Page 4 of The Grump I Loathe (The Lockhart Brothers #3)

EDDIE

“ W hat was that?” I shouted through my closed bedroom door. I had a crumpled tissue in one hand and a stack of business cards in the other to sort through while praying to the gods of gaming that my sinuses unblocked themselves ASAP.

“Nothing!” came Cassie’s muffled reply.

“Really? Because it sounds like you just unleashed an entire can of disinfectant into the hallway. You know that stuff is killing the environment, right?”

Cassie mumbled something that sounded like “I don’t want to catch your con cooties.”

“It’s called con crud.” When you jammed that many people into a convention, illness spread faster than word of an amazing game.

“Whatever! I don’t want it. Neither does Isabel or Luna.”

Cassie and I shared a small, four-bedroom place with two other roommates.

It kept expenses low enough that I could—just barely—make ends meet.

Since I’d graduated from UC Berkeley, I’d been let go from three different game companies for being a little too outspoken with my ideas, and finances were a little tight.

It didn’t help that way too much of my income went to managing my student loan debt.

“I need one of those white decontamination suits,” Cassie muttered from the hall.

“If you were going to catch it, I think you already would have,” I pointed out.

After all, she’d been right there in the booth with me, helping out.

And thankfully—plague aside—it looked like our hard work had paid off.

Renting a booth at GeekCon had been a spendy decision, but it had been so very worth it.

Preorders for Alterbot were way up, and I’d made some solid connections that could turn into my next job.

Things might not have gone great at my workplace attempts so far, but I was willing to swallow my pride for the sake of a steady paycheck.

A lot of unpaid time and effort went into creating an indie game, and my crappy room in this crappy apartment wasn’t going to pay for itself.

I choked on my next inhale, trying not to cough up a lung.

“I’m coming in!” Cassie called, shoving my door open and peeking in like a giant booger might launch across the room and smother her. She held a steaming mug in one hand, the other shielding her mouth and nose. “Don’t breathe in my direction.”

“I’m lucky I can breathe at all,” I said, still sorting the business cards into piles.

Jasper Dunn, Narrative Lead at Wild Bloom Games.

Amelia Chen, Quest Designer at NovaTales.

Darius Thompson, Human Resources at LockMill.

Ahmed Noor, Creative Producer at Codee Interactive.

The next phase of my gaming career was in this pile. I could feel it. Or so I hoped.

“Special delivery.”

“Oh my God!” I cried as Cassie put the mug down on my desk and a wave of something hit me. It reeked like garlic and vinegar and spice. Ew, was that cinnamon? “What is that?”

“Better if you don’t ask. Just drink it. If you go fast, you won’t really taste it.”

I eyed the mug warily. “Is this another one of the secret home remedies you’ve found in some sketchy online forum?”

“It had a bunch of good reviews.”

I glared at her, unimpressed. I’d adored Cassie ever since we’d met freshman year of college, but her weakness for snake oil cures was going to be the death of at least one of us.

“What?” she complained. “You look like a steaming pile of?—”

I cleared my throat, hacking on gunk.

“Exactly,” Cassie said, pulling out a jagged purple crystal from her pocket. She waved it over my head.

“What is that?” I said, batting her away. “Now what are you doing?”

“Amethyst. I’m cleansing your aura. I don’t need that nasty con crud escaping this room. I’ve got people to see this week.”

“People?” I said, waggling my eyebrows. “Any of the romantic persuasion?”

“You know I’m on a self-love journey.”

I stayed strong and resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Cassie’s insistence that she was currently dating herself could get a little over the top at times, but hey, it also meant that for once, she had a romantic partner who didn’t set off red flags.

She could be a little reckless when it came to love, and that meant she usually fell head over heels into relationships way too fast without stopping to check if the guy she’d fallen for was a decent human being.

“I’m talking about important clients,” she said, holding my arm up like she was going to scrub my armpit with the amethyst.

“Speaking of clients, why don’t you go cleanse their spaces?” She had a degree in interior design and had recently been hired on as an assistant at Studio Wren. She was still trying to figure out how best to say this chair is five grand and worth it .

“I’m off for the afternoon,” Cassie said. “So after we’re done here, we can give this whole apartment a deep energy cleanse.”

“Wow, Cass,” I muttered. “That sounds like so much fun.” On the bright side, maybe I’d drown in my own sinus fluids before then.

“It’s necessary.”

“I really don’t think I’m that bad.”

“Your nose looks like a burrito someone forgot in the oven overnight and then tried to microwave.”

“Huh?” I said, losing my train of thought as my phone rang. ALANNAH SCHOOL flashed across the screen.

“Uh-oh,” Cassie said, her eyebrows pinching in concern.

“Not again,” I groaned, immediately picking up the call.

“Hello?” I tugged the phone away from my ear as the shrill voice of the after-school program coordinator from St. Orwell Prep blasted through the speaker.

“Hi, Mrs. Armsfield,” I said when the booming voice finally stopped.

“No, I was not aware Alannah was still at school.”

I wished I could say this was the first time my dad and his second wife, Valentina, had failed to pry themselves away from their work long enough to remember to pick up their child, but that would be a lie .

“No, I’m not sure where they are.” I winced and pulled the phone further away from my ear. “Yes, I appreciate that the program ended forty-five minutes ago. I’ll be there soon.”

I hung up, catching Cassie’s eye. “Another Simon Sheppard special?” she asked.

I sighed and got up, quickly pulling on a hoodie. “You’d think on the second go around at having a family, he would have figured out how to actually show up as a dad. Apparently, all the other kids have gone home, and her nanny is out sick.”

Cassie grimaced. “Poor kid.”

“Tell me about it.” I knew what it was like to be the last kid left on the playground and realizing you’d been forgotten because everyone else had better things to do.

I’d decided the first time I held Alannah that my little sister wasn’t going to have to deal with that same crap.

So no matter how many times Dad and Valentina dropped the ball, I always made a point of showing up, con crud or no con crud.

“Car keys?” I asked Cassie.

“On the counter,” she said.

I nodded, threw back a couple of cold meds with the sludge in the mug Cassie had brought me, cringed at the taste, and booked it out the door.

Thirty minutes later, I’d made it through horrendous traffic and thrown the car in park in front of the gaudy doors of St. Orwell Prep. I’d barely caught my breath at the top of the stairs before Mrs. Armsfield was shoving Alannah out the door at me, complaining about being late for the dentist.

“Sorry,” I started to say but stopped. Mrs. Armsfield was already gone, and promising it wouldn’t happen again felt too much like a lie. I fought off a sneeze, then plastered a smile on my face and tossed my arm over Alannah’s shoulders. “Hey, kid. How’s it going?”

“How does it look?” she muttered, slumping against my side and practically dragging her backpack behind her as we made our way down the steps.

“Like you’ve lived a tough eight years.”

“Eight and three-quarters,” she corrected me.

“Can’t forget about the fractions,” I said. She was tall for eight (and three-quarters), but slight, her braids coming loose at the back of her head, and there were runs in her uniform tights Valentina would probably complain about later.

The only thing that bothered me was the downcast look on her face.

I wanted to think that no adult would lecture a kid for something that was clearly her parents’ fault, but I knew from past experience that when Mrs. Armsfield was pissed off, she made sure everyone knew it.

“Mrs. Armsfield sounded like she was having a…rough day,” I said, aiming for diplomacy.

Alannah nodded. “Her crown fell out. Mom said if I don’t brush after all my meals, my teeth will fall out. You think that’s true? ’Cause sometimes I skip brushing them after lunch. I hate having to do it in the school bathroom.”

I hummed. “Well…there’s probably a margin of error there. Between you and me, I think you’re good to skip a few lunchtime brushes.”

Alannah plopped herself down on the passenger seat of the car.

She prodded at the air freshener Cassie had hung from the rearview mirror.

We shared the car, our awful little junker, because the only thing better than driving around in this shitbox on wheels was knowing I only had to cover half the expenses .

“So…” I said. “What’s on the agenda tonight? Homework? Gymnastics practice?” I pulled away from the school, glancing at Alannah briefly. “You know, Cassie still thinks it’s epic that you’re such a gymnastics prodigy.”

Her face clouded over. Should I change the subject?

But no, she usually loved talking about gymnastics.

If that wasn’t true anymore, I needed to get to the bottom of the reason why.

Alannah had the habit of shoving her feelings down, out of sight, but I was usually good at getting her to open up.

It meant a lot to me to be her safe space—the one she could tell anything.

“She said we’ll definitely be seeing you at the Olympics in eight years. You’ll have your own little fan section. We can get shirts with your face on them and everything.”