He sticks his hands in his pockets and glances toward the corner, like he’s expecting Dad to appear at any minute and yell at us for not doing what Gigi wants. “Overachiever.”
“Right? We could cure world hunger, and she’d have probably already done it both hereandon some distant planet she discovered, and also cured cancer.”
Not that she’s into science.
She just has this drive. If shewantedto do something, she could.
Carter’s still not looking at me. “Lola’s digging.”
“Duh.”
“Whatever you’re sneaking out to do ... finish it.”
“I’m not sneaking out.”
He makes eye contact and silently calls me on the bullshit. “Yeah, and twenty years from now, I’m gonna be the next Mick Jagger.”
Okay, this is new.
It’s like he’s admitting he doesn’t think he’ll make his dreams come true.
I toss my hair, because it’s what I’m supposed to do, and I frown at him. “You can be anything you set your mind to, Carter.”
“Yeah, maybe I’ll hire someone who looks like me to do a theater tour.”
My veins freeze so hard I go light headed, and it takes me a second too long to force my fake laugh. “Oh my God, that’s, like,impossible.”
He holds my gaze until even my toenails are squirming.
How thefuckdoes he know?
“Yeah,” he says dryly. “Totes impossy.That’s how you’d say it, right?”
“No one saysimpossy. That’s a stupid word.”
“Stupid like hiring someone to play you in public?”
“Um, totes. And why would you even want to? Someone else would get famous instead of you.”
A muscle tics in his jaw.
While I look like Dad, he looks just like Mom, but in a rugged way. And just like me, if he weren’t rich, he wouldn’t have groupies throwing themselves at him.
We’re not pretty people.
Or maybe my view of us is colored by knowing what’s lurking in our souls.
“Is there any breakfast left?” I ask.
“Didn’t eat with your boy toy?”
“He’s not my boy toy. He’s a local who needs help polishing his image to help Tickled Pink get back on the map.”
“Yeah, I can see how you’d want Niles’s cold oatmeal soup instead of eating with the most popular guy in Tickled Pink.”
We stare at each other a beat.
“Did you just hear yourself?” I ask him.
