Chapter Text
“But I’m not sad he’s dead. If anything, it’s a liberation. I’m free at last,” Priscila tucks a long strand of hair behind her ear, a smirk on her lips clearly identifiable as that type of expression someone makes when they’re thoroughly convinced they’re the commanding presence of a room.
Only Priscila Ferro could possibly make a popularity contest out of a grief group, but then again, only Priscila is here against her own will, she supposes. Everyone else has brought handy tote bags of comfort food, wipes for possible, expected, and worst of all, recommended tears, and an arsenal of self-help books. Priscila, on the contrary, has not taken her sunglasses off ever since she sat, and keeps her purse on her thighs as if she doesn’t plan on staying for much longer. Hair freshly bleached and cut, blazer and pants to match, it’s evident that the second she’s off the hook she’ll be bouncing back to the actual real business of her day: convincing sickeningly indecisive old ladies to buy much too pricy houses, with more space than they could ever need - but great locations to spend the rest of their sad, lonely and boring days. A pretty grave.
Speaking of graves.
Priscila loves to be the centre of attention, but with everyone staring at her as if she's just confessed to murder, she gets the impression she’s not exactly winning this grief game. “What are you all looking at me for? The rules are to be honest, I’m being honest, what else do I have to do?” She points an accusatory finger at Pablo, the moderator of the group. “That’s what you said. No wrong answers.”
“No…there are no wrong answers,” Pablo shifts in his seat, his smile unconvincingly reassuring. “But I guess your approach can be a little- intense,” he chooses his words as if the eggshells he’s walking on were already cracked before he got there. “And, um, disingenuous?”
“Disingenuous?” Priscila lets out a hoarse chuckle. “You don’t know me, and you did not know my husband. Otherwise, you would’ve been the first one to be glad he’s gone-”
“What Pablo’s too nice to say is that you sound like you don’t want to be here,” the woman sitting next to him snaps. Pablo puts a hand in her lap: “Jackie, I really don’t need to-”
“No, she’s right,” Priscila crosses her arms, laying back on the uncomfortable plastic chair. “I really do not want to be here. My stepdaughter insisted I come. She says I haven’t processed my loss- as if she should worry about me, when she has her own father to mourn. But that’s her bleeding heart.”
“And yet you still came. Is that because maybe you know there’s some truth in her words?”
“Are you a grief counsellor or a therapist, Mr Galindo?” Priscila bites back, eyebrow perennially raised like the product of a facelift gone wrong. “Either way, Germán is dead, I don’t feel bad about it, do with that information what you will.”
“Your husband is dead and you don’t care- are you psychopathic?” the woman she identifies as Jackie - dirty blonde bun on the top of her head wound as tightly as her personality - snarls. “Maybe you killed him.”
Priscila takes her sunglasses off and shoots her an undecipherable look. “Maybe I did.”
“Ok, we are not here to shame anyone’s grieving processes, Jackie. We all react differently, the important thing is that we’re equipped to deal with these feelings when they eventually catch up to us. Sometimes we can ignore them for so long that they bubble up at the worst moments, and they lead us down very bad spirals.” Pablo grabs Jackie’s hand and squeezes it. “When Antonio died, I was destroyed. I had no idea what to do with myself- and I tried to bury my feelings in my job…until I lost that job, because my head wasn’t there and I kept messing up.”
Priscila truly couldn’t care less about Pablo’s little sob story, for she has no idea who Antonio is and cannot imagine a world in which someone fucks a life’s work up because another random guy died. On the contrary, now that Germán is dead she’s selling houses like no tomorrow.
Does she miss him? Sure, like you’d miss anyone who was a constant part of your life for that long. But more than missing him, she just really wants to know the fucker who killed him. Because he couldn’t be killed in a normal, easily punishable-by-law way - no. Hit and run. No cameras, no witnesses, nothing. Just some random kid walking to school the next day seeing a mess of limbs and blood and squished organs by the side of the road.
Maybe Priscila doesn’t do grief, but she sure can do revenge. And oh, God, does she need revenge. She needs to squeeze that fucker’s life out of their eyes, watch them cower in fear realising just who they got themselves up against. Germán is gone and she’s glad he is, their marriage had been falling apart for what felt like forever, but she never took kindly to people who took her things away from her. Germán was one of her things. And now the fucker will pay.
“What I’m trying to say, Mrs Ferro, is that you’re very brave for coming here today. Not many people get this far. I can assure you, you’re doing the right thing. For your family, for your husband, and for yourself.” Pablo’s smile is once again anything but comforting, and his sad eyes don’t work on Priscila’s cold heart - the only reason why she’s not telling him to get fucked right now is that another complaint about her lousy temper could get her in serious trouble with her job, and unlike other people in this weirdly cultish circle of chairs, she cares about her fucking job.
“How long had the two of you been together?” Another person asks, someone Priscila doesn’t even care to turn her head to identify. “Eleven years,” she answers, tone flat. And just like that, the atmosphere is cutthroat quiet.
“Eleven years and you don’t miss him?!” a woman on her right clutches her chest, to which Jackie echoes once again: “I told you, psychopathic.”
Priscila has had enough of this nosy little cunt whose head looks like a blotch of toothpaste you can’t put back in the tube. “What should I say about you, huh? Your poor uncle’s dead and all you kept going on about was how you told him to take it easy with his business- like his death is more of an I told you so moment for you. Please. If there’s a psychopath in here it’s you.” She stands up abruptly, “I knew coming here was a bad idea, you’re all idiots and I’m never stepping foot in th-”
The moment she’s on her feet something blunt and heavy comes swinging at the back of her head so violently it forces her stumbling back down on her chair, five millimetres away from screwing up the landing and face-planting on the ground. When she turns to look, the attacker is sitting on the chair to her left - the only free one in the circle. Sight blurry from the hit, she squints until she can make out at the very least their enchantingly skimpy red dress. A bold choice for grievers anonymous.
There’s something dazzling about this fool: slowly but surely, Priscila puts together her bouncy dark bob, her perfectly manicured crimson nails, her black high heels, the handbag (presumably what sent her wobbling down) she drops to one side of her chair, and the curve of her lips, framed by blood red lipstick, so lacking of smudges it looks unnatural, plasticky, when she smiles - rows of shiny white teeth like gates to whatever music is about to unravel from them.
But when she speaks suddenly Priscila’s headache gets worse. “Hi everyone!” a shriek cuts through the stunned silence, shrill as the whirr of a dentist’s turbine. “What are we talking about today?”
Pablo coughs through an awkward laugh, “Miss LaFontaine, you keep coming in right around the time we’re wrapping up.”
“It’s called being fashionably late, Pablito, not that you would know anything about it. In fact, is that the same shirt as last week?” She frowns, “You should find a more vibrant colour that matches your eyes, or a better boutique to shop for sad beige shirts that make you look more sweaty than you already are. I can recommend some!”
Despite herself, Priscila can’t help the laugh that escapes her, making the stranger turn her way. “Oh, hello, I didn’t notice you crouched down like that,” the woman beams, jarringly chipper for the setting they found themselves in.
“Where the fuck did you come from?” Priscila snickers, straightening her posture, hand on the back of her head where the blow still hurts like a bitch. “Are you real? Like- are you a real person?”
In what she can already classify as a characteristically blissfully unaware grin, the woman tends a hand her way. “I sure am! Jade LaFontaine, a pleasure to meet you. Is this your first time here? I’ve never seen you around.”
Again, completely despite herself - but really, either the hit to her head rewired her brain to hemorrhagic points of no return, or breathing this kind of sick air was starting to have strange effects on her choice-making…though maybe the fact that she was starting her morning here had turned it from perfectly inconsequential to the beginning of a fatal Opposites Day - she reaches out with her own hand to shake it, almost shivering at the touch: Jade’s palms are softer than a baby’s. “Priscila Ferro,” she mumbles, swimming through her alluring icy grey eyes to look for more information about the woman without needlessly asking her, “enchanted.” Jade’s grin shines even more. Clearly the right answer.
Turning back to the rest of the group, Priscila notices everyone’s left - Pablo did say the session was coming to a close. At the very least the setting where they’re hosting these meetings is a gorgeous view: right up the hill of a tiny but picturesque meadow, with a modest beach on the other side. A hidden slice of heaven, that’s how it was advertised. And quiet enough for no one to hear her having to humiliate herself because of her sappy stepdaughter.
Violetta loved to talk about everyone’s feelings but her own - the easy way out, that’s what that was. But in a way, Priscila’s proud of her: as much as she’s never considered her her own daughter, she can see seeds of great emotionally manipulative talents in that girl. She has a knack for getting to people’s hearts, maybe even unawarely so, as opposed to Priscila’s actual biological daughter - no, Ludmila’s only knack is for being a failure.
“Who are you mourning?” Jade asks, a smile still on her lips like she just dared her to kiss her playground crush. “My husband,” Priscila answers just as nonchalantly. “You?”
“Brother,” Jade looks at nothing in front of her, eyes unfocused. “My brother, Matías.”
“My condolences,” slips out of the blond woman’s lips, and strangely she has no idea if she means it. “How did it happen?”
“Ah, it doesn’t matter, I’m over it.”
“You’re over it?” Priscila furrows her brows. “I think you’re missing the point of the grief group.”
“I just like being here, everyone is so nice!” Jade crosses her legs, letting out a long, relaxed breath. Every word out of her mouth confuses Priscila more than the one before. “You haven’t talked to anyone- you missed the entire fucking meeting.”
“Well, you’re here and you’re nice,” Jade concludes, sending yet another impervious grin her way. Priscila’s mouth hangs wide open. Of everything she’s said so far this is the most outlandish. “I’m what.”
“Yeah, you’re a nice lady! I know these things, I’m a little bit psychic like that. You have a good energy about you- could really do without the magenta pants, but that’s minor.”
Priscila has had any and all insults thrown and spat her way - terrible mother, even more terrible wife, bitch, cunt, the whole charade of sexist swears, she’s had the worst sicknesses prayed upon her, and took every hit with the most utter indifference because it simply did not matter to her whether some dumb idiot thought she was a piece of shit. One, because she admittedly was, and two, because pointing it out had absolutely no impact in the grand scheme of things. She can be a piece of shit and still work her job flawlessly and be as successful as she wants.
But now, a complete stranger telling her she has a good energy about her. This somehow tips her over the edge. And it’s not just because she’s not equipped to hear nice things said about herself, but because if Jade genuinely thinks Priscila’s energy is good, then her suspicions were correct and today truly is Opposites Day. “Thank you,” she forces a hand on her mouth to keep herself from laughing too hard, “yeah, I’m a fucking schoolgirl.”
It’s the first conversation in months she’s not vehemently hating, but that’s just because it’s the first conversation since Germán’s death where people aren’t coddling and cosseting her. Maybe because Jade has a few screws loose. Maybe because Priscila has even more.
“Are you gonna get coffee?” She looks at the buffet where everyone has been stuffing their plate ever since the beginning of their conversation. Jade scrunches her nose. “Coffee? It’s awful for your pores. You have to be careful about these kinds of things, Priscila. It’s not easy to look the way I do.”
“I bet it’s not.” Jade seems to be filled with an otherworldly energy, one that makes her disconcertingly unpredictable in Priscila’s eyes. Why has this woman who looks like she could not care less about grieving her dead brother shown up - late - to a grief group meeting? Why does she talk like the plane of reality she’s inhabiting is completely different to everyone else’s? Why is she wearing her mental instability on her sleeve - and why is she rocking the runway with it? “Alright, then if I can’t drink coffee what should I drink?”
Jade jumps up from her seat like a slinky, extending a hand for Priscila to grab and get up as well. “I know where we should go.”
Why the hell Priscila decided to follow this deranged woman all the way to her own car and then let her give directions to a woo-woo kind of bar back in town, driving around and getting lost more than enough times - not surprising that Jade is a horrible GPS - she has no idea.
But here she is, at a woo-woo bar, trying some insane tea concoction across the table from her, conjuring everything in her not to throw up at the revolting smell, and valuing whether staying around Jackie and Pablo and their possibly shitty but at the very least edible coffee would’ve been the actual right choice in this game. But Jade is staring at her, intense icy eyes glueing her to the seat until she eventually takes the teacup up to her lips.
“No!” Jade whines, possibly perforating everyone around her’s eardrums - Priscila’s for starters. “You have to inhale it first. The smell goes through the nostrils and purifies your body.”
“I have to snort tea?”
“Something like that,” Jade hurls a spoon around her teacup as if she is actually brewing a witch’s potion. “You have to be careful about what you put in your body. A healthy diet is the first step to a healthy life.”
Priscila’s mind wanders to the bottle of wine she’ll inevitably down in her bed in the dead of night tonight, and she stifles a snort. “It smells like garbage.”
“That’s because your body is fighting against its healing properties. You have to accept the power of the chamomile into your organs first through the nose,” Jade’s hands go up and down, mimicking a strange ritual Priscila hasn’t been made privy to, “and then,” she inhales profoundly and exhales in the sound of a whistle (not too dissimilar from a caged bird praying for the sweet release of death), “once your heart accepts the apricot aroma, you’re ready to ingest its healing properties. It keeps your hair strong and your skin healthy, but most importantly it relieves eye bags!”
“And you believe all of that?” Priscila puts a hand to her temple, barely able to keep up with all her bullshit. “Well, as you can see, my hair is perfect and so is my skin. And do you see any eye bags here? So, yes, I believe all of it.” Jade rubs her hands together like a kid ready to unwrap her Christmas presents, and with one last wink Priscila’s way she starts drinking the unholy tea.
Priscila tries to follow suit - but just one inhale of the pungent smell brings tears to her eyes. God, her body is fighting hard against it. Jade, however, unrelentingly stares at her until Priscila’s forced to feign a nod to symbolise how the change and healing are already entering her body. And then she tries to gulp as much as she can without letting it scrape off her tastebuds too harshly. “Yum,” she puts one thumb up, making Jade grin from one ear to the other. “See? I knew you’d like it!”
“Yeah, loved it,” Priscila wipes her mouth with a napkin, trying not to think of whatever insanity she’s just forced down her body. As quietness settles at the table she gets her phone out: just one message from Gregorio reminding her of their twelve o’clock tomorrow, some stupidly rich bachelor who wanted a house as big as he probably believed his dick to be. The realtor game was almost too easy, the only real skills necessary were tergiversating, flattering and reading between the lines. Once you lock down your client’s essence, it’s actually incredible how they’re already in the palm of your hand. There’s a reason why Priscila’s so good at her job: she has everyone in the palm of her hand. And only needs one palm to juggle them all. The I don’t know how she does it poster woman of the year.
Looking back up, she sees Jade’s stare wandering around the climbing plants and vases hanging from the ceiling that give the bar an even hippier feeling than whatever was in those teas. The intensity with which she takes in everything around her is childlike. For lack of anything better to do, Priscila decides now is the right time to read her, as if she’s not juggling enough people in her hand as it is. The house-selling mentality is, after all, infallible, work setting or not. “Were you and your brother close?”
Jade’s shoulders rise, a gesture that Priscila takes note of: start with the bad, ease them into the good. Watch them squirm first, throw them a bone later. “Yes,” she says, eyes wide. “I loved him like a brother.”
“Wow, really?” Priscila plays with a strand of her long hair. “But you’re over it?”
“It was a long time ago,” Jade tries to shrug as casually as she can. Priscila squints her eyes. “How long?”
“Maybe five.”
“Five.”
“Yeah, now that you say it, it’s definitely five,” Jade nods, “it just sounds right.”
“Right,” Priscila smiles. How squirmy can a person be? “Five as in…?”
“Months- no, years!” Jade tries to correct herself to no use. “Five years- and five months.”
“That is a long time ago, I’ll agree with you on that.” Whatever’s hiding under the surface must be one juicy mystery, but being overt has never taken Priscila anywhere. “What did he do?”
“Other than scamming and stealing from a lot of people, not much,” Jade grabs her purse and sets it on the table. On her way to fish something out of it, she takes out a hair iron, a see-through little bag containing real golden earrings, and an entire other purse full of miscellaneous makeup - Priscila starts wondering how the earlier blow didn’t chop her head clean off. “Oh, there it is,” Jade finally gets a hold of her phone. She starts mumbling to herself something that Priscila can’t decipher, before that same phone is shoved in her face. “That’s him.”
The picture she’s presented with is of a painfully average-looking guy with the most tailor-made asshole haircut and polo shirt - aquamarine stripes - and that kind of sunglasses that seem to want to scream he’s really good in bed. Priscila would bet her liver nothing’s further from the truth. The smirk is also somehow weirdly condescending, and she gets the feeling she’s being looked up and down from a picture of a dead man. With dark sunglasses.
If he weren’t dead she’d kill him gladly, just from this one picture.
Alright, that’s enough of that.
(Did he die after getting his dick stuck in his motorboat?, she bites her tongue from saying.)
“We used to live together before he- well, anyways, now I’m staying at this boarding house I do manicures at,” Jade starts, drinking her tea in small sips if only so she can start immediately talking again. “I don’t hate it, I’m actually really good at it- oh! You could stop by sometimes and I could do you a special discount for your husband’s funeral.”
“My husband’s funeral was two months ago.”
“It’s ok, we can call it a rain-check!” Is this all an act, or is Jade really this out of touch? Somehow it’s…charming. Huh. Well - charming as a court jester could be called charming. Like a little squeaky toy you keep around for pure amusement.
Jade notices her vacant stare and misinterprets it for genuine melancholia, which brings her to the sourest note of their coffee date so far. “And how was he? Your husband?”
Maybe snorting the tea back out of her nose is part of the healing process, but Priscila has to keep herself from laughing once again. Just the thought of him is so incredibly funny, somehow. “Oh, he was a lot,” she coughs. Jade looks at her questioningly. “In a good way or a bad way?”
Germán was just…a lot, period. He loved a lot, he cared a lot, he was a lot of everything all the time. Even when he wasn’t there, even in his absence, there was still a lot of his absence - his business trips, the whole lot of them, brought back a lot of money, but also a lot more responsibilities for Priscila, never the motherly type. Kinda unfair that he died now that her business is going so well. But then again, it’s not like when their daughters were children anymore, so she can pretty much do whatever she wants.
Now that he’s gone, gone with him are also the pretences of playing happy family, so basically what is actually happening inside the Castillo-Ferro household is three roommates, two of which happen to share a last name, are sharing a house. At least Violetta doesn’t take that much from him, in the sense that she is also disillusioned that insisting on repairing something that was never meant to be put together in the first place won’t bring any sort of closure. In a way, when she asked Priscila to attend this grief group thing, it might’ve been the real first time they’d mentioned his passing out loud. The whole situation had caught Priscila by such surprise that it almost sounded like a joke. So saying yes - and watching Violetta subsequently write her name down on some online form - was in a way like the other shoe dropping, one she’d been waiting to drop like her husband dropped dead on the side of the street.
He was a businessman, though the business part of that really never made much sense to Priscila. No, his real passion was his daughter - and Ludmila, when by some fluky coincidence she felt like humiliating her biological parent and playing nice with him when Priscila is very much aware she despised her stepfather - and music. Something about his ex-wife that he never got over. Maybe they’re together in the afterlife at long last.
Bitter wife, bitterer widow.
But- Jade doesn’t get to turn the tables on her. Jade is the one being played, not the other way around. Time to tergiversate. “My daughters are getting along fine. We are a strong family.”
“You have daughters?” Jade perks up, eyes bright. “How many?”
Ok, what? “Um…two. One from my previous marriage, one from his.”
“I’ve always wanted children of my own. It must be so nice with two daughters. Daughters are the best,” the raven-haired oddity of a woman says mostly to herself. “What are their names?”
“Ludmila and Violetta,” Priscila carefully concedes, wondering what exactly she’s letting out and if it’s smart of her to. What should she even do now? Back to the plan-
“How old are they?”
Priscila’s eye twitches. “What’s all this interest in my daughters?”
“You brought them up!”
“Yeah, in passing- I was making conversation! You know, two people talking-” Suddenly Priscila realises how she was brought here, sat down, and this perfect stranger got her to drink awful tea that might as well have poison inside of it. “Ok, what the fuck is this?!”
“What the fuck is what? The tea? I spent ten minutes explaining it to you!”
“No, you- who are you?”
“You really weren’t listening then! I’m- I told you this, I’m Jade-”
“Is this- like- a thing for you? You pick up grieving women and you drug them? And then you- steal their daughters? For some crazy ritual? Or whatever the fuck you do?”
Jade only stares at her, features slowly contorting in a grimace. “That tea really isn’t helping you, querida.”
“Because it tastes like shit.”
“Are you suffering from any…residual stress?”
“Fucking- residual stress?”
“Grief is a beast. You need to open your chakras in order to-”
“I’m done here,” Priscila takes her purse and gets up from the table, marching up to the door and slamming it on her way out. Did she just get played? What even was the game here? Either way, she cannot deal with this shit.
Once she’s back in her car she grips the steering wheel so tightly it could almost come off. Fucking stupid Jade and her stupid tea and asshole brother and funeral nails. To randomly follow a crazy woman into a bar for no reason. What the fuck? When did she lose her mind so completely?
No, she hasn’t lost it, she has everything under control. Her daughters still hate her, she’s still amazing at her job, she still is a terrible person - these are all things she knows to be true, and the truth? That’s easy to keep under control.
Just like the truth that Germán is dead, and he’s not ever coming back. Once you establish that and make everything clear, then it’s over.
It’s over.
It’s all over.
He’s gone.
He’s dead.
Forever.
“Hey Prisci- woah, your face has melted off!” When Priscila turns around she notices Jade’s found her car and is staring at her through the window - though covering her eyes with her hands. Priscila wipes at her cheek in annoyance, and on her fingertips now are smeared the remains of her foundation. Damn it. “I didn’t mean to make you cry!” Jade keeps one hand to cover her sight and with the other she starts banging on the glass, “I’m sorry!”
“I’m not crying,” Priscila says - and subsequently sobs. Holy shit. “No shame in crying! I cry in my car all the time! It’s therapeutic!”
“Therapeutic like your crappy tea? I’ll pass.”
“You know, you’re not being very nice,” Jade crosses her arms. “And you’re not very bright,” Priscila snorts. “Will you please let me in? At least drive me home!”
“Call a taxi, I’m out of here.”
“I can’t afford a taxi!”
“You can’t afford a taxi?”
Jade keeps her arms crossed almost as if she were hugging herself, and positions herself in front of Priscila’s car, pouting. “I’m not moving until you give me a ride home.”
“Oh, come on Jade, how old are you?”
“Seriously?! You don’t ask a woman that!” Jade gasps with a hand on her heart.
“Get out of the way.” It would be insensitive to say or I’m gonna run you over, but for one intense yet quick moment Priscila wholeheartedly considers it. “You’re making a fool out of yourself.”
“I wouldn’t if you just let me ride with you,” Jade shrugs. And Priscila, worn down by the tea poison and the hit to her head and a thousand other factors and a million different coincidences, smacks her forehead on the steering wheel so that the horn resonates all throughout the neighbourhood. Jade slightly jumps from the surprise, but then sees Priscila’s welcoming hand gesture as an invitation to get inside, and doesn’t get told twice.
“What does it mean that you can’t afford a taxi? You don’t look poor,” the blond woman turns her car key through its hole. “I um- I wasn’t always poor. Then a few bad things happened and…I’m living in a boarding house. And I don’t like the term poor! I prefer diversely rich.”
Priscila looks at her, a loud sigh driven out by pure exasperation. Jade doesn’t take it as a warning. “You know, you don’t have any reason to be as paranoid as you are.”
“I’m not paranoid-”
“Why would I drug your tea and steal your daughters? I don’t even know where you live!”
Priscila steals a glance at her own eyes through the rearview mirror and not only does she see the catastrophically smudged mascara, but also the terrible eye bags which, paired with her bloodshot scleras, are not a cute look in any sort of way. The fact that she even went out like this at all today suddenly fills her with embarrassment - but she wouldn’t let a fidgety fool completely off her rocker like Jade get the last word on such a personal subject. “You started asking me all these weird questions-”
“I wanted to get to know you! You’re my friend now and I-”
“I’m not your friend,” Priscila shudders, “again, I have no idea who you are.”
“And again, I’m Jade LaFontaine. This is the third time you ask me. Is it amnesia?”
“Or your bag slamming against my brain,” Priscila seethes. “Whatever, who cares, just tell me where your-”
“I’ve always wanted a family,” Jade interrupts her, tone suddenly wistful, and Priscila has to focus her entire energy on not eating her whole fist then and there. “It didn’t work with my own. My father is not a great man and neither is- was- my brother. The thought of creating a family of my own is so exciting though! I would be an amazing mother.”
“Sure.”
“See? It’s just hard. I don’t know where to start. Where did you start?”
“Where did I start what?”
“With motherhood. How did you raise your daughters? It must’ve been hard. You deserve a hug- can I hug you?”
When Priscila turns her way again she can almost see the three heads she’s grown that would’ve warranted her stunned stare just as much as her words did. “No.”
But it’s something, something about Jade that’s almost hypnotising: once you lay your eyes on her, it’s hard to take them off. Priscila’s still so confused by her entire demeanour that leaving it like this…it would either drive her insane or with that awful feeling of an empty stomach that would throw off her whole day. There’s got to be something she’s hiding, somewhere in the midst of her indeclinable face card and rich but not persona. Something wicked lurking behind that white teeth grin.
Or Jade really is a vapid, brainless twat. Wouldn’t it be more criminal to leave her to her own devices, in that case? She seems to lack any sort of awareness of her surroundings, given by blissful ignorance or sheer lack of braincells.
Before Priscila can realise it, her eyebrows shoot upward with surprise: she can’t actually read Jade. She can’t figure her out.
And that’s bad. She needs more.
So that once she’s done with her surveying she can either kick her out of her life, or keep her around as her latest thing: out with the old, in with the new.
Could that be considered a friendship? Maybe a layered one. Either way, it’s a new game, and given how boring life has gotten lately, Priscila can’t help but welcome change with open arms. Not in a hug way, but still.
She flashes Jade a Cheshire cat smile, the ones she keeps for done deals and bought houses. Because she very well knows that once she throws the hook Jade will hold onto it with her whole self. “You wanna meet my daughters?”
Jade’s matching smile is more sheepish, “What do you mean?”
And so the game begins.