The thing about Zara was that she had a finely calibrated internal alarm for when Ava was keeping something from her, and it had been going off for two weeks.
She had let it go for two weeks because she was not unreasonable and because Ava processed things internally before she brought them out and Zara had always respected the architecture of how her best friend's mind worked. She pushed on things that mattered and she waited until she was certain the moment was right and she had learned over nine years that the right moment was usually when Ava had stopped pretending she was not thinking about it.
She cooked on a Thursday evening, which was her tell and they both knew it. Jollof rice made from scratch, which required forty minutes of focused attention and produced the specific atmosphe
