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“Oh my god.”

“I aminsistingright now.”

Well, given how the last time he’d insisted on sharing something with me turned out, at least it was likely to be entertaining. I giggled. “Fine, fine, okay, but if your taste in horror sucks we can’t be friends.”

“Can we still be colleagues?”

“As long as the price is right, I’ll happily sell out my integrity for you, Brougham.”

“That’s all any guy ever wants to hear,” he deadpanned, holding his hand out for the remote. I passed it over, and he promptly found the movie buried in the library. The display image was a teacup sitting off-center in a saucer.

“Ooh, very unsettling,” I said. “Grandmas everywhere are quivering in their crocheted cardigans.”

“Shut up and watch, Phillips.”

“Oh andtalkabout intimidating, you’re so dominant, I’m terrified of you.”

“You’re not one of those people who talks all the way through the movie, are you?”

“No.But the movie isn’t on yet.”

Before Brougham could retort, Mom brought in the hot chocolates, which she’d topped with a generous amount of whipped cream and a marshmallow she’d browned with her little handheld kitchen torch. If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought she was trying to make an impression here. Maybe she just felt the need to show off when one of her students came over?

She flicked the light off as she left for the study, plunging Brougham and me into near-darkness, broken only by the dim bluish glow emanating from the screen. I set my cup down on the side table to cool and Brougham clutched his between both hands, blowing on it gently. “I like your mum.”

“If you didn’t, I’d have to assume there was something wrong with you. You gonna press play or what?”

He side-eyed me and turned the movie on.

Like he’d promised, it actually wasn’t bad. Maybe it was even kind of good, in an atmospheric sort of way. The movie followed aliens called Pincers that were either invisible or existed between dimensions—hard to say—and hunted their prey for days before turning them inside out, cell by cell, gradually at first then exponentially, until organ failure. The only sign of their presence? Objects would start to move, ever-so-subtly, as their molecular structure was rearranged and put back together.

Brougham was lucky he hadn’t gone into detail on the premise, because the cinematography was the only thing that saved this film from being cheesy and ridiculous. But as it stood, it was weirdly engaging. It even got a choked scream out of me following an unexpected shot of an exposed, decaying jaw turned inside out. Brougham onlylaughed out loud at my reaction. It seemed we’d found the one thing guaranteed to get a smile out of him: schadenfreude.

I managed to resist messaging Brooke until about halfway through the movie. When I absolutely couldn’t take it anymore, I whispered, “Will I miss much if I run to the bathroom?”

“Nah, you’re good, go.”

I had my phone whipped out before I’d even reached the room. I probably could’ve checked during the film, but Ainsleyhatedpeople going on their phones during movies, to the point where physical violence wasn’t out of the question from her to get the phones putaway.Now I’d learned that lesson the hard way, I couldn’t really unlearn it.

Two messages from Brooke.

I feel like absolute shit.

Wanna do something tomorrow?

Sushi or an escape room or literally

anything?

Did Iwantto? After two months of scrounging around for any free scrap of time Brooke had left over, this was the most beautiful text I’d ever seen.

But, man, it felt really fucking dirty.

Hear me out: Sushi AND escape room?

I love you so much. Yes please. 12?

How was it possible to be both filled with remorse and simultaneously happier than you’ve ever been regarding a decision? Itwasn’tpossible. And yet, here I was. I felt like I’d finally defeated the boss in a game I’d been playing for months. Ray was gone and Brooke was back andwhy did I sound like a psychopath—it wasn’t okay to be so self-satisfied after doing a shitty thing.