Chapter Six
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Remember that pipe Poem made leaky? We in the biz like to call that foreshadowing.
Fox
My eyes narrow as I scan the Blackwood Brew floor, looking for a head of butterscotch blonde softness. I come up empty.
That pesky little brat.
She left. I told her I wanted to talk to her—to explain myself and apologize—and she left.
Sometimes, I truly could throttle her.
I pull my phone out of my pocket, smiling tightly at Wolfe when he catches my eye from across the room where he manages the clean up of enough balloons to cover the entirety of the Pacific ocean.
Between the balloon trash and plastic tablecloth trash, I’m pretty sure this party alone is fostering climate change for the next decade.
You okay? the planet hater mouths, brow furrowed.
My nose scrunches, and his face clears, wry amusement curling the edge of his lips. Poem?
Of course, Poem. It’s always Poem, raising my blood pressure and shortening my lifespan by years with every interaction we have, be it tantalizing or infuriating.
I lost at least a decade earlier when she let me hold her against my chest, my hands rough on her waist while she leaned into me, embracing my touch.
My hands flex, remembering the feel of her waist beneath them.
But she didn’t just embrace it, she defended it when Wolfe thought I was doing something harmful.
I scowl. As if Wolfe would have a single clue what Poem is or isn’t capable of taking.
Sure, he’s known her longer—been friends with her longer—but I’m the one who’s with her day in and day out.
I’m the one who knows what she’s actually like when she decides not to care what another person thinks about her.
I’m the one that she lets her guard down with enough to bring out her claws, meager though they may be.
And I’m the one she ignores when I tell her I want to apologize, because she’d rather nurse her anger than hear me out.
My shoulders drop.
And Wolfe’s the one whose phone calls she answers right away. Because she’s never angry at Wolfe.
I take a deep, calming breath as she sends me to voicemail for the second time. I leave a terse, “Call me back,” at the beep.
Then I stride across the sticky-with-juice bar floor, halting in front of my brother and presenting my empty hand for him to fill. “Let me use your phone.”
He blinks at me, holding open a trash bag for Mom to toss torn gift wrap into.
“Wolfe, may I please borrow your phone?” Mom intones with a severe frown.
I huff. “Wolfe, may I please borrow your phone?” I parrot, wiggling my fingers.
He shrugs, handing it over. “Sure. It might drop some glitter on you, though.”
Unconcerned, I accept the device, swiping quickly to the Ps in his phone.
She’s not there.
“You don’t have Poem’s number?” I grumble, a jolt of shameful pleasure shooting through me at the thought. I have Poem’s number.
“It’s under ‘Haiku,’” he says, and I do my best to ignore the slithering jealousy that wrests away my pleasure.
I find her, then scowl when the phone rings a measly two times before her voice trips over the line.
“What’s up, Wolfy? You need help with clean up after all?”
“I told you I wanted to talk,” I reply, fully ignoring Wolfy, lest I tear myself apart.
A pause follows.
“Did you consider that I don’t want to talk?” she asks finally. “And that that was the reason I, one, left without saying anything and, two, didn’t answer your phone calls?”
“I considered it,” I answer. “And I decided it was childish and stupid.”
“I’m childish and stupid?” she squawks. “You got Amia the same gift as me—but better! Talk about childish and stupid. And petty.”
“This is exactly why we need to talk,” I point out. “Because I wasn’t being childish or stupid or petty. I was put in a bad situation with no good options, and I did what I thought was best for my niece.”
“No good solutions?” she huffs, and I can picture her gorgeous gray eyes narrowing in annoyance as clearly in my mind as if she were standing right in front of me.
“Like, say, not buying her the thing that I told everyone I bought her? And specifically said no one else should get her? The thing that every single other person managed to not buy, because self-control is a thing that most people have, along with an absence of the incessant need to be a total jerk for no freaking reason?”
“I already had it,” I snap, running a frustrated hand through my hair.
“Before you went and bought that one, then you said you got yours on sale, so you couldn’t return it, and I couldn’t return mine because it was past the return window, and having the perfect gift for Amia and not giving it to her wasn’t a good plan, but asking you not to give yours to her wasn’t either.
Then every time I tried to tell you about it, you’d interrupt to throw some rabid insult at me, bat your eyelashes, and flounce away.
So in the end it didn’t much matter what I did. There wasn’t a good option.”
Quiet on the other end of the line.
I choose to take her silence as reflective and wait it out.
“That doesn’t sound like me at all,” she mutters eventually, sniffing.
That’s as close to an acquiescence as I’m getting, I guess. I roll my eyes to the ceiling. “We could’ve cleared this up before you left,” I say. “And not risked you driving when you’re angry.” The fun she has dancing on my nerves isn’t worth her life.
She scoffs. “You don’t affect my emotions as much as you think you do. I’m perfectly fine to drive. In fact, I’ve made it all the way back to my house, safe and so–”
She cuts off on a gasp, then a squeak.
My heart stutters to a stop. “What?”
“Nooo,” she moans. “No, no, no, no, no.”
“What?” I bark.
“I have to go,” she says. “Emergency. And… I might not be at work tomorrow.” She groans. “Or the next day. Sorry. Bye.”
The phone beeps, and she’s gone.
My heart picks back up, double time, as I tell myself she’s fine. Completely fine. Did she sound fine? No. But. She also sounded like she didn’t want to be on the phone with me, and this is exactly the sort of thing she’d do to replace a simple gotta go, bye.
She’s fine.
Absolutely fine.
“She okay?” Wolfe asks.
I shrug, a jerky, unsure movement. Then, I take a deep, calming breath. Then, I curse.
Wolfe blinks. “Do we need to go help her?”
“I don’t know,” I grunt. Probably not. Possibly so. “She said there was an emergency, but she’s a good enough actress that it could’ve been a ruse to get off the phone with me.”
His stare slides sideways, head tilting as he considers the possibility.
“She doesn’t live far,” Mom tuts, arms crossed.
“Just go check. If she’s fine, she’s fine, but if she’s not?
Then my boys are not going to be the ones who stand around wondering what to do when a woman needs help.
” She shoos us away. “Off with you both. Your dad and I can clean the rest of this up. Text us when you know if Poem’s all right. ”
I frown, dragging my feet as I follow Wolfe out of the bar and to his marvelously ridiculous minivan. “She’s probably completely fine,” I grumble. “And wasting our time.” Maybe.
Unless, you know, she’s not.
My footsteps quicken of their own accord.
Wolfe fires up the van, and we both pretend we don’t hear sputtering coming from under the hood of his seriously-needs-some-work vehicle as we hurtle down the road toward Poem’s house.
I’m out the door before the hunk of mostly drivable metal comes to a stop. I push Poem’s open door wide as Wolfe yells behind me about “basic passenger safety.”
My feet squish on sopping wet carpet as I step into Poem’s living room. She paces through the squish to her kitchen, where her boots swish against a flood of water as she pleads into her phone.
“Please hurry,” she begs, sparing me a glance. “I don’t know where the main shut off is, and it’s getting worse by the second. My carpets are ruined. My walls are ruined. My life is ruined. All my stuff…” she trails off, finishing her thought with a distressed groan. “Just. Hurry.”
I twist and nearly mow Wolfe down in my haste to get outside. I find the water shut-off valve on the side of the house and turn, stopping the problem from getting worse, at least.
When I return to the house, Poem’s off the phone and explaining the situation to Wolfe. I listen as I look around, assessing the damage for myself.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I just came home, and everything was wet.” She kicks the water at her feet.
“The entire downstairs is like this. My living room. My kitchen. My bathroom. My office. Everything, soaked.” Forlorn, she hangs her head.
“I haven’t even paid off the loan from the renovations I got when I moved in.
I can’t afford this on top of that.” She sniffs, shoving her palms into her eyes and rubbing.
“What am I going to do?” Her hands drop, and her gaze locks on Wolfe, who looks about as helpless as I’ve ever seen him. “What am I going to do?” she repeats.
Wolfe, the useless louse, shrugs. Shrugs.