My jaw drops. “No way.”
“Yes.” Her nod is emphatic. “Do you realize I pay a thousand a month for the Pen Pen?”
“Seriously?Pen, that’s criminal.”
“No, Stella, that’s a housing shortage.”
No way.No way.“Yeah, but that’s what we pay for our two bedroom apartment,” I argue.
Pen wrinkles her nose. “Midcity.”
“What’s wrong with being in the middle of Lafayette?”
“It’s not downtown or Freetown,” she says, like it’s patently obvious. “And I’m an artist.”
I chuckle. “You can’t be an artist and live off Guilbeau Road?”
My best friend looks at me like I’ve just confessed to human trafficking. “No.”
“But youcanbe an artist in a third floor attic?”
And it’s like I’ve just named the sun after her. “A third floor attic with a view of the cemetery and St. John’s Cathedral? Where I can still walk to Downtown Alive! and get a Bloody Mary at the French Press whenever I want?”
Well, when she puts it like that…
“Fair enough.” But it’s not like Pen is a representative sample of the renting population in Lafayette, Louisiana. She’s pretty much one of a kind. “But why would someone want to live in a house with a bunch of strangers?”
More to the point, why would anyone want to live in a house with a single mom, a four-year-old, and a thirty-year-old man with a head injury? Oh, and a self-proclaimed witch?
Pen gives me her best mystical, all-knowing smile and shrugs. “There’s one way to find out.”
ChapterTwo
LARK
“I can’t believeZoe kicked your ass out,” Bear says. “On a Tuesday.”
I take a pull from my South Coast and say nothing. We’re sitting on Bear and Maggie’s back porch. She’s putting Grayson to bed while Bear rocks the baby—Lola—out here.
“I mean, what did you do? You’ve only been back in town, what, a month?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
My brother snorts a laugh. “That might work on me, but Maggie’s not gonna give a shit if you don’t want to talk about it. Might as well start now.”
I take another swallow of my amber ale and ignore him. The trouble is Bear is hard to ignore.
“Mom’s gonna freak.”
I roll my eyes. “No, she won’t.”
“Yeah,” Bear says, amusement in the word, “she will. She wouldn’t let up for weeks when you two moved in together. Living in sin. Endangering your souls. But I think she finally clammed up because she thought you’d eventually get married.”
It’s my turn to snort. That was never going to happen, but just try telling my mother that.
Mom’s a good Catholic. Old School. Mass every Sunday. Confession once a month. Never in her life took a birth control pill. And she made sure we all knew growing up that she was a virgin on her wedding night.
Like I couldn’t have gone my whole life without picturing my parents’ wedding night.
