13 : Girls' Talk

**JASMINE POV**

"So, is it true?" Kate asked, the second I sat down, before I'd even gotten my coat off.

"Is what true?"

"Don't play dumb, Jasmine Ray." She was practically vibrating with it, elbows on the table, chin in her hands like she was watching the season finale of something.

"We kissed. You already know that. I texted you."

"I want details. Real ones. Not the sanitized version you give my brother's HR file."

I rolled my eyes and flagged down the waiter for an iced tea, mostly to buy myself a few seconds before Kate's interrogation really got going.

"There's a rumor going around the finance floor," Kate continued, undeterred, "that Ranjiv asked you out. Is that true too, or is that also something I should already know?"

I nearly choked on my water. "Ranjiv did not ask me out, Kate, and you know that better than anyone, because I'm pretty sure you're the one who started that rumor."

She grinned, entirely unrepentant. "I might have mentioned it to Japheth. Purely as an experiment."

"An experiment."

"A very successful one. He turned the color of a tomato and left the room so fast I thought he'd pulled a muscle."

"You're a menace." I couldn't help but laugh, even as I said it. "Ranjiv is a friend. That's it. He's actually engaged, not that it should matter either way."

"I know, I know. I just wanted to see what would happen." She waved a hand like the ethics of the situation were beneath her notice. "And what happened was extremely satisfying, so I regret nothing."

"Someday your brother's going to find out you engineer half his emotional crises."

"He already knows. He just likes pretending he doesn't." She sipped her drink, then fixed me with a look that told me the real conversation was about to start. "Okay. Real talk. How are you actually doing? With all of it. The job, my brother, everything."

I hesitated, turning my glass in slow circles on the table.

"Good," I said finally. "Mostly good. It's a lot, honestly. The job is everything I wanted, and Japheth is" I stopped, not quite sure how to finish that sentence without it sounding bigger than I was ready to say out loud.

"Japheth is what?" Kate prompted, gentler now, less teasing.

"Different. In a good way. He actually listens now. Actually thinks before he talks, most of the time." I smiled despite myself. "It's strange, having the version of him I always hoped existed underneath the bully finally show up for real."

"He always was under there," Kate said. "He was just an idiot about showing it."

"An accurate assessment."

We sat quietly for a moment, and I found myself turning over the thing I hadn't said yet  the part that was harder to hand to anyone, even Kate, even after everything.

"Can I tell you something? And you have to actually hear it, not just tell me it's fine."

Her expression shifted, immediately serious. "Always."

"My dad texted me the night I got the promotion. Before I even had a chance to be happy about it for more than an hour." I kept my eyes on the table. "He wasn't proud of me, Kate. Not really. He was relieved that I'd be more useful to your family. That's  that's basically the whole message. Be indispensable. Don't embarrass us. Don't get distracted by a schoolgirl crush."

Kate's face went very still. "Jasmine."

"I know it's not new information. I know he's always been like that. But it still gets in, every time, no matter how many times I tell myself it shouldn't."

"That's not okay," Kate said quietly. "None of that is okay, and I'm sorry he does that to you."

"It's fine. I've had nineteen years of practice not letting it ruin things." I tried for a light tone and mostly missed. "I just  sometimes wonder if any of the good things in my life are actually mine, or if they're just installments on some debt he thinks I owe your family."

"You are not a debt, Jasmine. You never were." Kate reached across the table and took my hand, and for a moment she looked almost angry not at me, I understood, but for me. "I've known you since we were kids. I've never once thought of you as anything but my best friend. Not an obligation. Not a transaction. If my parents heard the way your father talks to you, they'd have words for him."

"Please don't tell them."

"I won't. But I'm not going to pretend I didn't hear it, either." She squeezed my hand once, firm. "You deserve to have good things happen to you without someone finding a way to make them feel like a bill coming due. The job. My brother. All of it. You earned every piece of it, and none of it belongs to Richard Ray."

I nodded, feeling my eyes sting in a way I hadn't expected in the middle of a crowded café.

"Thank you," I said. "For hearing it. Really hearing it."

"Always." She sat back, letting the moment breathe for a second before her natural mischief crept back in around the edges of her smile. "Now. Since we've done the emotional heavy lifting. Tell me if my brother is a good kisser, because honestly, given how long he's been dreaming about it, I need to know if the reality lived up to the hype."

"Kate!"

"What? I'm invested!"

I threw a napkin at her, laughing despite everything, and for the rest of the afternoon, we let the conversation drift somewhere lighter  Saph's latest complaint about Xandry scaring off yet another one of her dates, Kate's own plans with Dean for the weekend, the mundane, comfortable rhythm of two friends who'd known each other long enough to hold both the heavy things and the silly ones in the same conversation without either one crowding out the other.

But even laughing, even happy, some small part of me kept circling back to Richard's text, sitting unanswered in my phone, and the quiet fear underneath everything good that had happened this week that no matter how far I climbed, some debt would always be waiting to collect.