Page 8 of Play the Part (Marsford Bay #2)

HUXLEY

“ W hat’s up your butt?”

I clench my teeth, exhaling deeply before sliding my gaze up from the book. I’m sitting near the window while Sophia is sprawled on the couch across from me, scrolling on her phone.

She’s not even fucking looking at me.

“I haven’t even said shit.” My voice is flat and full of impatience.

“You don’t have to. Your weird energy is stinking up the whole place.”

She still hasn’t looked up from her phone, the TV filling the silence between us with studio audience laughter.

“What the fuck are you even saying?” I answer with all the annoyance of dealing with a younger sister.

She huffs loudly as if I’m the one being difficult. Rolling her eyes up to the ceiling, she drops her phone on her chest, finally looking at me.

“You know, just because you were gone for five years, that doesn’t magically erase that we grew up together. I just know these things, okay? You’re not as misunderstood as you’d like to think.”

She falls silent and quirks an arrogant brow.

I absentmindedly drag my barbell between my teeth as I try to choke down what she just said.

Ouch.

Sophia has a knack for calling it as it is without bothering to sugarcoat things.

My mind still spins with how my night ended yesterday.

Calling Connie an attention whore wasn’t my finest moment.

I have trouble thinking about it without feeling ashamed.

Then I remember her calling me kid, and I get angry all over again.

But it was exactly what I needed to hear to snap me out of whatever infatuation I had for her.

She’ll never take me seriously.

I was just an easy fuck.

An itch to scratch.

At least now, I know exactly where I stand with her.

Although I should have known from the start.

It’s as if I lost all my social skills while I was rotting in prison.

I hate how prison politics feel a lot more natural to me now.

I got used to keeping my head down and my mouth shut.

Simple. Straightforward. Even after more than a year, the outside still feels confusing. Stressful and overwhelming.

Pathetic.

I’m such an embarrassment.

I sigh, closing my book, and resign myself to admitting some of my anxiety to Sophia.

“It’s just that … I’m having — I don’t know.”

I stop talking, the words stuck somewhere between my heart and ribcage.

Sophia hums like a fucking therapist. “Great start.”

My irritation flares. “Fuck off, Soph.” I spit the words out, and she barks out a laugh.

“Come on, dude, give me something — What is it? Selina?” she asks innocently.

“No, it’s not Selina, but —” I stop abruptly, rubbing my palm over the scruff on my cheeks.

I can’t tell anyone about Connie. Especially Sophia. I know how close those two are.

Shit.

Maybe Connie was right.

We’re just a disaster waiting to happen.

Sophia obviously picks up on whatever I didn’t say out loud and springs up from her horizontal position. Her mouth drops open, blue eyes scintillating.

“Is there someone else?”

I shake my head, acting clueless. “No. Why would you say that?”

She extends her arm, pointing a finger at me, her mouth opening even wider. “There is someone else.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I say quickly, now acting squirrelly.

“Why? Do I know them?”

I avoid eye contact and mumble, “It’s nothing, drop it.”

Sophia flashes me an unimpressed face. “Fine. You’re no fun.” She drops back onto her back. “You realize you haven’t told me anything of substance, right?”

Guilt pricks at my conscience for being so closed off. I can’t help it. I snap closed like a spooked clam in the ocean anytime there’s even a whiff of vulnerability in the air.

I decide to move onto a less precarious subject.

“It’s my first class tonight, I guess I’m just nervous.”

“Woodworking?” Sophia asks with far too much hope in her tone.

As if the workshop Ozzy gifted me for my birthday back in October is somehow going to be the key to my rehabilitation. I hate how it felt like charity, especially from Ozzy.

But I still accepted the gift, unwilling to admit how much I wanted those classes. Ever since I learned a few basic skills in prison, it’s something I’ve wanted to continue learning.

I guess Ozzy remembered.

I should be grateful. Instead, it makes me bitter, and I’m too messed up in the head to explore the reasons why.

“Yeah,” I cross one ankle over the other. “Woodworking,” I mutter.

“Oh, you’re going to do great,” she assures. “You’ve always had a knack for that stuff.”

She’s back on her phone. I think she knows if she pays me too much attention, I’ll clam back up again. But she still lifts her gaze to meet mine and smiles before looking back down.

“Remember when you used Dad’s old scrap wood and made a birdhouse out of it?”

I chuckle weakly. “Yeah, what a piece of shit.”

“What?” she says, looking back at me. “The birdhouse? Or Dad?”

It’s one of those jokes that are only funny to people like us—those who got the shit end of the stick and never caught a fucking break. Most people would find that kind of humor sad and morbid.

Instead, we fall into a fit of laughter.

I sit in the driver’s seat of Sophia’s parked car, watching the snow fall onto the windshield.

It melts as soon as it hits the glass. I don’t have a car of my own yet; my driver’s license was only reinstated a few months ago.

It was taken away when I was convicted. Another piece of my life to be ashamed of—stuck borrowing my younger sister’s car like some fucking grade-A loser.

I arrived too early for the woodworking class.

I’ve been wasting time in the car, landing on Connie’s Instagram page like a moth with a death wish.

She’s posted a new video. It’s one of those skits where she reenacts classic tropes from romcoms. It was only posted a few hours ago, and it already has thousands of likes and comments.

I watch the video a second, then a third time, smirking at her antics despite myself.

She’s funny and effortlessly charismatic, made to be an actress.

I’m no better than any of her other lame-ass followers …

except I know what she sounds like when she moans.

And how her tits fit perfectly into my palms.

I close the app with an irritated sigh, and my head falls backward onto the headrest. I watch the snow fall against the frosty glass for a little while longer before finally opening the car door.

I pretend my heart isn’t beating against my chest as I make my way inside for my first real class since I was seventeen.