Page 38 of Burn Bright

The Three Beans look like wrinkly little dicks, but in the cutest way.

I put the call on speaker so I can click into my cell’s settings. “Location services might have turned off on the last update.” Sure enough, it’s off. I swipe it back on. “Fixed.”

After a long moment, Aunt Helena gasps. “New York? No, that can’t be right. Angelica said you’d be in Baltimore. She’s never wrong.”

Angelica is her close friend and a psychic.

“Maybe her crystal ball is dusty.”

“Darling, she reads cards. Why are you in New York?”

“School. I transferred?—”

“Goddammit,” she curses. Not at me. Pretty sure I hear a loud groaning in the background. “These pipes are going to bust any day now. I swear it.” She’s living in a rent-controlled apartment. The same one she moved in to when she was eighteen. She has said more than once that her landlord will have to kick down the door and drag her decomposing body out of it. I just hope the Three Beans don’t eat her first—at least, I’ve heard that cats will start chowing down on their dead owners.

“Sorry,” she apologizes. “You transferred schools? That’s great. Or I assume that’s great. You don’t make those kinds of moves without thinking fifteen steps ahead.” She gasps. “Unless, is there…a…boyinvolved?” She asks like she’s tiptoeing around the subject.

My cheeks heat and another flash of Ben Cobalt’s panty-dropping smile graces my brain. OhGod.Sorry, God. Shit. Fuck. I pinch the bridge of my nose.

“There’s not a boy?—”

“I feel like you might be lying,” she cuts me off swiftly. “Maybe we should put Angelica on a three-way call?—”

I interrupt her before she has a chance to speed dial her psychic friend. “All right, it’s boy-adjacent.”

Aunt Helena sucks in a breath. “What in the hell does that mean? Like…is he…part amphibian?”

I almost laugh. “He’s not a merman, Aunt Helena.”

“I suppose it’d be more likely he’s part robot,” she says, all too seriously. “I heard they’re starting to put microchips in people’sbrains, Harry. When you’re a fancy-pants doctor, please side with the humans and not the AI.”

“Always Team Human,” I tell her.

“So boy-adjacent. My theories have ended. What does that mean?”

“I transferred for school,” I explain, “but there’s this guy who kind of also transferred? Our worlds are…revolving, I guess.” I take a beat before I add, “We’re friends.” I say it confidently, believing it more, and I smile to myself.

There’s a long pause on the other end.

My smile falls. “Aunt Helena?”

“I’m not crying.” She’s sniffling. I roll my eyes, but I can’t help but laugh a little. “It’s just…you have afriend. You haven’t had a friend since the fourth grade.”

Thank you for that reminder.

“It probably won’t last,” I mutter. “No need to go through the waterworks.”

“Manifest, Harry.Man-i-fest. It’ll last if you want it to.”

I’m not sure that’s true. Every time I’ve tried to manifest something, the universe doesn’t grant it to me in a package and bow. I have to work. And work. Andworkfor what I want.

Though I really,reallywant to be Ben’s friend. Maybe I can’t manifest it to last, but I can try my hardest not to fuck it up.

“Do you still have Hope’s number blocked?” my aunt asks, changing the subject so abruptly that I have mild whiplash.

“Yeah.” My skin goes cold hearing her name.

Hope.