Real Fake Love (Copper Valley Fireballs #2)(31)

She pulls the phone away from her ear again, lighting up her wincing face, as a loud squawking comes through.

“Nice to hear your voice too, Oliver,” she calls to the phone.

It squawks again, then clearly says the entire alphabet, and finishes with an impersonation of Elvis, saying “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“Wow, Oliver, that’s so great!” Henri cheers.

Is she cheering on an actual bird, or does she know someone who pretends to be a bird?

The fact that I honestly don’t know the answer to that question, and can’t even make an educated guess, says a lot about how much my life has changed in the last twenty-four hours.

“Oliver, can you put Elsa back—”

There’s another squawk, and then the bird-person starts singing that song.

The earworm song.

The one made famous by a certain ride at a certain amusement park, and fuck me with uncooked spaghetti, that’s gonna be stuck in my head all night long.

“Oh my gosh, Oliver, I’m so sorry, my phone battery is dying. I don’t know if—”

She cuts herself off, pulls the phone away, and hangs it up.

Then she sits there, thumbing over the screen.

“You’re not texting whoever that was to tell them your battery died, are you?”

She shrieks and drops her phone. “Luca! You scared me to death!”

“What the hell were you talking to?”

“My sister and her family.” Pause. “And their bird.”

I cross the small lawn and start shaking out the blanket. It smells like mothballs and musty basement, but we’re sleeping on ground that’s more dirt than grass, so does it matter? “Your sister makes you talk to her bird?”

“The first time Oliver learned to say a word, I asked if I could hear it, and now she makes sure I hear everything. My nephew learned to poop in the potty today too. Isn’t that awesome?”

Huh.

Henri knows sarcasm.

Didn’t see that coming.

“You and your sister don’t get along?” I guess.

“Oh, no! We get along great! We’re like two peas in a pod. She’s the perfect one with three kids and two more on the way and a handsome husband who gives her four-point-nine orgasms a week, a membership at the best gym in LA, the world’s most perfect name, a Better Homes and Gardens house, her own popular YouTube channel where she teaches yoga, and the ability to bend time so she can also be involved with the PTA where her oldest will start school year after next, and she also makes three hundred meals a week for the homeless.”

“That…makes you two peas in a pod?”

“Yes, Luca, because I’m the one without a home and children, with five failed engagements, the laziest cat in the universe, and a job that no one in my family considers a real job because I write about vampires that aren’t even very good vampires. I provide the balance by being the loser in the pea pod ecosystem.”

What the hell’s a guy supposed to say to that? “Mm. Pillows?”

“I had a house,” she grumbles. “Barry got it in our split.”

“Barry?”

“Number four.”

“You were engaged to a Barry before you were engaged to a Jerry?”

“Yes, and I was engaged to both a Kyle and a Lyle too, and if you think you have some new jokes to make about that, please consider that Elsa’s husband Roberto has already made seventy-five percent of all jokes that can possibly be made about them, mm-kay?”

“How did Barry get your house if you didn’t get married?”

She heaves an exasperated sigh and shoves a pillow at me. “It’s complicated, okay?”

“Did you co-sign on a house with your fourth fiancé and no marriage certificate?”

“No. I’m not that stupid.”

I wisely don’t point out that she was stupid enough to not keep her house, but she still skewers me with laser eyeballs in the darkness.

She also huffs. Loudly. And then keeps talking. “He moved in while we were engaged, and he brought his dog with bowel control issues, and also his ferret, and his beef jerky collection—”

“Beef jerky collection?”

“It wasn’t actually a collection. It was more like…he had an obsession. He ate it all, and then he’d go get more, and I thought it was cute that he was addicted so I called it his collection, because my house started to smell like he was made of beef jerky, and I didn’t want it anymore after we split up, so I let him have it.”

“You could’ve sold it.”

“Not without putting more than it was worth into getting the beef jerky dog poop smell out of the walls. And believe me, I learned my lesson. No more dating men who smell questionable or sleep with raw garlic under their pillows.”

Pillows.

Yep. I need to put that pillow to use before she starts talking about the rest of her exes.

“Some people just need someone to love them,” she says quietly. “I’m good at loving people. Why is that wrong?”

This Henri?

She’s more than I bargained for last night.

And this morning.

And at Brooks and Mackenzie’s place.

She’s not simply a hot mess.

She’s hurting because her drive has been taking her on all the wrong trips.