A few minutes later he picked his phone up and started a new message to Laila: “She’s pretty, right?” He studied it for a moment, thumb hovering the button that would send it, and erased the last bit. A second later he deleted the rest. Cat had already weighed in on Renee’s favorable looks, and it was irrelevant either way. Saying such a thing unprompted would only get Laila thinking, and Jeremy didn’t want her asking questions when he genuinely didn’t mean anything by it in the first place.

