Misfits Like Us (Like Us #11)(17)

Two years ago, I had a small following. Now a few hundred people read my work on Fictitious, and with the growing number, the urgency to improve weighs heavier on me.

Staring at the red ink, my stomach sinks, and I push the binder into my backpack with these shitty feelings. Be gone!

“You sure you don’t want me to pay you?” I ask him. So far, Charlie has been doing this on a voluntary basis. And I have more than one ongoing fic that he edits for me.

“With what money?” Charlie asks casually, but there’s the normal bite to his voice.

“My money.”

“I’m not taking money from your trust fund.” He brushes a hand through his thick, golden-brown hair. “It’s like stealing from Aunt Lily and Uncle Lo…” He considers this for a second like maybe he will take my money. Then he rolls his eyes. “Keep your money.” He stares harder at his phone. He’s usually pretty much like this around me. Short sentences. In a hurry. But he never makes me feel like I’m an embarrassment.

“Did you like it?” I wonder, zipping my backpack closed. I’ve really refrained from asking that question to Charlie. I haven’t wanted the answer. I don’t know what’s changed.

Maybe the fact that I want some positive assurance after seeing all his corrections.

He clicks something on his phone, half-paying attention to me. “It was okay.”

Okay?

Just okay. I feel ready to puddle into the floor, but I remain standing somehow.

“I have to go,” Charlie says quickly. His eyes flit to me. “Same time next week?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

He quickly departs from the apartment like he has somewhere to be. Maybe I had been holding him up. I sling my backpack over my shoulder and walk through the living room down another hallway, coming to the last door on the right.

I hear the faint sound of an audiobook. “‘His time of fearing death. Stoop, Romans, stoop. And let us bathe our hands in Caesar’s blood. Up to the elbows’…” I give the door a good knock, and the audio, likely Shakespeare, cuts off.

Seconds later, the door swings open, revealing the mischievous gentleman of gentlemen. One out of two of my best friends.

Eliot Alice Cobalt stands at six-foot-four with windswept brown hair and broad shoulders. If he were a constellation, he’d be Leo Minor. Little Lion. Loyal, dauntless at heart, and the one who’s grown to look most like the lion who bore him. He has his father’s fashionable style and fit build.

His lips lift in a devilish kind of smile. “You didn’t tell me you’d be in Hell’s Kitchen today.”

“You like surprises.”

“That, I do.” He swings his door open wider for me. I slip through, noting that his desk has been ravaged by paperback copies of plays and various stage props. But his bed swallows most of the room. A thick canopy in deep burgundy fabric drapes over the ornate four-poster bedframe, like something from a gothic.

Crimson Peak is one of his favorite films. But so is 10 Things I Hate About You.

I wedge myself around the bed and plop on the leather club chair near the corner. My favorite spot. The window and reading nook are behind me, and an antique lamp casts a warm glow over my head. “Where’s Tom?” I ask, opening my laptop on my knees.

“Picking up lunch from that new Mediterranean place down the street.” He takes out his phone. “I’ll tell him to grab you a bite. You want anything in particular?”

“I’m good. I ate earlier.”

“Chicken shawarma it is.”

I smile and flip open my laptop. He usually orders extra just in case. And usually, the just in case refers to his own hunger levels. But I always like when he asks. That’s the thing about Tom and Eliot, they don’t forget to include me.

“What are you up to?” I peer over my screen.

Eliot is still texting, his shoulder propped to the bedpost, and I think it might be about something other than chicken shawarma. He has an impish twinkle in his eyes that usually doesn’t accompany a lunch order.

“‘Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.’” Eliot quotes Shakespeare. At least, I’m about eighty percent sure it’s William Shakespeare. He could quote lengthy passages from A Midsummer’s Night Dream at the age of eight, but lately, he’s been on a mega Shakespeare-binge after landing the lead role in Hamlet this fall. He works at the Sun & Thorn Playhouse as a theatre actor.

“Translation?” I ask.

He lifts his eyes off his phone. “I’m cupid. I’m a mastermind, Luna. You know how Tom has that crush?”

I raise my brows. “You mean the person he likes but he won’t tell us who because he’s worried you’ll come up with some scheme—?”

“How is it scheming if it’s in the name of love?” Eliot touches his chest dramatically.

Eliot and me. We’re a lot alike on the romantic front. One-night stands. First dates only. Only I do it because I know I wouldn’t be a good girlfriend. Eliot chooses it because he thinks people are boring the more you get to know them. Like he can read the whole book in one sitting and then it’s over.

Done.

Tom is the opposite of us. He usually tries to find more than just a quick fling, but most of his crushes go…unreciprocated.

Can I relate to him on that front? Unreciprocated love…