easy. There was nothing strained between them.
It was nice, being able to sit in Quinn’s place and do it
again. The banter. Like they used to. Without strain. Dallas
knew that she had to talk to Quinn about what happened the
night before and that did feel strained, but she couldn’t just sit
there and put it off. She didn’t have time not to talk about the
hard stuff.
“Quinn…”
“Dallas…”
Dallas laughed. “I guess we’re both thinking the same
thing.”
“Probably. You go first. I’ll listen. To the end this time. I
promise.”
“Okay.” Dallas shifted on the stool so she could clench her
hands between her bare knees. It reminded her that she was
wearing a dress and that she was slightly uncomfortable in it.
“I- when I got the call from the lawyer, I was literally walking
down the street and had to duck into an alley. Apparently it
might be my destination of choice when it comes to hard
conversations.”
“Did that one smell like ancient, deep fried socks.”
“No. No, it smelled fine. Um- I was really shocked when I
got the call. I know you think that I moved and I put
everything behind me and just forgot about my life here, but I
didn’t. I thought about you all the time. I thought about your
family. It made me really sad to hear about your grandpa,
especially because I never got to say goodbye and then he was
gone. I know I could have. I should have done a lot of things
differently, and that hit me hard. And then when the lawyer
was saying I’d have to come back to Topeka to get money that