Come into the Water

chapter thirty eight

"Pass the icing, please," Lila said, her eyes down and focused on the cupcake in her hands.

"Here you go," I responded. I handed her the tin off of the counter.

Since we were kids, Lila had been more of a strawberry icing person whereas I preferred chocolate. She always found it disgusting that I was a chocolate-on-chocolate person. I was a huge fan of chocolate ice cream and chocolate sprinkles, fudge brownies, or anything chocolate flavored made even more chocolatey.

Growing up, whenever Lila and I needed an "us" day we'd invite the other over and bake sweets. "Us" days usually involved a lot of garbage food alongside a lot of garbage television. We loved to binge watch any reality show and The Bachelor was the choice of the day. We had been in a debate between cookies and brownies only to end up making cupcakes.

"Can you believe we've been having Natalia-Lila day since we were in seventh grade?" Lila asked me, setting the freshly iced cupcake down. "Your Bieber phase, my Panic! phase. We've really been through it all."

"Remember when you dyed your hair black and your mom thought you "went emo" and started making you go to church again with your grandparents?"

She giggled. "My mom hates when I dye my hair. She didn't even look at me when I dyed my hair red-for six weeks. She's so overdramatic."

"Remember when I got my nose pierced and she sat me down to have a talk," I snorted. "She's hilarious."

"Yeah. Hilarious to you. Did I ever tell you what she said about Rafael when they first met?"

I pursed my lips, trying to remember. "Probably, but please remind me."

"She said and I quote, the lights are on but nobody's home. In front of him!" She scoffed.

"Yikes," I frowned. "Did he understand her?"

"Nat," she scoffed. "Are you calling him dumb?"

I furrowed my eyebrows. "No. I don't really know how much slang demons know, so I was just curious."

I took a brief break from icing the cupcakes and sipped at my wine. The cupcakes were mostly done. There was only a handful left to cover in icing-if there was any icing left by the time Lila was done. If she wasn't eating out the container, she was piling icing on. But she was my best friend, and I adored her ritual of eating strawberry icing out the container.

"Oh. Well...no. He didn't know what she meant."

I snorted. "Poor, Rafael."

"It was so strange finding out that he was a demon, Nat. I thought he was just fucking with me honestly."

"I would too. Rafael seems like some guy you'd meet that goes to NYU and paints portraits of the girls he hooks up with."

"That was very specific. Have you thought about that before?"

I nodded. "Yeah, in my free time I religiously think about Rafael attending NYU and painting portraits of the girls he hooks up with," I muttered sarcastically.

"No sarcasm tonight," she pointed the strawberry icing covered knife at me. "You have to be nice to me or I won't let you eat any of the cupcakes that we made."

"You just said we made them."

"Yeah, in my apartment. So eat a dick." I shook my head at her, finishing up the last bit of icing. We set the cupcakes down, taking a long look at them and sighing at it. "I'm going to swallow these."