Page 17 of The One Month Boyfriend (Wildwood Society)

“You can’t just throw things at people,” I snap. “The hell did you think would happen?”

“You’d catch it like a normal person?”

Luckily, the phone is fine.

“Why do I have this?”

“Why do you think? Give me your number,” he says, as if throwing something at me was the obvious way to get my contact information. “I’m picking you up tomorrow at five.”

“Silas,” I say, very slowly. “I am not going to this dinner—”

“I’m picking you up at five or telling Meckler what’s really going on.”

We stare at each other in the low light, and I’m tempted to throw his phone down, walk up to him, and put my hands around his neck. Of course Silas is going to get what he wants, because he always does. He’s a handsome white guy who gets to disregard whatever rules he wants and run roughshod over anyone else, and he doesn’t even know it. He thinks I owe him.

I’m so angry I want to cry, but instead I put my number into his phone and throw it back.

“Great,” he says. He doesn’t sound like he thinks it’s great, but a moment later my phone is buzzing in my pocket, and I assume it’s him. “Text me your address tomorrow.”

“Silas,” barks a voice, and I jump. We both turn to see Gideon leaning in through the door. “You done here? We still gotta get the art back to Javi’s. Hey, Kat.”

I nod, because I’ve got no idea how to act.

“Hey.”

“Thanks for overseeing the pies.”

“Of course.”

He nods, then looks over at Silas.

“You coming?” he asks.

I like Gideon. I don’t know him that well, but he doesn’t bother much with small talk and he likes animals, so we’re good.

“Course,” Silas says, pushes himself from the wall, nods at me. “Five. Don’t forget the address.”

He walks away without waiting for confirmation as Gideon looks from him, to me, and then back, face filled with questions but none of them getting to his lips. The two of them leave and I finally take a deep breath, put my hands over my face, curl my fingers into my hair.

Maybe I could launch myself into the sun.

* * *

The next afternoon,I stand in front of the eye makeup selection and consider my options under the fluorescent lights of Sprucevale’s most comprehensive drug store. That’s not saying a whole lot, since the only other drug store is mostly an old-timey soda fountain that also has, like, two boxes of Sudafed on a shelf, but here I am. Looking at eyeliner.

My conundrum is this: I left my apartment with the explicit intention of buying the most expensive eyeliner I could find, because fancy eye makeup soothes me sometimes. Yes, I already have at least ten pencils, sticks, jars, and pots of black eyeliner, but what if none of them are the right one for tonight? What if I go to put one on and it smears everywhere and I look like a raccoon but I’m already running late and then I not only have to go to this awful dinner, but I have to go while also looking like I lost a fight with a chimney sweep?

Clearly, twenty-dollar eyeliner is the solution to every problem I have right now. It’ll make me look polished, professional, and like I got more than two hours of terrible sleep last night. It’ll fold the five loads of clean laundry that I can’t even look at without feeling like I want to crawl out of my skin with pointless, endless anxiety. It’ll quiet the endless babbling monologue in my brain of everything that could go wrong. It’ll call my psychiatrist and ask about possibly increasing my Lexapro dose because the life I had almost rebuilt for myself feels like it’s imploding around me.

See? Twenty dollars well-spent. It might even do the first thing and make me look more awake. Now the only problem is deciding whether I want the waterproof version or not; on one hand, waterproof formulations sometimes make my eyes itch.

On the other hand, there’s a non-zero chance that I’ll burst into furious tears at some point tonight, given that I’m going to be with Silas Fucking Flynn for several hours, so the waterproofing might be necessary.

After more deliberation, I buy them both. And a shimmery gold eyeshadow pencil, just for fun. And some deep red matte lipstick, in case I ever need it. And some electric blue nail polish, because I can.

And some gum, and some breath mints, and some peanut butter cups, and a jar of something that promises to ‘instantly reverse aging,’ and also a ten dollar bluetooth speaker for my shower that I’m sure will stop working after a week. I don’t really need any of it, but I feel like shit and I’ve got the money, so I do it.

Afterward, I sort of feel better. I don’t feel good; I still feel like my skin is stuffed full of writhing snakes and like no matter what, I can’t breathe quite deeply enough, but I feel good enough to go get ice cream instead of heading back home to hide out between piles of clean-but-too-stressful laundry. Besides, if I have to look at the laundry that I physically cannot make myself fold for much longer, I might have a breakdown about it.