Who came up with this shit? Who even marked the anniversary of spousal and parental abandonment—over and over again?
In the long list of questions I had about my life and that of my crew, those didn’t even rate more than a passing thought. They did, however, make me want to clobber my lie-dad over the head with my bedside lamp. Here he was, right on schedule, pretending to love me and care for me. I’d believed him for most of my life, when he hadn’t given a damn beyond how I could secure his coveted Nobel Prize.
I used to like his smile. It had been one of my favorite parts about him, always making things a little lighter, a little bit better. Now it felt smarmy and wheedling even though it didn’t look it. Everything about his performance, as usual, was spot-on, down to the flushed cheeks and damp hair, confirming he’d recently returned from his morning, care-fucking-free run.
Waking to Bobo beside me on my bed was possibly the only thing that kept me from blowing the whole damn ruse wide open. His warm, furry body and happy, goofy grin were proof that there were indeed good things in this world, even if so much of it was revealing itself to be screwed up beyond measure.
Bobo was real. His love for me was real. Same for my friends. For them, too, I resisted the urge to hiss at my lie-dad whom I knew—I damn well knew—was stabbing me in the back every freaking day—after he recovered from the blow from my lamp to the head, of course.
Our lie-rents deserved punishment, and with each passing day of this bullshit, I was growing more and more in the mood to be the one to deliver it.
Thanks largely to Bobo’s sweet morning greeting, I managed to keep my cool until my lie-dad left to do whatever his superspy self actually had lined up for the day. According to his script, he and Porter were treating Orson to lunch and beers to soothe their friend’s feelings on the whatever anniversary of being dumped.
Yeah, right.
I left my note concealed in my panties’ waistband in my dirty clothes basket. I’d been doing my own laundry since I was tall enough to reach the buttons on the washing machine, so it was probably safe from discovery there. Of course, if I died today and was successfully hypnotized, I’d almost certainly never find it. The note would dissolve in the wash and that would be that.
My already slim options were growing slimmer by the day. Coincidentally, so was my emotional stability. If I hadn’t beenready to snap before, I sure as shit was now. This, all that had been happening to us, was the stuff of mental breakdowns. I was one more naked Magnum away from snapping.
On the way out, I snatched a small tray of fluffy, buttery, supposedly homemade croissants from the kitchen for me and my friends. A chef wassocoming into the house and cooking when I wasn’t here. No way was Monica slash Lynne responsible for this deliciousness. What was one more lie in a sea of thousands of them?
I managed to slip the house with a quick, barely there peck to Monica’s cheek that I despised giving, but within minutes I was sitting in Clyde—or at least a version of him—my eyes feasting on the sight of the man I loved.
The tightness in my chest, which had been there since I first woke, finally loosened. And when he kissed me, the heat of his mouth and tongue swept me away and, for just those beautiful, wonderful moments, very nearly made me forget what we’d witnessed the night before.
Alas, not even the frisson of Griffin’s kisses was enough to accomplish that. A nuclear blast, sure. Short of total annihilation, there was no forgetting.
For as long as I lived and wasn’t successfully rebooted, I’d never forget.
My friends and I were a twisted anthropomorphic bundle of nerves. But it seemed only we noticed the outward signs: the jumpy stares, the bunched shoulders, the twitchy fingers, the way our smiles were brittle. All too aware we swam in a fishbowl with a whole town of observers, we made it through our prelunch classes unusually broody and quiet, but without incident. My friends were also struggling to recover from last night’s mind-melt.
Only once we were settled at a booth in one of our regular haunts, Hughie’s Hoagies, with a sandwich each, did the dam come crashing down all the way.
Hunt fiddled with his Italian sub, not taking a bite yet.
Layla huffed out a breath and took a ferocious bite out of a Reuben.
My brows arched in question.
She chewed and rolled her eyes.
I said.
I tore some lettuce that peeked out of my sandwich and ripped it into tiny pieces, just to have something to do with my hands.
Brady took a loud sip of an energy drink and frowned.
Hunt said.
I sighed, feeling like I was actually deflating.
Griffin said.
Brady’s eyes were uncommonly vulnerable when they pinned on Griff across the table.
Griffin said, crunching a salt and vinegar potato chip.
