Page 28

Don’t send me any photos, it’ll fuel my FOMO and I might cry.

Was Isureit wasn’t okay to bail on Brougham?“No,”I said to myself out loud, throwing my phone down on the bed. As much as I hated it, I needed to consider this my own not-up-for-negotiation shift at work. I was getting paid for it, after all.

So, my heart breaking and my mind grumbling, I did my hair and makeup (mostly using sample spoils scored fromBrooke’snot-up-for-negotiation job), got dressed (a lightweight knit copper sweater over a short-sleeved shirt and a denim miniskirt Ainsley had altered for my hips), and put on perfume (a half-used bottle of Dior Poison Mom had passed down to me when I told her I loved the smell of it). It struck me, as I looked at the finished product in the floor-length mirror stuck to the back of my door, that today I’d been dressed by the three most important women in my life. Cheesy, but also kind of special. Special in a way that an outfit bought on a Platinum Mastercard probably didn’t feel.

Okay, I had forty-five minutes to go before Brougham was due. That would give me enough time to get through the letters I’d shoved in my backpack yesterday, so I didn’t have to spend all day dwelling on them. Perfect.

With Dad clattering around down the hall, and the smell of toast seeping under the crack in my doorway, I set my laptop up on the empty wooden desk and started working through the letters. It seemed like I’d barely sat down when Dad knocked on my door, but a glance at the time told me I’d been going for thirty minutes already. I knew it was Dad, because Ainsley, who had joined me in sleeping at Dad’s last night so we could drive over together, didn’t knock and wait, she knocked and opened. “Come in,” I called.

I didn’t bother hiding the letters. Dad was… unperceptive, to put it kindly, and if he noticed them at all he would probably just assume they were homework.

He poked his head around the door and screwed up his mouth so his mustache went lopsided. “There’s a boy here.”

“Oh. He’s early.” I still had one letter reply to go. Guess Brougham would have to entertain himself up here while I finished. I wasn’t going to fall behind on my locker duties just because Brougham thought three forty-five meant four thirty and nine a.m. meant eight forty-five. Maybe in Australia time was but a vague concept but in America when we said nine we meantnine,damn it.

Dad pushed the door open farther and stood blocking the doorway, even when I got up. “Who is this boy? What does he want with you? Why haven’t I heard of him before?”

I met Dad’s eyes—and given I’d inherited his height, it wasn’t so hard to do—and folded my arms. “Um, the realquestion here is why don’t you quiz me like this when girls come to the door?”

Dad, who’d only recently stopped referring to me “turning” straight or lesbian depending on which gender he thought I had a crush on that day, surprised me by saying, “Because teenage girls are sweet and responsible and understand consent, and teenage boys are every father’s nightmare come true.”

I hesitated, then shrugged. “That’s actually a fair answer. I’ll allow it.”

“Our dad, the ally,” Ainsley sang happily from her bedroom, where she’d been apparently eavesdropping. Oh, good, she was awake. She’d had to drive back to Mom’s late last night, after I’d already climbed into bed, because she’d accidentally left her hormones behind. One of the many hazards of being children of divorce.

Dad followed me to the front door, and hovered suspiciously behind me while I greeted Brougham. When I introduced them, even though Brougham was all firm handshake and polite words, Dad barely managed to give him more than a brief “hi, how you doin’.” Brougham didn’t seem overly ruffled—and, to be fair, compared to his mom’s reception of me, Dad had practically rolled out the red carpet—so I didn’t bother trying to make group small talk. Besides, it was probably the last time Dad was going to have anything to do with Brougham, so it hardly mattered.

“I’ll just be a few minutes,” I said to Brougham as we got to my room. “I’m finishing up an email.”

I sat at my desk, and Brougham hung back, looking around the room. “It’s really different here,” he said.

“Hmm?”

“It’s bare. Doesn’t really look like your room.”

“I’m only here a few days a month,” I said without turning around. “It does the job.”

“Looks more like a guest room.”

“Well, when I’m not here,” I said, typing away at my response, “it is.”

“Oh, ofcourse it is.Now I sound like a dickhead.”

“‘Sound’ like one?” I muttered, before stealing a peek at him.

He glanced over his shoulder. “Pardon?”

“Nothing. Anyway. It’s better than the arguing.”

He seemed to deflate at this, and he sat heavily on the edge of my double bed. “Point taken.”

For the next few minutes, Brougham contentedly scrolled through his phone while I finished off my last response. Luckily this one was easy, and it didn’t require research to figure out the best approach. When I was done I grabbed my own phone to respond to a few messages Brooke had left about her vast, unending boredom.

Brougham cleared his throat. “I was wondering something.”

“Hmm?”

“Could I… I’m just really curious to see how your whole setup works. Do you reckon I could check it out?”