Page 191 of You've Got Hate Mail
Heappreciatesme.
“Was it?” I bat my lashes.
He smiles softly and traces my nose with his finger. “Was it?”
“Yes,” I whisper.
“Fucking genius.”
“If Pip remembers and still wants to do it when she’s sober.”
He kisses me one last time, and then I dash back to the house.
The eyeball for the costume Mabel’s working on is exactly where I expect it to be, so I snag it and dash up the stairs.
She’s not in the bedroom she’s been using as a secondary workspace, so I open the attic door and let myself up. “Mabel? I heard you were missing an eyeball. I found it—ahhhhhh!”
A giant beaver missing one eyeball turns to look at me.
Tail swinging, furry body shifting, vacant eyeball staring at me.
“Cricket. Shit.Shit. This isn’t—don’t freak out.”
A beaver.
A fucking big-assbeaver.
“The zipper’s stuck,” Mabel says from inside the beaver costume. “I didn’t want you to see—shit. This isn’t about what happened to you. It’s an order. They paid me a fuckton of money. I do this. It’s?—”
A laugh bursts out of me as I grip the railing, and soon, I’m laughing so hard I have to sit down.
Mabel lumbers down the stairs in the beaver costume and sits on the step beside me after figuring out what to do with her beaver tail.
“Sorry,” she mutters again.
“This is so—fucking—perfect,” I gasp out between peals of laughter.
“Are you losing your shit, or are youlosing your shit?” she asks, her voice muffled inside the costume.
“Hilarious,” I pant.
“Seriously?”
“Fuck the trolls.” I sit straighter. “Oh my god. Fuck the trolls.”
“Why does that sound like it means something it doesn’t?”
“I have to find Ginny.”
“Wait! Wait. Can you please unzip me?”
I rise and tug at the zipper until it releases, and a moment later, Mabel’s head pops out of the costume.
Her dark hair’s standing up like she rubbed a balloon all over it, and she pulls off her fogged-over glasses to give me a look. “You’re okay?”
I grin. “I’m great.”
“Sorry about leaving you with the ass.”
