Misfits Like Us (Like Us #11)(23)

9000 to be exact.

But more importantly, I have more roommates. I live with two married couples, a married triad, a one-year-old baby, seven cats, two puppies, and the goldfish that I secretly bought a month ago. Two more newborn babies (human) are expected to arrive at the end of the year, which will increase the Homo sapiens to eleven.

“DMs,” Eliot says, “as in the Fanaticon DMs?”

Tom strums a cord on a guitar. “Wait, the ones from this afternoon?” I did inform Tom about StaleBread89 when he returned with the chicken shawarma. That I did end up splitting with Eliot.

“Maybe,” I say softly, still smiling at the DMs.

“That is a big flaming yes,” Tom sounds more interested—but also ten times more concerned. “I’m FaceTiming.” In an instant, Tom appears on my phone screen, guitar on his lap while sitting on his bed, a skull-printed black duvet beneath him.

Eliot stays as a voice call. He’s in the dressing room that he shares with most of the theatre troupe, and he goes on-stage later tonight as Hamlet.

“What’s the prognosis, Tom?” Eliot asks. “Is she swooning?”

“Oh yeah. Total swoon.” He strums the guitar. “What’d StaleBread say?”

I cup my phone. “I have to click out of FaceTime to read it.”

“Then click out.” While strumming more forcefully, he sings with melodic passion and aggression. “‘Cause Luna with No Middle Name might be swooning over Stale Bread. Yeah! Stale Bread!” He pumps his fist in the air with a grin. His golden-brown hair is a popular 90s style that has all the guys swooning after him.

Tom Carraway Cobalt has always been an ember in the dark. Eliot is the one burning and burning on fire.

I imagine they are the fiercest, raging stars in my universe, and if there is a night where the sky is black, they’ll glow the most brightly. Burn too bright and they become supernovas. They explode and die.

Chaos at its finest, Eliot would say, but I don’t like thinking about a time where they might not be there. Where I can’t look up and point them out so easily.

“Stale bread! Yeaaaah,” Tom sings again.

“Number one single,” I sing-song way more off-key.

“Luna, coming in with the chorus.” Tom starts to bob his head, then stops halfway. “Really, though.” He puts his hands on the guitar strings, cutting off the music. “What’d he say?”

I pop up Fanaticon and read most of our conversation, “…and then he said, if it’s weird it’s def for me—”

“Pit stop,” Eliot chimes in. “Red flag.”

I frown and return to the FaceTime screen. “He was being nice.”

Tom sets aside his guitar. “He said he’s into weird shit. How is that not a red flag, Luna with No Middle Name?” His nickname for me sounds serious with his serious eyes boring into me. He even adds, “Seriously.”

“I’m into weird things,” I mention.

“So am I,” Eliot interjects.

“As am I,” Tom adds. “But this is online. Anonymous. He could be into kidnapping!” He rakes a hand in his hair with a wide-eyed expression that reminds me of Scott Wormer from Now and Then. He does almost have the same haircut. “Eliot.”

“Brother.” His tone says, I will kill.

“I just started messaging him. Today,” I remind them. “We’re just talking about TV shows. It’s nothing.” The word feels wrong after I say it.

Eliot and Tom don’t usually express this much worry over my choices, but I guess this is different than going clubbing with them and finding a random guy. There, they can at least see the guys. They can’t see him. They aren’t even sure if this is a him.

“Did he say anything else?” Eliot asks about the DMs, and I scan the part about romance.

“Yeah, but it’s just more TV stuff,” I say vaguely. I promise to keep them in the loop. Though, maybe I won’t read the messages verbatim again. I feel protective of the convo between me and this Fanaticon user, and our words should stay between us.

“I have to go. It’s pizza night at the penthouse.”

We say our goodbyes, and I click out of FaceTime. Eliot and Tom think I’m out of my mind wanting to live at the packed penthouse.

But I don’t see why I wouldn’t. As we get older, Maximoff, Jane, and Sulli will all move out on their own one day. Maybe even one day soon.

One year. Two years. Three? This will be a blip in my life. A small particle in time that I can look back on (hopefully fondly), and why would I want to give up this experience just to live on my own?

The idea of living with Eliot and Tom can be enticing at times, but I’d never commit to that move. When they’re with their family, especially their brothers, I often feel like the lone Hale in a sea of Cobalt boys. I don’t love that feeling.

The penthouse is my home. For as long as I’m allowed to live here, I will.

Glow-in-the-dark stars are stuck in a frenzied pattern to my ceiling, and a purple lava lamp emits a violet tint along the dark-painted walls, beanbags, fuzzy rugs, and tapestries. Orion, my furry Newfoundland puppy, snoozes on my white globe chair that kinda resembles something from a spacecraft. A Star Wars Wampa cap is squished beneath him.

Swiveling back to the vanity mirror, I secure the front pieces of my hair up in two little buns and then the rest into a fishtail braid. Sometimes I just like looking like I could be inside The Fifth Element. Somewhere else other than here, at least. I swipe some glitter underneath my eyes like war paint and then throw on a Thrashers hoodie and shorts.