month? Honestly, I think she just forgot about it. Or figured it wasn’t a big deal. It was probably her grandson. He’s two, and I remember her saying they were having a tough time potty training him.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” I struggle to hide my skepticism from my voice. My dear friend’s sweet, forgiving, glass-is-always-half-full nature is both a blessing and a curse.

Slowly, I settle back into my seat, though not nearly as relaxed. “Which cushion was—”

“I’ll never tell,” she says with wide-eyed earnest. “But isn’t it perfect for this place?”

Finally, I have to laugh to myself, because the entire debacle is Ashley in a nutshell.

She joins in soon enough, shaking her head. “I know. I’m ridiculous.”

“Just don’t tell Christa,” I warn. The last time Christa told Ashley what she thought about the “spiritual advisor” who bills our best friend two hundred bucks a month, they didn’t speak for weeks. “And there had better not be any bad spirit juju with this thing. If weird stuff starts happening around here, the couch has to go.”

She rolls her eyes. “You sound like Chad now.”

Maybe he isn’t a complete idiot, after all.

The sound of keys jiggling has Elton leaping off the couch and trotting toward the door. I cringe at the sight of his tail, the end of it a bony white stick where he’s chewed off the hair. He meows—that unnatural woeful Siamese howl—in greeting as Christa plows through, her arms laden with two plastic restaurant bags. She has to turn sideways to manage past Ashley’s containers. “Tell me you have more of that wine.”

Ashley and I share a look. Christa rarely drinks and when she does, it’s sugar-free, low-calorie vodka on account of her being hyperconscious about maintaining her figure. Halfway through college, she got onto an extreme healthy eating and exercise kick that helped her shed pounds. Since then, it’s been what seems like a constant battle against her body’s natural tendency to carry extra weight. She’ll never be what society deems “thin,” but she can fill out a vintage swing dress like no one else I know.

“Rough day?” I hazard as Ashley heads for the cabinet to fetch a third wineglass.

“Oh no, it was great!” Christa says, her voice dripping with sarcasm. She dumps the take-out containers on the counter and reaches down to scoop up Elton and hug him close. He returns the affection immediately, rubbing his pointy face against her cheek, his raspy purr carrying. “I caught my bar manager stealing bottles of Veuve.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Ashley says, her freckled face scrunching with sincerity as she holds out the glass.

Christa sighs heavily, then sets the cat down to take the wine and tuck her hair behind her ear. She’s been wearing it layered and shoulder-length for years now, a style well-suited to her round face. “There’s a vegetarian pasta for you, Ash, and a bloody slab of cow for you.” She nods to me through a sizeable gulp.