Chapter Seventeen
It’s probably morally compromised, but only probably.
Mars
Sara : Any chance you can make him six-foot-one…and a quarter?
Rouge : Consider it done.
I can’t remember a time I’ve ever been this happy before in my life.
Ceres is giving me a chance. Ceres and I are almost a couple.
Ceres tastes so good . I can’t inhale without remembering how she smelled.
I can’t go three seconds without some odd tiny sound of hers echoing in my head, replaying, replaying, replaying.
“You’re going to have a mother soon,” I whisper to Gingerbread as I give her a snack that she stuffs into her cheek pouches with a dedication I find commendable.
After she’s finished, her face is bursting, but she proceeds to look for more treats as though it isn’t.
“Don’t be greedy.” I pet her little head.
Noise shuffles behind me, practically zombielike, and I lose some grasp on my mirth as I turn from Gingerbread’s living room cage and locate my brother, who has been sleeping roughly seventeen choppy hours a day, barely eating any carrot cake, and “working.”
A lot.
Assuming working means staring at a blank screen.
If something else doesn’t break soon, he might.
Putting Gingerbread back in her happy shark tank, I rise and trot into the kitchen as Jove squints into the fridge. “Good morning, brother dear.”
He grunts.
“There’s fresh carrot cake, for breakfast, if you’d like.”
It’s noon. Friday. A noon the Friday after I kissed Ceres , and her eyes begged me for more, and I had to tell her to stop and be good, and that seemed to make her blissfully happy in its own way.
I kind of feel sick being so blessed while Jove’s struggling to function.
He closes the fridge. “I’m not here for food.”
“You’re not in the kitchen for food, at noon, when this is the first time you’ve left your room today?”
He nods, stoic, the silent type, and I decide that I’ll need Ceres to fall horrifically in love with me before I let her spend any time with my brother, who could double easily as a mafia crime lord.
She loves mafia crime lords. And even if she says that oblivion isn’t her preferred archetype, I worry. Because of the shoulders.
Dragging my attention off said shoulders, I say, “Come on, babe. Tell me what’s going on.”
This man looks me square in the eye and says, “I’m working.”
“Working. Yes. Of course. In the kitchen?”
He nods, again, exhausted.
And it clicks. “Jovey…” I press my lips and palms together. “Please tell me you aren’t looking for inspiration so that you can wax poetic about food for five hundred words.”
Distress riddles my dear big brother’s brow as he murmurs, “I was hoping for a thousand…”
Why am I not surprised?
“What counts as Flag Day food?” he asks.
Tempering my inner editor that says a thousand words about food will need to be cut like a slice of carrot cake, I smile. “Sandwiches. The ones with the little flags in them. Obviously.”
A dull light that scantily looks like hope gleams in the back of Jove’s eye. “That makes sense.” He turns. “Thanks, babe.”
“Anytime, babe. But, also, why don’t I make you one?”
“That seems unnecessary. I’ll look up pictures online.”
“Looking up pictures online would probably only get you three hundred words. You’ll need the full experience for a thousand.”
Eyes narrowed, Jove peers at me. “I know what a sandwich tastes like.”
“Don’t argue with the process,” I declare, and begin gleaning ingredients from all over the kitchen. Blessedly, Jove doesn’t argue with the process and takes at least one bite before I pack a second and third sandwich to come next door with me.
“Beloved?” I call the moment the tumblers click into place and I swing open my goddess’s front door. “Where are you, darling?”
Scooting in her desk chair, Ceres peers down the long hallway at me as I kick her front door shut. “I think I should give you my spare key before you break my lock.”
My heart bursts as I make my way to her. “With such open permission to visit, I might pull an Edward Cullen.”
“If you watch me while I sleep, we’re done.”
“Wow.” I offer her one of the two napkin-wrapped sandwiches. “Was that a boundary? Never thought I’d see the day.”
“It’s actually the opposite of a boundary.
If you’re coming into my bedroom in the middle of the night just to watch me sleep, I’ll assume you’re also using your immortality to go to high school for the five thousandth time instead of, I don’t know, curing cancer ?
Do you even know how much good you could do with unlimited time to compile knowledge?
But, no, you squander your gifts among tweens.
Makes me shudder. Watch me after you’ve woken me, ravished me, and made me pass out. ”
“Ceres.”
A lovely smile flutters to her lips. “Yes, villain?”
A curse word tightens in my skull. I. Love. That. “Eat your sandwich, beautiful girl, and stop giving me roadmaps to felonies.”
She takes her sandwich. “And here I thought you’d agree that crimes are only crimes if you get caught.”
“Crimes are only crimes if they contradict my own personal moral code. You’ll be shocked and alarmed to discover that ravishing you in the middle of the night with no prior communication lands pretty high on my crime list.”
“That’s really disappointing.”
I settle onto the arm of her loveseat and unwrap my own sandwich.
“Don’t worry. Whenever it happens that any ravishing takes place, you won’t be disappointed.
” I hope. I mean. Come now. It’s not like I know what I’m talking about.
Every last bloody girl growing up liked Brian .
Yesterday was my first kiss, and it was a haze of emotion melded with I’m pretty sure this is how it’s described in books .
Ceres crunches into her sandwich and fixes her attention on her computer, where she has an email open. Even though I haven’t sent her any. And Tempest Rain’s book isn’t blocked off until April.
Surely, she’s not looking at queries and trying to fill any more of her precious time with something that’s not me…
“Whatcha doin’?” I ask, completely secure and willing to share my lover’s attention with her job and stuff.
“Amelia sent me an email.”
“Oh?”
“It is twenty-four paragraphs long.”
The paragraphs, I can tell from here, are dense . “Is she… okay?”
“Mentally? No. Physically? Yeah.” Ceres takes another bite of her sandwich.
“She spends the first few paragraphs pitifully apologizing to Brian for sending an email instead of a letter because she doesn’t have my address.
Then she devolves into why she wanted to send a letter instead of call.
And I’m in the middle of her explaining that she needs physical reasons, in print, for why she’s not happy in her current situation, so she won’t forget them during the moments when things are less terrible than they are right now.
” Ceres’s eyes glint. “I’m so freaking hopeful that this means she’s ready to move forward on making her life what she wants it to be. ”
“So, she’s going to marry Brian and become his housewife?”
Ceres turns her chair to face me. “If that’s what she wants, Brian would be lucky to have her.”
“I bet if she sent him a love letter, he’d send her a filled marriage form.”
Her eyes roll. “Very funny.”
“I’m not joking.” Biting into my sandwich, I chew and swallow. “Amelia never confessed to Brian. He could like her.”
“She’s not subtle, for one thing, and for another Brian strikes me as the type of guy who would have told the girl he liked that he liked her.”
“Brian strikes me as the type of guy who doesn’t know that he likes a girl until she’s standing before him with a love letter.”
“But, at that point, does he like the girl, or the letter?”
I hum. “Point taken.”
“Regardless of what happens with Brian, who doesn’t even live in this state, Amelia isn’t happy.
Her parents are…a situation, and she still lives with them.
Walmart isn’t the greatest place to work since they’re the type that hires one person for ten jobs, then gives you weird hours so you don’t qualify for benefits.
She needs security and independence right now. She can work on the love story later.”
“Or she could work on it all at once.”
“What do you mean?”
“Brian has a good, high-paying job…and a guest bedroom.”
Ceres faces me again. “Unless you’re suggesting that he kidnap her and put her to work against her will, you’ve exited my genre.”
“I can text him and ask if there are any entry-level positions available for Amelia at Whirlwind Branding, then if there are, I can ask if he’d mind letting an old schoolmate stay with him while she gets on her feet.
” Finishing my sandwich, I crumple the napkin I wrapped it in.
“Brian’s got connections. I’m sure he’d make it happen.
We could have a moving date as soon as Amelia consents, and we both know that she won’t be able to backpedal if it involves Brian. ”
Ceres stares at me. Long moments slip by, and a bubble of anxiety floats into my chest. Maybe suggesting a scheme to manipulate her best friend wasn’t the play here.
“What?” I ask.
“I like the way your brain works.” Her gaze skates over my lips before she turns her attention back on her computer.
“We need to phrase things in such a way that we get the text out to Brian before she panics and cancels everything. This plan needs to become irrevocable. The hard thing needs to be something she has to do, because it’s not going to be something she wants to do for a hot minute.
I know. Leaving the familiar comforts, even when they suck, is almost always harder than staying. ”
“Speaking from personal experience?”
“Something like that.”
I will dismember anyone who has hurt my Ceres, especially if those people are her parents.
“How close are you with Brian?” she asks.
An excellent question. “I can confirm that we aren’t in a homosexual relationship.”
Her eyes roll. “Yes, well, I certainly hope you’re not after a lavender marriage with me; although, that would explain why you’re so keen on skipping through the plot.”
“If I suggest that I am after a lavender marriage, would that get you to the courthouse?”
“No. I’m not going to be your beard. Thanks for asking.”
Rising, I settle myself behind her, bracing an arm on the backrest of her chair so I can skim the words on her screen.
Yikes. I never knew Amelia was quite this stuck.
She hides her distress well with how bubbly, positive, and put together she always is.
I have never, even throughout our entire childhood, seen a hair out of place on her.
Not a single wrinkle in her clothes. Not a single stain.
But I guess having narcissistic parents determined to present perfection to the world creates that sort of child. “Poor thing,” I murmur.
“Are you close enough to Brian that you can call him while I call Amelia?”
“I’ll call anyone. Brian, however, is one of the few people who would pick up. Why? What’s the scheme, princess?”
She faces me, cheeks leaning into shades that match her hair.
“I don’t know Brian. So this is speculation.
But if I can get Amelia on the phone and in a raw place where she needs to get out and just any solution is an option, could you call Brian on the spot and get him to confirm that there’s a place for her with him and at his work before she can bail? ”
“Oh yeah. Totally.” I blink. “But…did you just imply that you’re going to call your friend and manipulate her into playing her role?”
Ceres’s brow furrows. “For her own good.”
“Right.” I love this woman. Tracing her jaw with a finger, I dip, coming just short of touching her lips with mine. “Make me proud.”