In Your Dreams (Falling #4)(17)

Except for the people who made me.

I move to the living room, and Houston follows. His mom brings us each a bottle of water and an Oreo cookie, which makes me chuckle silently as she walks away.

“Dude, I love that your mom still brings us snacks after school,” I say, twisting the cookie in half to lick the cream.

Houston smiles in return.

“Not gonna lie—I do too,” he says, eating his cookie whole and twisting his water bottle open. “So,” he mumbles through chewing. “What came up today that put the whole new-car mission on hold?”

I choke a little on my cookie. He’s been so focused on the dent in his car that he hasn’t asked about my talk with Murphy.

“They don’t live there anymore…the Sullivans?” I say. His brow cocks for a second, but he quickly shuts his eyes when realization creeps in.

“How early did you go? You went right away, didn’t you?” he asks.

“Well, if you’re just going to know the answer, why bother asking me?” I respond.

Houston leans forward to set his water on the coffee table, his hand on his head again. He’s going to get a wrinkle in his forehead from all of that rubbing.

I sigh and lean back into the sofa.

“Yes, I went there…early,” I say, a little shrug to avoid the judgment on his face. Patience is not my thing. “They rent that house out now. But…”

His head falls to the side and his eyes grow wide.

“You tracked them down…” he fills in, his mouth a straight line.

“Dude, I had to find her. And so yeah, I did. I got her mom’s business card from the renters, and she told me where to find Murphy, and we had a nice chat,” I say, glossing over most of the embarrassing details while I pop the last bite of Oreo in my mouth.

“You…chatted,” he says.

Okay, I don’t use the word chat…ever. That’s probably a tell that I’m feeding him a lot of bullshit.

“We did. We chatted,” I say, folding my arms over my chest. He mimics me and glares in my direction. I can play this game though. I’ll just stare back. “It was a very nice chat if you must know. I complimented her music, and we reminisced about the old days, and then I left her with my business card so she could call me to get some recording time set up.”

“You reminisced? And…you have business cards?” he says, one eye all screwy.

“I’m professional, yo. If I’m going to intern with John Maxwell, then I need to have something I can give people,” I say, pulling my wallet out and handing a card to Houston.

“You haven’t even started yet. You start next week,” he says, taking my card in his hand and flipping it over a few times between his fingers. “These look terrible.”

I reach forward and snatch it from him as he laughs.

“That was mean,” I huff, poking the card back in my wallet. He’s right, though. They didn’t come out like I wanted them to. Houston’s girlfriend is good at design stuff, and she comes back in a few weeks. I’d planned to ask her for help. Paige gets me. Or she tolerates me. She doesn’t hate me, at least, and I’m never anything but full, selfish, pig-headed Casey with her.

“Forget about the cards. So this…chat…,” he says, making finger quotes, “it went positively? You think you might actually get her to record something with you?”

“I think…I think there’s a lot of positive that came out of it, yeah,” I stammer, letting the fact that I smashed her car with Houston’s sneak into my stream of thoughts while speaking. He notices my facial tick. I need to get better at lying.

“Case?” He tilts his head and looks at me hard.

I shirk my shoulders up and lean my head from side-to-side. “I may have…sort of…not lead with my best…self?” I half admit. I f*cking smashed her car with yours.

“I said less YOU!” he says, but his tone is joking, which is the reason it only hurts my feelings a little. If only he knew how much of me I’m not fond of. My mental list of defects is so long that I forget the old ones to make room for recent ones.

“Well, there’s a whole lot of me, so it turns out that even less me is still, like, a shitload of me!” I say, falling back into the couch, this time tossing my hat to the side in frustration. “And I might have hit her car.”

I throw the last part in quickly, mumbling and pulling the cap from my water bottle fast to drink. I don’t like lying to Houston. I had to tell him. I feel like a kid who broke a lamp.

“You…that dent…my car…” he stutters chopped up sentences. I only nod. “Damn it, Casey.”

That single phrase has been uttered by my best friend so many times.

“I know,” I say, an apologetic half smile. It’s all I got. I smile my way out of messes. “I really will fix your car.”

He stares at me for a few long seconds.

“I know,” he blinks. My stomach rushes with relief—not because he isn’t yelling at me, but because he knows I’m good for my word—that I at least have some integrity. It makes me feel less like a bum.

After a minute of silence, my head falls to the side, and I nod to regain his attention.

“She’s probably not going to call me,” I say, my face scrunched up.