Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here(44)

“I like your shirt!” She absently rubs Gideon’s arm. “I had one like that last year. I gave it to Goodwill.”

Jason Tous, meanwhile, seems to be bypassing the passive-aggressive remarks and going straight to the glare.

“You narc on anybody lately?” Jason asks me.

I feel the blood drain out of my face. “No,” I say stupidly.

“Really?” asks Dylan. “You seem like you like it. The same way you like running around acting like a big butch lesbian.”

I look at Gideon. He says nothing—just stares down at his Tater Tots like they’re an ancient rune to decode.

“You’re right, Dylan. I’m a big butch lesbian narc. Gosh, it feels great to stop living a lie. You should try it,” I say, then turn to Jason. “Don’t you see how he looks at you?”

“What the—nah, dude,” Jason sputters.

“Homophobics are often self-hating. You’d probably be a lot happier if you stopped terrorizing old ladies and just went full Modern Family,” I say. “Enjoy the tots.”

I turn and start walking away, humiliated that I thought Gideon would follow through on anything he said to me when we were alone, outside of school, in the safe bubble of late-night texts. I hate myself even more when I glance back on the off chance that he’s trailing behind me. No dice.

Avery is sympathetic to my situation when I return to the Girl Genius table and explain it. However, her version of counsel is trying to distract me by reading fun facts from the “baseball metaphors for sex” Wikipedia page, and it makes me want to take a Silkwood shower.

So I bail on lunch and try to go write in the library, but the arc of the Ordinaria is all off now, and I don’t get anything done—just a few false starts, somewhere between what I’d written before and the last chapter I’d written, that end up in the trash file on my laptop. Which is annoying, because I could use the group’s support now more than ever.



Dinner with Dawn’s latest Match.com rando is worse than I thought it would be. Rather than at the very least removing one aspect of the awkward intimacy of this meal, he’s bringing over the fixings and, for the first time basically ever, we’re making dinner. At home.

Dawn darts around anxiously, throwing out old bills and cleaning invoices scattered around the counter, checking her hair.

“Scar, get off the computer.”

I reluctantly close my laptop.

“Go put on something nice, please.”

She means something that isn’t Dad’s. I tug at his oversized Rolling Stones tee, tenting comfortably on me. “This isn’t nice?”

“Now.”



Brian’s car crunches into the driveway. As soon as I watch him getting out of the car from the window, I begin the official evaluation. It always starts here. If it didn’t, I would never have caught that one dude who told Dawn he had no kids surreptitiously hiding a pink-and-black car seat in his trunk.

I fold my arms as I do some initial scrutinizing from afar. Dawn’s darting around the kitchen making some unnecessary last-minute tweaks, like moving the salt shaker a quarter of an inch to the right.

“What is that, a Fiat?”

Dawn barely hears me, too busy glancing in the full-length mirror and smoothing down her dark blue pencil skirt. I told her to pick something for me to wear to save us the trouble of creating a discarded-clothing snowstorm in my room, so she picked a dress my grandma handmade for her when she was my age, and now I look like a Mexican place mat.

“Audi,” Dawn mumbles, preoccupied.

Good choice. Nice, but not obnoxious. (In the past few years of Dawn’s dating life, we’ve both become attuned to car brands the way some people really care about the zodiac signs of their dates. Since middle-aged guys all basically dress the same, it’s the only real snap judgment you can make.) This guy, though? Well, at least he isn’t bald. His head’s just shaved, which is a surprisingly good look for him. Square jaw. Weird, wispy blond eyebrows that are barely visible. He’s tall and lanky, and his suit is clearly expensive but not showy about it.

“Not bad,” I say, somewhat begrudgingly.

He looks up, sees me in the window, and jumps a little. Good. Let him think I’m a weird Mexican place mat ghost. Dawn strikes a match to another tea light.

“Oh, good, I didn’t think there were enough tea lights,” I say.

Every time Dawn didn’t know what to do with her hands, she lit another tea light, so now there are approximately 2,523 tea lights glowing in the living room.

I turn away from the window, frowning at her a little. “You know, if you’re still nervous about this guy after this long, I’m not sure that’s a good sign.”

“I’m not nervous about him. I’m nervous for him.”

“Why?”

She looks at me like it’s obvious.

“I’m nervous you’ll eat him alive.”

Then we run down to help Brian carry the groceries up from the car.

I am steeling myself for the first interaction, which is always the worst and consistently determines the rest of the evening. I just hope he doesn’t say, “Howdy, girlfriend” or tell me I look “just like [my] mother” while staring at my boobs, like some of Dawn’s greatest hits.

“Hey,” he says. He shakes my hand a little bit like I’m a dude from the office. “I’m Brian.”