Anyone But Rich (Anyone But..., #1)(39)

I was seeing it for the first time. My friends hadn’t been paying enough attention to see me for who I was. Their lives had gotten busy, and it had become easier to remember who I’d been instead of learn who I was becoming. The ultimatum proved that.

I shook my head. “I’m serious. If you’re going to make me choose, then I choose Rich.”

“Come on,” Miranda said coldly.

“Kira?” Iris asked.

“Iris, come on,” Miranda said more loudly this time. “She made her choice. Let’s go.”

It felt like an eternity before the door finally closed and I was alone with Rich.

“Kira, I’m sorry,” he said softly.

“Don’t be. For once, I’m not going to lay the blame on you for this.”

“I wouldn’t fault you if you did.”

“That’s because you’re a better person than I gave you credit for.”

He laughed with more than a little mirth. “That depends on your definition of a good person. What matters more? What we do or what we wish we did?”

“Both?” I laughed.

“Then I’m a halfway good person and a halfway shitty person.”

“Yeah, welcome to the club.”



I lived on the top floor of a two-story condo. The woman who lived below me was an elderly widow with a snake phobia. I didn’t know much more than that about her, but I knew all about her snake fears. She’d wake me with a knock on the ceiling about once every week or so in the middle of the night. We’d communicate through my floor, which was far from ideal, because I could hardly ever figure out what she was saying. Usually, thinking a snake had broken into her home, she wanted me to come help her look.

Considering I wanted as much to do with snakes as I did with gonorrhea, it was far from an ideal way to be woken up in the middle of the night. I’d grab a kitchen knife—because I thought even a snake would be smart enough not to start a fight with somebody who was packing steel—and I’d sleepily make my way downstairs. Her house was always empty, and she always thanked me profusely for my help.

She’d woken me twice last night, so when I finally rolled out of bed to the sound of my alarm at six in the morning, I was so groggy I thought I’d need the jaws of life to get my eyelids open. My head was pounding, which was probably because I’d been crying before bed. I wasn’t proud of it, and I’d done my best to hold it together in front of Rich, but at the end of the day, my best friends were pissed at me. I’d thrown a full-blown pity party, complete with the obligatory sappy movie, popcorn, and those puffy cheese balls I seemed to crave only when I was feeling down.

Someone knocked at the door while I was brushing my teeth. I took a look in the mirror at the haggard mess that was my face, decided I didn’t care, and spit out the toothpaste. I headed down the stairs and opened the door.

“Dad,” I said slowly. There was a specific voice inflection reserved for moments when a relative or friend shows up unexpectedly. It started out obviously surprised but made a quick recovery toward exaggerated excitement. For some reason, parents always seemed completely oblivious to it too.

I had to be ready for work in an hour and I was running on almost no sleep, but I also didn’t want to hurt his feelings by acting like I wasn’t happy to see him. Somehow, I managed to squeeze all of that into the word Dad.

Clueless as always, my dad grinned—like I’d just squealed and said how thrilled I was that he’d come. “Your mother couldn’t make it, but it has been forever since we had a little father-daughter talk.”

“Uh, yeah.” I nodded. I was smiling, but inside, I was trying to figure out what I’d done wrong. Dads didn’t just come to have a talk with you unless you’d done something horribly wrong or someone was dying. “Is everyone okay?”

“Oh, sure. Can I come in?”

“Y—yeah. Sorry, it’s just a little bit of a mess up there.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less. Trying to get you to clean your room was always harder than getting a tick off your Grandma Ray’s back.”

I gave him a quizzical look.

He laughed. “I always forget, she passed before you knew her. She would always lay facedown in this hammock of hers in the backyard. Of course, the forest behind her house was infested with ticks, so every time we went to visit, my mom would make your uncle and me get the ticks off. But Grandma Ray had a low pain tolerance and tried to buck free and swing at us any chance she got.”

“Wait,” I said, pausing halfway up the stairs. “That’s a true story?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

I shivered a little. Disturbing. “So,” I said while we climbed the stairs, “anything in particular bring you by?”

“Well, this is a little awkward, but yes.” We got to the top of the stairs, and my dad plopped himself down on my couch. “People have been talking about you and Richard King.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. “People around here will talk if somebody wears a pair of socks that don’t match.”

“I’m just saying I’ve heard some rumors that the two of you are maybe—” He swirled his finger around and pulled his chin back, making some inscrutable expression.

“Maybe what?” I asked. My tone was a little sharper than I expected. Surprisingly, not getting enough sleep and having my dad mysteriously show up when I needed to be getting ready for work was testing my patience.