Chapter Sixteen
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In which Fox is a big ole scaredy cat.
Poem
So maybe I’ve completely lost my mind.
“You’re doing what?” Almond squawks in my earbud, confirming that I haven’t “maybe” anything’d. I have fully and completely lost my mind.
“I’m winning over your brother so that I can, once and for all, fully join my favorite found family and stop having to deal with his stupidity every day all day.
” Does that make an ounce of sense? No, it sure does not.
Did I say it with enough confidence that it could seem like it might make some sense somehow?
No, I sure did not.
“Poem, why are you antagonizing him? Again? When you live with him?”
A fair point, I concede. “But, you know, that just means I have even more time to convince him that the irritation I bring to his life is endearing. Just you watch, Al. Before the week is over, I’ll have him saying things like, ‘You know, Poem isn’t so bad after all,’ or maybe even, ‘Wow! That Poem gal sure is swell!’” Nevermind my extreme attraction to the man.
We can cross that bridge when we tumble face-first into it.
“Swell?” She snorts. “Is Fox turning into an eighty-year-old man sometime this week?”
I grin. “Well, I do tend to give men gray hairs.”
“When do you intend to start this plan of yours?” she asks.
I roll on my borrowed bed, careful not to dislodge myself from the heated blanket, and find the clock. “Right now, I guess,” I answer. “If he’s still home.”
“You don’t know if he’s home?”
“I’m still in bed,” I answer. “And apparently your brother rises with the sun. For all I know, he could have taken over a small country by this time of the day. The man’s a lunatic.”
“Poem, it’s noon,” she says, aghast. “You’re still in bed at noon?”
Ugh. “Not you too,” I groan. “Please, don’t tell me you’re one of them.”
“If them means people who wake up before the clock hits PM, then yeah, sorry girl, but I am most definitely one of them.”
“What could there possibly be to see in the world before PM?” I ask.
“What use are the morning hours to me, who works late into the night? What point would there be in me existing during them?” I tsk.
“No, no, it is much better for me to stick to the hours of coziness and comfort. The hours where I can drink a peach Alani and not get scolded by a grouchy loser about it being ‘too early for energy drinks’ while he downs half a pot of coffee.”
“That felt like a lot to unpack right there,” she replies. “Lets start with the fact that you seem to be saying that you are never awake in the morning and I’ve just… not noticed? How is that possibly true?”
I shrug as I find the button to turn off the heated blanket, prepping to acclimate myself to the regular, still-chilled air of Fox’s apartment.
“You work in the mornings?” I suggest. “And are busy pretty much all the way through until your lunch break, when we do our first connect of the day.” I sniff, all sorrow.
“In other words, I start my day with you, unable to find the will to get out of bed without you by my side, but you? You are perfectly content to live half of your life without me. I am unneeded! Unloved!” I gasp.
“I must try harder to be lovable to you, too! Not just your brother! It’s a whole family sort of problem! ”
“My heart does not beat until we speak,” she assures me. “I just didn’t know how much of my days were spent by rote, walking around like the dead. How scary my clients must find me!”
I sigh. “You could never be scary, Al. You’re too cute for it. A certified cutie-patootie, even.”
She groans. “Stop complimenting me to get out of the conversation we were having.”
“But I like this conversation more,” I retort. “There’s less stinky boy in it.”
“If he’s so stinky, why are you trying to sibling-ize him?”
An excellent question. Obviously. All of Almond’s questions are excellent.
Which means I should probably search to find a proper answer beyond “because it made sense at the time.”
“I think,” I start, having no clue what I think but hoping it’ll come to me as I spew it out, “that I wasn’t lying.
I really would like to be fully enmeshed in the family that I’ve found here, and Fox is a huge block to that.
He’s never fully been comfortable with me being here, and he’s made that super clear.
He doesn’t like me, no matter what nonsense he was telling me last night.
Until yesterday with the tip jar, he’s never done a single friendly thing for me.
And that’s been fine, of course, because I don’t exactly like him either, but that doesn’t mean I can’t feel the divide it creates between me and the family I crave.
I feel it acutely, and I hate it, and I hate even more that I’ve been letting some idiot boy’s insecurities create it.
” I take a deep breath. “I like messing with him in the After Fox world we’re in, but I liked having my Before Fox family even more.
Before he came back home, it was just us and your parents and your brother and your niece, and there weren’t underlying hostilities when I would show up to family dinner.
” My sigh comes wistful. “I miss it. I want it back. And if that means I have to convince Fox that he likes me? Then that’s what I’ll do. ”
Agitated, I sit up and throw the rapidly cooling blanket off me. “Starting now,” I pronounce. “Right this minute.”
“I think we should talk some more about this,” Almond worries. “I think you have a lot more to unpack than I even thought.”
“No time for unpacking,” I reply, crossing the room to rummage for an outfit in Fox’s guest room dresser. “I gotta go win your brother over.”
“Poem, seriously. You know we all–”
“I love you!” I interrupt, finding an only-sort-of worn-out Stray Kids T-shirt and a slitted black maxi skirt.
The pink and yellow flowers on the skirt match the pink pig-rabbit character I accidentally cut the legs off of when I was cropping the T-shirt.
Poor Dwaekki. It’s a good thing he’s still cute without his legs.
Almond says she loves me, and I give her a “MWAH!” before hanging up.
We can have her desired therapy session later.
Right now, I have a mission to complete and Dwaekki by my side to help me do it.
Or, he’s by my side once I manage to get my clothes on, only falling once in my haste to take my plan and do it now that my motivations have revealed themselves to me.
“Nothing like a little self-reflection to get a girl going in the early afternoon,” I tell Dwaekki. “You should try it sometime.” Because Dwaekki is an iron-on pig-rabbit hybrid with no thoughts behind his adorable little eyes, he does not confirm my genius. I don’t take it personally.
Eventually, after rushing through a harrowing bathroom routine during which I nearly took my own eye out with my mascara wand, I make it to the living room to find that Fox is…
nowhere to be found. At noon? On a Tuesday?
Where could he possibly have to go? The bar isn’t open on Tuesdays, and his family doesn’t have anything planned for today. Almond would have mentioned it.
And yet, the workaholic loser isn’t home.
“This sucks,” I tell Dwaekki. “I was all geared up to make him love me.”
Sighing, I trudge to the kitchen for my just-woke-up dose of caffeine. Despite all his drama about energy drinks in the morning, I managed to negotiate shelf space for an entire pack of my Alanis. I grab one, snickering. He’s such a sucker.
A sucker who’s going to accept me. Today. “As soon as I find him,” I mumble, padding to the door. I open it, take two big barefoot steps, and press the doorbell for Wolfe’s apartment.
Sipping at peachy goodness, I wait. And wait. And wait. And wait.
Finally, the door opens to an out-of-breath Wolfe, hair tousled and cardigan hanging off of one of his muscled shoulders, which now relies solely on his Blackwood Barbs T-shirt to cover its scandalous breadth. “Haiku,” he pants. “Hey. What’s up?”
One of my eyebrows creeps up, and I rock back on my heels. “He didn’t want you to answer the door, huh?”
“Not even a little,” the white-haired man replies, a rueful smile cutting through the redness of exertion covering his skin. “Do you need him for something?”
“Yes.” I peek behind Wolfe, scanning the clutter of kid’s toys and baskets full of rocks. “I’m trying to make him love me.”
Wolfe chokes. “You’re what?”
I push in, poking the gobsmacked man out of the way so that I can invade his home more easily. “I’m trying to make him love me,” I repeat. “Your apartment a mirror layout of Fox’s?” I ask to confirm.
He nods.
“You’re in love with Fox?” he asks.
That halts me, and I almost lose my mostly-full Alani when I whirl around to stare at him in absolutely not. “And just why are you accusing me of such a terror?”
He gestures helplessly in my direction. “Maybe because you just burst into my house to track him down and ‘make him love you’?”
Oh. Right. That. “I suppose I can see where you might’ve gotten the wrong idea,” I acknowledge. “I can assure you, though, that I am only seeking for your brother’s platonic love, like what you and I have. I’m trying to get my found family fully found.”
Shocked speechless by my incredible intelligence and darling plan, Wolfe blinks at me for several long moments before sighing, kicking his door shut, and asking if I’d like a snack while we wait for Fox to find his bravery and leave his hiding spot.
I accept. “What sort of snacks do you have?”
“Fruit, mostly. And I have some cute cutters I could use to make them into flowers or hearts or something?”
Plopping myself on a wooden barstool at his counter, I wiggle. “Do you have a puppy-shaped one?”
He shrugs, tugging his cardigan up over his shoulder.
“Let me check. Any preference on fruit? Amia’s in a melon phase, so I have every sort of melon that Rory’s Market has to offer, or I’ve got apples, oranges, cherries, grapes…
” He trails off, shrugging. “Maybe we can just assume I have all of the fruits Rory’s has to offer in general? ”
I grin. “I’ll take some puppy melons. Any kind is fine.”
He returns my grin, then gets to work preparing the most adorable, elaborate plate of bite-sized melons I have ever had the pleasure of receiving. I tell him so.
Humbly, he shrugs. “It’s nothing fancy. I just used the cutter.”
“Having the cutter is fancy,” I protest. “Duh.”
His eyes roll, but his pleased smile gives him away.
“Why’d you want puppies anyway?” he asks. “I didn’t think you liked dogs?”
“I definitely don’t like dogs,” I agree. “Slobbery, no sense of personal space, and wildly needy?” I shiver. “No, thank you.”
His eyes shift pointedly to my cutie-pie puppy melons.
I stab one with a toothpick helpfully provided, then chomp it. “They’re to match my Dwaekki,” I explain.
Wolfe does not feel learned by this. “What’s a Dwaekki?”
I point to the pink pig-rabbit on my shirt.
“This is a Dwaekki. It’s a sort of… animal representation?
For one of the members of Stray Kids.” I slide my finger to the side, over the SKZ beside Dwaekki.
“One of the other members has a puppy for his representative.” I stab another piece of melon and hold it up beside Dwaekki. “It’s on theme!”
“Stray Kids is K-pop?” he asks. “One of those bands you showed Amia?”
I nod. Truthfully, they’re the only band I showed Amia. The rest she got from Almond. “Stray Kids everywhere all around the world,” I confirm, boasting the group’s tagline. “Including in Amia’s speakers. You’re welcome.”
He pulls out an apple and starts peeling it, impressively taking the peel off in one long strip.
“I’m grateful,” he says. “There’s only so much kid’s pop a man can take, and if I had to listen to the Frozen soundtrack one more time, our dear Amia would be at the circus right now torturing the clowns with her music instead of me. ”
I laugh, visions of Amia trapezing through the air with a squeaky red nose filling my head. “She’d still be pretty cute, even at the circus.”
His light blue eyes soften. “Yeah,” he agrees. “She really would.”
Amia dominates the conversation after that, bringing Wolfe to life as he talks about his daughter, her current interests, her friends, and—most importantly—how much she loves and uses the rock tumbler I got her for her birthday.
“Fox’s is great, too,” he says, helping himself to a piece of my melon.
“But we’re keeping his at my parents’ place to do the bigger rocks that need more tumbling time.
She’s using yours to tumble smaller rocks that she can have me turn into beads.
” He shakes his head in joyful disbelief.
“She has grand schemes of making jewelry out of them to save up for a mysterious, large item that I’m ‘not allowed to know about.’”
Consider me curious.
Alas, before I can schedule a time to interrogate my proxy-niece, Fox decides that now he is ready to be a Very Brave Boy and come out of hiding.
I swivel on my barstool, puppy melon held aloft as I lay eyes on my target for the first time today.
Locked, loaded, and ready to pounce, I waste no time getting started on my mission.