“Hey, Zo, Waverly’s looking for you,” Levi calls across the room.
And there goes Zoe.
Not even a goodbye.
Just a high-shrieked squeak accompanied by, “Waverly’s finally here?” and she’s gone, taking the hedgehog with her.
“Hope you didn’t want to see Waverly too,” I joke to Aspen.
“We hung out earlier. And I’ll see her again tomorrow.”
We stare at each other.
Say something normal. Say something normal. Say something normal. “So your Christmas song is killing it.”
The Christmas song she just released is going absolutely bananas. It’s trending on every chart a song can trend on. You can’t open a social media app without the first ten videos you see all using parts of the song. I was in New York last week, and the billboard in Times Square was playing parts of the video every time I looked at it from my hotel room.
She shrugs. “Yeah.”
Clearly not the right thing to say, though I don’t know why. “You’re doing Christmas with Cooper and Waverly?”
“Uh-huh.”
Something’s off.
Not that I know her well—we’ve only been in Malibu together at the same time maybe a month total—but now that it’s just the two of us, things are weird.
I should leave her alone.
I should.
“You play darts?” I ask instead.
She glances at the board. “The last time I threw something at a wall, you had to get your roof fixed.”
Not wrong, but it wasn’t her fault. She was bouncing a rubber ball against the wall while working on some lyrics, and the ball went through the drywall. It had been quietly rotting for months due to a leak that wasn’t obvious.
Not saying I made a big deal about sticking true to my humble roots and helping patch the wall when the contractors came by to work on it, but I’m not saying I didn’t either.
I pluck the darts off the board and separate them to hand her the green darts. “Wanna see if Beck’s walls have structural damage?”
“Absolutely not.”
“You’d be doing him a favor. He’s not out here often, so it’d be good for him to know if he has problems with his walls.”
I get a half smile, and once again, I tell myself I should retreat.
I’m not blocking her in the corner, but Iamher landlord.
And I know she had a lot of trouble with landlords before she moved in to my pool house.
Does she think I’m trying to hit on her and she has to tolerate it or find a new place to live?
I’m about to step back and let her go, but she reaches out and accepts the darts. “Okay, but if this goes through the wall and lands outside, you’re telling Beck it was your idea.”
“Deal. You know the rules?”
“Hit the dart board and don’t put it through the wall.” She’s completely straight-faced.
