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ChapterThree
Skye
“How’s it going?”
I glance across my apartment to make sure Gideon’s door is closed. I have Chloe on speaker phone. Even though I don’t plan to tell her I think her brother is weird, it feels wrong to be talking about him at all when he’s here.
“Okay.”
“Yeah? You sure?”
I don’t tell her I’m already a little resentful that he’s here. I mean, how can I be comfortable reading in my favorite reading spot when he’s just on the other side of the closed door? Instead, I’m crashed in Dad’s recliner, feet up, and feeling okay but somehow still wrong. I want my space back, and I’m fairly certain that if he were like Chloe, I wouldn’t feel weird about sitting on the loveseat to read.
“Yeah.” I try to sound normal, but I’m probably overdoing it and giving herthere’s a serial killer in my housevibes.“He got everything carried up here about an hour ago. I was a little worried he had a drum set with him, too, but he stopped at the guitar and keyboard.”
“He brought Gigi?” Chloe sounds pleased.
“Gigi?” What? Did he sneak a hamster or a cat in here? The apartment complex is pet friendly, but I’m not so much, unless that pet is a dog. Hamsters and other little furry things give me the heebie- jeebies, and I’m allergic to cats.
“His guitar,” she answers. “I got it for him for his fourteenth birthday. Saved up all my babysitting money, and my dad still had to pitch in a little to help me.”
“He calls his guitar Gigi?”
“Named it after Gigi Hadid. The supermodel. He had a thing for her then.”
Interesting.
“Did you finish reading that Jane Hamilton book you started?”
Time to change the subject. Other than letting her know her brother did get here and move his things in, there’s nothing to say about the situation. I can’t tell her I think he’s weird, that I can’t sit on my loveseat to read. Or that I like his eyes.
Or that his voice is ten kinds of sexy.
I wonder if he sings.
“Haven’t had time,” Chloe tells me. “Got home late from work the last few nights. Did you say you read it?”
“No. I finished my book club book.” I stretch my arms over my head and yawn. Chloe is jealous of my book club. I invite her to join all the time—after all, I’m not an original member. The Meet Cute Book Club started at Abbott Ridge College in Abbott Ridge, North Carolina. My hair stylist knows one of the founding members, so she joined last year and invited me to join when she saw me reading from my phone when I was waiting for my appointment time. Chloe loves theideaof a book club, though, not the real thing. She won’t read every book someone else chooses for her, so she’s more of the just pour me a glass of wine and pass the charcuterie board kind of member than one who wants to discuss a book. “Reading a Jayne Ann Krentz book now.”
“Hey, don’t you have that Stephen King book about Kennedy? The one about his assassination?”
“Well, it’s a novel. It’s not really about Kennedy’s—”
“Loan it to Gideon, would you? He wants to read it.”
Gideon, again. I roll my eyes, about to ask just what sort of a job he’s looking for here, but speak of the devil, he appears in my peripheral vision. I didn’t hear him open his door. Still with my arms over my head and my phone flat on my belly—which he can probably see because my shirt is cockeyed now—I jump and shove the footrest down.
“Hey, Chlo.” I look at him as I stand. “Gotta go.”
“K.” Chloe sounds distracted. “Tell my brother to call me.”
“Sure.”
When I end the call and slide past him, he turns with me and watches me. I don’t even know what I’m doing. I just couldn’t stay in the recliner like that. I felt like a bug pinned to a board for a science project. In my room, I toss my book and phone on the end of my bed and stand there at a loss for what to do.
“Skye?”
Did he come out of his room for a reason?
