“I don’t think so. Lola was busy trying to ask Teague where his brother’s been hiding. But you should probably try to stay on Gigi’s good side and clear out of here soon.”
“No way,” Dylan says. “Floyd would never sell.”
Phoebe’s eye twitches.
And it’s not like Teague’sI hate people and the worldtwitch or Dylan’sthis is getting uncomfortabletwitch.
This is 100 percent a twitch ofI just put two and two together, and I am about to be very pissed at you.
“So Dylan’s offered to let me use some mint out of his garden for my next round of truffles. Do you like mint, Phoebe? I can’t believe we’ve been sisters for like twenty-nine years, and I don’t know if you like mint.”
“Deer Drop Floyd?” she asks Dylan.
Either the man is completely missing the tension so thick that it’s making its own gravitational pull, or he wants to see me suffer. He shakes his head at Phoebe. “No, Tickled Pink Floyd. He bought this place when it went up for sale some—you know what? I don’t even remember how long ago it was. Ten years? Fifteen, maybe? Anyway,he’s always talking about how he’s gonna convert it to a bookshop or a nightclub or an art studio. Pretty sure he’ll die before he makes up his mind as to which, and he’s not one to start a project if he doesn’t know he can see it through to the end. Needs a vision before he can start, and his visions have been inconsistent.”
Phoebe’s laser beams turn to me, and I barely avoid incineration on the spot. “How long have you been using this church basement?” she demands.
“Oh gosh, I don’t know,” I lie.
“Where’s your rental agreement?”
“I sneaked in here. I didn’t know who owned it. It was open and no one came or went, so I thought it was just fair game.”
Dylan gives me awhat are you smoking?look.
I lunge for the fridge. “So I made some sea salt caramel truffles yesterday. If we let them sit out for about thirty minutes, you can be my taste testers. Actually, does anyone want to take them home? I have these fake boxes with fake shipping labels and everything so you can say that someone mailed them to you.”
Phoebe has a bone, and she is not deterred.
Actually, I’d say she’s pissed.“You knew Tickled Pink Floyd wasn’t a ghost.”
I give her my best innocent look, like I never noticed that she was the one who muttered the most aboutthe ghostkeeping her from sleeping, or the one who seemed most creeped out about it, or the one who the locals weretotallytargeting most with all the hijinks at the school before she fell for Teague. “Phoebe, there areso manyFloyds. I thought that the ghost at the school was, like, TPF Senior.”
“TPF?” Phoebe echoes.
Dylan cracks up, and someone hold my ovaries—the man hasthe bestlaugh. “You have any idea how much it would make his day if you go around town calling him the Notorious TPF?”
I smile at him. “Aww, I love making people’s days.”
“I’m seriously regretting sticking up for you to Gigi right now,” Phoebe says.
I’d feel bad, except TPF is also basically responsible for my mom leaving town. When she caught him sneaking through the halls while setting up the next haunting, she freaked out, dropped that bombshell about Phoebe’s paternity and her own cheating on the whole family, and left.
As far as I’m concerned, Tickled Pink Floyd has done a lot of good in the world. Or at least for my family.
I love my mom, but I also can’t stand her, and I like the breathing room since she’s been gone.
She’d be the first person to tell me that making chocolates will make me fat and then make me lose my place among the top influencers in the world, and thanks to a lot of support from Naomi and my own realization that I want to be something more than a vapid face for the rest of my life, I’ve finally reached a place where I’m fullyfuck thatwith the fat-shaming.
Most days.
Okay, some days.
Okay,fine.
One day, I hope to get there. I understand the theory but have yet to convince my feelings and emotions that I’m okay exactly as I’m shaped and with exactly the metabolism that I have.
In the meantime, running off all the chocolate I eat is really good stress relief.
