Before the night’s over, I’ll have my phone back.
And then I’ll make a plan.
Even if it’s not the plan Iwant.
Because, much as it pains me, making sure Oliver’s okay before I take off is what Margot would want me to do.
And after the way Bea took care of me when I was suddenly penniless, family-less, and overall lost in the world…I think the universe would call this situation my chance at restitution for what I’ve been given the past few years too.
3
CAN I GO BACK TO NIGHTMARES ONLY WHEN I’M ASLEEP, PLEASE?
Oliver
My father isa giant hermit crab.
He’s Cupholder, the giant hermit crab mascot of the Miles2Go Corporation, and he’s come all the way inland to Pennsylvania to take a gigantic hermit crab dump on my glass cabin.
Yes, my glass cabin. My see-through glass cabin, where my father, with his beady little hermit crab eyes, is watching me panicking inside as he crushes my greenhouse with his giant hermit crab excrement.
He scuttles so hard that my bed shakes.
It’s a hermit crab earthquake.
I take a swing at him and he makes a weird, feminineoomph.
Feminine.
Pennsylvania.
Daphne.
My eyes fly open, and motherfucking fucker, there she is.
Daphne’s on the ground in the small cabin bedroom, hermit crab style, legs and arms on the ground, staring at me with big brown eyes that are telegraphinggoddammit, he caught me.
“What are you doing?” I bark. She’s supposed to be sleeping on the couch in the next room.
Or sneaking out in the middle of the night to go do whatever it is she does.
Shit.
Shit. “Did I hit you?”
“As if. My reflexes can handle a sleeping man. Your snoring stopped so I thought you were dead. Glad to see you’re not. I hate police paperwork.”
She has a tell that she’s lying.
She has to.
I have no idea what it is, but there has to be a tell.
Doesn’t matter.
I know what she was doing. She was trying to get her phone.
I stare at her as it dawns on me that I can see her clearly against the wood-paneled wall, that she’s still in her dress, and that her dark hair has blue and green highlights in it.
