Page 21 of Never Your Valentine

I growl, super unhappy with this situation, but I scurry behind him when he cracks the door open. “Hey, guys?” he yells.

A face appears at the door. A short man with oddly overdeveloped muscles. When he speaks, his voice is high-pitched and strained. “We still have twenty minutes left.”

“Just checking if you want the volume down,” Grant says.

The man disappears to check with his buddies. A moment later, a chorus of voices screams, “Turn it up!”

Grant closes the door, calm as a saint. “There’s your answer.”

I storm away, cursing the day I ever thought about moving here.

“You leaving already?” he calls after me. “I thought we were negotiating terms.”

I turn on my heel, glaring. “Negotiating terms implies you listen. And clearly, you can’t hear me over that—that—” I’m sputtering now, trying to form words. I stab a finger toward the door behind him. “Demolition derby run by rabid squirrels.”

“Oh I like that.” He grins. “I should get a t-shirt.”

“Make me one too. Then we can both look like idiots.” I march up to my apartment while the apocalypse rages on.

Chapter 8

Grant

The next day, I’m still thinking about last night’s encounter with Annabelle. Once again, I was a total dick. But this time, it wasn’t my fault. Rage rooms are loud. They just are.

I had no intention of turning down the music, but I did intend to lend her a pair of noise-canceling headphones. She stomped off before I got the chance. I left them on her welcome mat, along with a coupon for one free rage session.

This morning, both the headphones and the coupon are gone. A hand-drawn card is stuck to my door.

At first, I mistake it for a sympathy card. The lilies on the front are drawn in soft pastel colors. The caption: Sorry for your loss.

Inside, it says: …of hearing.

Annabelle signed it with, Thanks for the headphones. Don’t say “it was the least I could do.” I already know.

I’m still holding the card when I get downstairs. June is untangling a pink heart garland with Felix on the other end, pulling on it and making it worse.

In the summer tourist season, Felix overextends himself leading wilderness hikes and fishing trips seven days a week. Winter is slow for him, so he does a lot of hanging out. For some reason, he likes to hang out here.

June drops her end of the garland and unfolds a giant paper cupid. “We could ask Grant,” she says.

“The answer’s no,” I say. “You’re not decorating for Valentine’s Day.”

“Not that,” Felix says. “We want to know if you’ve seen Lumpy.”

“Cole hates it when you call him that.”

Felix shrugs. “Why do you think I do it?”

Each of us Neverly kids was born on a different holiday. It’s our curse. The five of us argue about who got screwed the hardest, but our youngest brother Cole always wins, since the poor guy has a Christmas birthday. At age eighteen, he started opting out of the holidays completely, and spends every December traveling to one tropical hotspot or another. This year, it was Bali.

June adds tape to the paper cupid. “I was just saying, I haven’t seen Cole for months.”

“Right?” Felix says. “He could drop by family dinner for five minutes.”

“Family dinner isn’t mandatory,” I tell him.

“No,” he says. “But it’s fun.”