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Despite my phone being muted, I swear I can hear Lena cackling.
“Good,” August proclaims. Oh, he thought I was serious? “I’ll be by to pick you up at seven sharp.”
With that, he turns and storms away, leaving Clara and me looking after him in frozen stillness.
Before Clara sighs, her shoulders droop. She looks down at me with a rueful smile. “Well then,” she says. “I suppose I’ll put on some tea.”
She turns and walks inside the cottage, but she leaves the door open for me.
I don’t get up just yet.
I’m still sitting here, hunched on the grass and pressed against the wall next to the door, my knees drawn up like some demented goblin.
I finally remember to unmute my phone as my brain starts working again.
“—e mute us? I bet that little bitch muted us.”
“Lena, I know you have a foul mouth, but could you refrain from calling my granddaughter a ‘little bitch’?”
“You just said it!” Lena announces triumphantly. “Hey, I only say it affectionately. As in, that lucky little bitch.”
“That little bitch can hear you,” I groan. “Yes, I muted you. I don’t even want to know what you guys were saying.”
“Oh! There you are.” Lena perks up, completely shameless. “There you are. So, what’re you gonna wear?”
I stare down at my phone.
And then I instantly hang up, thunking my head back against the wall.
My God.
August Marshall has blown my life to bits in far more ways than I could ever imagine.
I’ve never had a day more awkward than this in my life.
Yes, that’s counting the day in third-grade theater, when little Jimmy Schmitz pantsed me onstage in front of every parent, well-meaning aunt, and older sibling in my school district.
I made the best of that too.
I’m just glad I had on really cute floral panties that matched my bright sunflower costume, so, hey, technically I really wasn’t that out of costume. It got a good laugh from the audience and Jimmy a week of detention, where every day as I passed by the classroom window during recess, I looked in, smiled at him, and waved as cheerfully as I could.
Look, I try to stay positive. But every now and then I can be positively petty.
Right now, though?
I’m positively tired.
I spent the whole day with Clara. If I thought I was going to work any miracles with her, I was wrong.
She didn’t want to talk art. I didn’t feel comfortable offering to show her my portfolio.
Instead, she had me sorting all the Inky originals, models, and merchandise so she could pack them up to hand them over to Marissa whenever a legal order shows up to do so.
She promised she’d keep the boxes until August made peace with the idea, but it didn’t change the fact that her mind was made up. I wasn’t about to get kicked out for starting an argument over this.
Depressing as hell.
Any joy I might’ve felt over getting to handle priceless one-of-a-kind artist originals was completely dampened.
