CHAPTER TWO
Calista
“Knock. Knock,” Kaiden chimed as he let himself into my apartment. I really needed to get that spare key back.
“That’s not really a knock, turd.”
He plopped down on the end of the couch and looked over at me as I finished placing my meager grocery order. His light brown hair was getting longer and brushing the tops of his ears. “You wouldn’t answer the door if I did.”
“Precisely.”
Clutching his chest, he said, “You wound me.”
I smacked him with a throw pillow then shoveled another scoop of popcorn into my mouth. Desperate times called for desperate measures and cheap food. Around the crunch of my dinner, I said, “I may be naked next time.”
His face scrunched and twitched. In an attempt to erase that image from his mind, he changed the subject. “You’re gonna fill yourself up before we eat.”
I chewed slower trying to figure out what he meant. “Did we have plans?”
“Seriously?” His voice rose an octave.
Why did everyone keep saying that to me lately? I glanced at his exasperated face out of the corner of my eye. “What?”
“You promised Mom and Dad you would be there for Sunday dinner.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and mumbled, “Fuck.”
This past week went by in a blur. Between wallowing in self-pity, updating my resume, job hunting, wallowing in self-pity some more, and smashing Bryan after I said wouldn’t, I had completely lost track of what day it was.
“Calista—”
I groaned. “I know.”
“You promised.”
“I know!” I returned his stern expression. “I just forgot what day it is.”
“On purpose?”
It was a possibility. I was an overachieving self-saboteur. Too bad I couldn’t put that on my resume, too.
Although I promised Dad I would be there, going to Sunday dinners was the equivalent of standing in front of a one-man firing squad with my stepmother aiming the rifle. Not something I looked forward to on a regular occurrence. Who wanted their life to flash before their eyes every single week? Not I.
“No.” I set the popcorn on the table and went to get dressed. I dug through my dirty laundry that was scheduled to be picked up tomorrow and tried to find the cleanest, least wrinkled, matching garments.
“Hurry up,” Kaiden yelled from the living room. “We’re gonna be late.”
I huffed and changed out of the only clean clothes in my wardrobe because Patty would have a conniption if I went in pajamas.
“It’s called fashionably late,” I said and frowned into the full-length mirror in the corner of my room. Patty is going to love the wrinkles in this, I thought as I stretched the rippled fabric as much as I could to pull some out.
“It’s called being lectured as an adult, and I get enough of those for breathing.”
As I turned to walk away, I noticed a crusty spot on the side of my jeans. “Shit,” I mumbled. I licked my finger and went to town to get it off. “You’re barely an adult, and I wouldn’t call the babytalk you get a stern tongue-lashing.”
Kaiden stared me down when I returned to the living room. “You have no idea what it’s like to be me.”
“You’re right.” I slipped into my shoes and grabbed a thin sweater to cover my wrinkled top. “I have no idea what it’s like to be served everything on a silver platter and handfed with a silver spoon.”
