Maybe one day my heart and my brain would get on the same page.
But every fibre of my being screamed at me to answer the phone when his number popped up on my screen. I’d pin my hands under my legs and watch it ring through, not even risking touching the phone to decline. I didn’t trust myself.
Eva had been checking in a lot as well. I was still chatting with her. We’d exchange funny videos and posts on different social media platforms.
I had to set all of my socials to private because of the media attention I’d been getting since the video of me telling the ERT captain to shove it went viral. I didn’t mind some of the attention, but it was getting more and more weird as time went on.
I was getting a bit of a cult following of my own. Like fan accounts that do those edits to whatever song was trending. Amber and Maddy were killing themselves—sending them to me every time they found one.
Not going to lie, I did like those. Some of them made me look cute, some made me look kind of hot, but my favourites were the ones that made me look like a badass. Someone had filmed me taking down muggers not once or twice, but on like six different occasions. One account took the clip of me roasting the police chief, meshed it with one of the dozen thirst trap songs floating around, and put it over clips of me beating up muggers.
Whenever I was really sad, I’d watch that one and read the comments:
User679: I’d let her stomp on me any time
Avlover98: not me begging her to bully me too
Bookishgirl: how many times have I watched this? Yes
Devilaus94: I’d let her ruin my life any day
Maddy reposted every single one she found because she was my biggest fan. Honestly, she might have been running one of the accounts, or all of them. She was having way too much fun.
I took a sip of my sangria, surveying the chaos. Amber, Maddy, and Tasha were hunched over Amber’s phone, giggling like mad women and sneaking glances at me. Probably another edit that just came out. Candice sat with Jenny and Jessica at the small dining table I had tucked into the corner by the front door. Candice was nice despite the fact she was raised by Detective Asshole and so was Jenny, but I didnotget along with Jessica. She was an uptight bitch who had looked down her nose at meeven before I started working with my villains. Now it was ten times worse.
Like tonight, she would glance over every once in a while and sneer at me—in my own goddamned home. Seriously, I didn’t know why Amber insisted on inviting her to everything when she sucked the fun out of anywhere she frequented.
“I wish I’d been there! Why do all the fun things happen at 49th?” Abby pouted after Ashley finished recounting the infamous police chief speech that got me arrested.
“I got walked out in handcuffs four hours later. I don’t know if I’d classify that as fun.”
“Oh please, we all know what kind of books you read. You’re a slut for a guy—or girl—with handcuffs!” Amber called from the kitchen.
True.
“Shut up.” I rolled my eyes. “Remind me why we’re friends.”
“Because I encourage your inner whore. Duh.”
I snorted, mostly because Jessica looked like she was on the verge of having an aneurism. Whatever. We weren’t at work; she could stand to live a little. Everyone else was laughing.
“I’d have to be getting laid to be a whore.”
“Girl, come on. All those smoking hot supervillains and you’re not getting any dick? It’s a crying shame,” Maddy cut in.
Queue hysterical laughing and Jessica choking on her drink. I just sighed.
“Tell me about it.”
“Who’s the hottest?”
Alex’s question had everyone’s attention. The girls in the kitchen moved around the counter to the stools tucked under it, instead. I was wondering how long it would take for them to grill me about my villains. Twenty minutes—longer than I expected.
“She’s going to say Avalanche. She’s had a crush on him for years.” Amber laughed.
I glared at her. “I’m not the only one. Tell me who you think is hotter.”
She strummed her fingers over her chin, deep in thought.
