“Aren’t you, like, twenty-three?” Aspen inserts.
“Yes. Old. Very old. Too old for joking and messing around. These American children are too playful.” She frowns at Dmitri. “Now that I think about it, it says a lot about you.”
“Hey!”
“You take nothing seriously,” she recounts, sticking up a finger. “You make me watch Disney movies.” Another finger pops up. “You are obsessed with coffee, peanut butter, and bacon.”
“I take plenty seriously, and the movies were to help you speak better English. They’re staples.”
“Not for me. And my English is perfectly fine.”
“If we were in a Charlotte Brontë novel!” His hands fling wide and high. “This is the twenty-first century, Sofia.”
“I preferred the twentieth.”
“You didn’t exist back then.”
“I still prefer it. They’re obsessed with sports too. Don’t they know sports are a way for their leaders to control them?”
“I don’t think we put a lot of thought into it,” Victoria teases.
“No, this is the problem fucking?—”
“Fucking problem,” Aspen corrects.
“Yes! Exactly.” Sofia snaps her fingers this time. “You don’t think at all. You just cheer. I was in the library the other day and these boys came in, chanting because they had won some foolish game. A library!Noise. And the librarians didn’t even stop them! If Oakwood didn’t have the best biochem professor in North America, I’d move.”
“If I take Maxim’s job offer, Sofia, we can’t move.”
“I can move. You stay here.”
Dima pouts. “She’s always so mean to me.”
“Not mean. You’re needy. But you’re a good right-hand man. Or left-hand. Where do you sit, Misha?” Sofia inquires as servers appear at the door and start to bring in our meal.
Misha flashes me with a wink. “I’m flexible.”
With a long-suffering sigh, I pour myself a mimosa and drink it down in one.
It’s going to be a long day.
FIFTY-FIVE
DYERS, YOU JUST MADE YOUR LAST ENEMY
Wynter: Check this out
Wynter: There’s a reason he’s at the top of our shit list
Wynter: Didn’t think there was higher than first place
*Wynter sends a picture*
My eyes widenat the disgusting hack job on my phone. I shove it at Shay, who’s busy sneak-eating brownies Aunt Aoife gave us after we trekked down to the city for afternoon tea with the aunties. He stayed home to decorate the house for the holidays with his mom—family tradition.
Frowning at being disturbed, he looks away from the oversized book he’s reading on tort law, drops the brownie in a spray of crumbs, then gawks at the picture too.
“What the fuck?” He rubs his eyes like they’re too tired to focus. “That’s Denver and Zach from the diner.”
