Hopeless(33)

He’s never in much of a hurry and seems so assured in every movement he makes. It’s like all of his thoughts and actions are meticulously planned out days in advance. I can just picture him in his bedroom, writing down the words he plans to use the following day, because he’s so selective with them.

“Your mom seems really young,” he says.

“She is young.”

“You don’t look like her. Do you look like your dad?” He turns and faces me.

I shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t remember what he looks like.”

He turns back to the pictures and runs his finger across one of them.

“Is your dad dead?” He’s so blunt about it, I’m almost certain he knows my dad isn’t dead or he wouldn’t have asked it like that. So carelessly.

“I don’t know. Haven’t seen him since I was three.”

He walks back toward the kitchen and takes a seat in front of me again. “That’s all I get? No story?”

“Oh, there’s a story. I just don’t want to tell it.”

He smiles at me again, but it’s a wary smile when accompanied by the quizzical look in his eyes. “Your cookies were good,” he says, skillfully changing the subject. “You shouldn’t downplay your baking abilities.”

Something beeps and I jump up from my seat and run to the oven. I open it, but the cake isn’t even close to being done. When I turn around, Holder is holding up my cell phone. “You got a text,” he laughs. “Your cake is fine.”

I throw the oven mitt on the counter, then walk back to my seat. He’s scrolling through the texts on my phone without a shred of respect for privacy. I really don’t care, though, so I just let him.

“I thought you weren’t allowed to have a phone,” he says. “Or was that a really pathetic excuse to avoid giving me your number?”

“I’m not allowed. My best friend gave it to me the other day. It can’t do anything but text.”

He turns the screen around to face me. “What the hell kind of texts are these?” He turns the phone around and reads one.

“Sky, you are beautiful. You are possibly the most exquisite creature in the universe and if anyone tells you otherwise, I’ll cut a bitch.” He arches an eyebrow and looks up at me, then back down to the phone. “Oh, God. They’re all like this. Please tell me you don’t text these to yourself for daily motivation.”

I laugh and reach across the bar and snatch the phone out of his hand. “Stop. You’re ruining the fun of it.”

He leans his head back and laughs. “Oh my God, you do? Those are all from you?”

“No!” I say, defensively. “They’re from Six. She’s my best friend and she’s halfway around the world and she misses me. She wants me to not be sad, so she sends me nice texts every day. I think it’s sweet.”

“Oh, you do not. You think it’s annoying and you probably don’t even read them.”

How does he know that?

I set the phone down and cross my arms over my chest. “She means well,” I say, still not admitting that the texts are annoying the living hell out of me.

“They’ll ruin you. Those texts will inflate your ego so much, you’ll explode.” He grabs the phone and pulls his own phone out of his pocket. He scrolls through the screens on both phones and punches some numbers on his phone. “We need to rectify this situation before you start suffering from delusions of grandeur.” He hands me back my phone and types something into his own phone, then puts it in his pocket. My phone sounds off, indicating a new text message. I look down at the screen and laugh.



Your cookies suck ass. And you’re really not that pretty.



“Better?” he says, teasingly. “Did the ego deflate enough?”

I laugh and set the phone down on the counter, then stand up. “You know just the right things to say to a girl.” I walk to the living room and turn around. “Want a tour of the house?”

He stands up and follows me while I point out boring facts and knick-knacks and rooms and pictures, but of course he’s slowly soaking it all in, never in a rush. He has to stop and inspect every tiny thing, never speaking a single word the whole time.

When we finally get to my bedroom, I swing open the door. “My room,” I say, flashing my Vanna White pose. “Feel free to look around, but being as though there aren’t any people eighteen or older here, stay off the bed. I’m not allowed to get pregnant this weekend.”