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“My deal is…I didn’t want a fucking costume and stop hanging out third wheeling with my best friend.”
“Damn. Fine,” she says with a cold tone. That’s better. She needs to know that the other night wasn’t something serious, it wasn’t leading up to something else. It was just sex. Plain and simple.
23
TAYLOR CROMWELL
“Hey, Mom,” I say, answering my phone as I kick my shoes off. King roams around on the bed next to me. My new fridge is still cooling down, so the frozen mice aren’t ready to be transferred yet.
“Hi, Baby,” she says, her voice sounds strained and tired.
“How’s California? How’s Justin?” Justin is her boyfriend of six months. They aren’t serious, but I’ve met him once which is a big deal for her. He’s a little sleezy, wears baggy pants but not in the Justin-Bieber-cool-way, more like he bought the wrong size.
“Oh, you know,” she sighs. I can tell she is fiddling with her hair even from a thousand miles away. I picture her in her sweatpants, cross-legged like me, sitting on her bed.
“King and I miss you,” I say.
“I miss that slithery motherfucker, too. Tell him I said that,” she cackles.
“Oh, he can hear you.” King rests his head on my lap like a puppy, his long body wrapped around me and the covers. “Shit,” I mutter, petting away his molt as his skin leaves flakes all over the bed. “Shit, shit, shit.” I pick him up and carry him to his terrarium before stripping my bed, unfurling his molted skin and placing it on my dresser. I’m careful not to shake the covers until I have it over the balcony and watch the excess scales flitter away into the breeze. Hopefully, some didn’t get in the pool.
“You’re not due until next week, buddy,” I tell him, carrying the covers back inside.
“Ahh crusty snakeskin,” Mom says through the phone.
“Hold on a minute, putting my covers in the wash.”
“Yeah, yeah, take your time,” she says. I leave my room with my comforter wrapped in my arms. Of course, I run into Elijah in the laundry room. He holds the blanket from the other night, pulling it out of the dryer with a stack of his clothes. It looks fresh and new. Nobody would know his cum was once soaked into it.
I shove my comforter into the wash and turn it on.
“I wasn’t done with that,” he sighs, crossing his arms over his bare chest. Of course, he’s shirtless. I don’t have time for this.
“I needed it, okay?” I respond, keeping my eyes down on the floor. I don’t need to wash my panties, too.
“What, get your period?” he says. His face scrunched up like a little boy in disgust.
“No! If you must know, King molted onto it, and it needs a good wash.” Ugh, I looked at his abs. Why does he have to have such perfect abs? I’m not even materialistic like that either, he’s just so… damn. When did he get so tan, too? I never noticed that his tattoos swirl around his body like a cloud of insidiously beautiful smoke.
“What the fuck does that mean?” he asks, snapping me out of my daze.
“Look it up,” I say, twiddling away. I grab an extra blanket from the hall closet and meet Mom back in the room, shaking my head at the image of half-naked Elijah.
“Back,” I say. I hear sniffling coming from the other end. “Mom?”
“Hey, honey, I should get going.”
“Mom, is everything alright?”
“You know…boy drama. You’d think by this age I’d have it figured out but we’re all just little girls hoping to find our perfect man at the end of the day, aren’t we?”
She gets philosophical whenever she gets really sad. She gets it from Grandpa, who says that people never have bad days, they choose to see the day as either bad or good. It’s a perspective thing. I think that’s bullshit, but I love that little wrinkly Korean man, nonetheless.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, knowing all too well what she means. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No, no, just make sure you find the right man, that’s all. I know you get your poor decision-making skills on that front from me, so make sure you do better.”
I wince. She was there for the Jared debacle and witnessed my meltdown that led to me moving away. She knows better than anyone that my choice in men is typically less than stellar. It’s ironic. Before the affair, Mom liked Elijah and Jessica. But after something like that, how could you trust anyone anymore? I always wondered if Elijah secretly knew but didn’t tell me to keep us together longer. That would be just the thing he’d hide from me.
