”Burns like the clap, don’t it?” Kenzi smacked her palm against the bar top. ”Naughty, girl. Get mama another cup.”

Two hours later

”Do you realize that I am doing exactly what I said I’d never do?” Kenzi reclined opposite Lauren, balancing on the back legs of her chair and with her head tilted so far back that it almost looked dislocated.

”What would that be?” Lauren spun an empty shot glass on the table.

”I’m wearing this,” Kenzi answered without lifting her head.

Lauren laughed as they both wore identical khaki-colored camp shirts with rolled up sleeves. Lauren lowered her voice and intoned, robotically, ”Resistance is futile.”

Kenzi lowered all four legs of her chair with a thud. ”Do you ever think about Toronto?”

”Sometimes, I mean, do you?”

”I think of Hale.”

Lauren wanted to answer, And I think of Bo, but thought the better of it. She reached for a beer and gulped from the bottle. This conversation had been long in coming, maybe, and what better way to pass a sloppy, humid afternoon than with talk of love?

”I think of him in a good way though,” Kenzi continued. ”He’s not coming back and it’s nobody’s fault…not even mine.”

”Wow. That’s new. You put a girl in a khaki shirt and look what happens.”

”It’s not new.” Kenzi appeared neither sorrowful nor deceived, conditions that would seem to bloom after grief, which is what Lauren more than expected. Instead, she was disarmed by the look of relief that seemed to radiate from her. Kenzi put her elbows on the table and leaned in toward Lauren.

”Look, you saw something in that bus, in this place—in me, and you never gave up. Even just driving around here with you. I’ve just—and this is going to sound really shitty—I’ve never, ever seen poor as I’ve seen poor here. At least when I was living in the streets, I could go and get cleaned up somewhere. I had shoes on my feet. I could steal a meal if I had to. Here? There’s nothing to steal.” She opened her arms wide. ”This is it!

”They don’t give up.” Kenzi surveyed the distressed bungalow and inhaled the wet breeze. ”And we shouldn’t either,” she pinched Lauren’s arm through her shirt.

”Ouch!” she swatted her hand away.