“Like I said before, your most important asset is your body. You need to take care of it so you can use it to encourage your man to give you everything you want,” Bianca said on-screen, dressed in a mini romper open to the belly button. She was obsessively stroking her hair extensions—which had earned their own video—like a cat.
“I wasn’t blessed with 30 double G breasts. I bought them.” Bianca smirked. “Well,my husbandbought them. But what’s his is mine. Wink!”
Bianca had to say the word “wink” because not only had the fillers rendered her incapable of completely closing her lips, but she had also lost significant eyelid function. She’d probably spent half of her husband’s fortune on eye drops.
Riley covered her face and let out a half-scream, half-moan.
“What’s going on? What happened? Who’s screaming?” A disheveled and confused Mrs. Penny popped up over the back of the dusty divan.
Riley yelped. “How long have you been there?”
“Long enough to fall asleep listening to that dummy talk about the importance of balancing your lip fillers with butt implants,” Mrs. Penny said with a yawn.
“Is there something I can assist you with?” Gabe asked from the doorway. He was sweating from his morning marathon, and instead of a bowl of ice cream, he held a giant mixing bowl of kale and nuts.
“I thought Dickie was bad. But this lady? She made the nanny stand in for the daughter on the family Christmas card because she didn’t lose enough weight to be in it and it was ‘affecting her brand.’” Riley shuddered.
“Sometimes people are horrible,” Gabe agreed.
“About time you said it,” Mrs. Penny said. “I was starting to think you weren’t human with your bullshit equanimity and niceness.”
“That’s a very un-Gabe-like thing for you to say,” Riley said, ignoring Mrs. Penny. Shelikedthat Gabe was so kind it made him seem not human.
“I am feeling un-Gabe-like,” he admitted. “Adrift. Unanchored. Floating without meaning or purpose.” He stabbed a piece of kale with uncharacteristic violence.
Oh, boy.
Riley scrubbed her hands on her knees. “Hey! How about you teach me how to detox my mental spaces so ghosts like Bianca don’t hang out in there and start to rot my brain?”
Gabe loved teaching her stuff.
He shrugged his seventeen-foot-wide shoulders. “I suppose I could attempt to help.”
His lack of enthusiasm made her overcompensate. She jumped out of her chair. “It’ll be great. You can explain to me again why I can’t contact the newly dead like Bianca and Titus.”
He looked down at his pile of greenery and frowned. “Is your feigned enthusiasm for my benefit because I am now pathetic?”
“Gabe, buddy. Why in the world would anyone think you’re pathetic? You’re smart, kind, handsome—”
“Built like two hot linebackers smashed together,” Mrs. Penny added.
The complimentary bullet points were cut off by the window next to the fireplace shattering into a cloud of glass.
Burt woke up under Riley’s desk, barked once, then rolled back over and immediately began snoring again.
Fred poked his toupeed head in through the broken window over the protruding two by four.
“Ooops! We’ll have that fixed in a jiffy. Right after lunch and a nap,” he promised before disappearing.
“You’re so Zen you can withstand living here,” Riley continued, waving a hand toward the destruction. “You’re wise and strong. Everyone thinks you’re awesome.”
Gabe looked at the toes of his sneakers. “Not everyone.”
“The people who count the most think you’re awesome. I do. My sister does.”
At the mention of Wander, he turned into a gigantic marshmallow. “Does Wander really believe that I am an excellent human being?”
“Of course she does,” she insisted. “She lights up every time you walk in a room. And why wouldn’t she? Don’t let anyone make you feel like you are less than totally awesome.”
