“You can sit, if you want.” I point vaguely in the direction of the armchair. “It’s better than you hovering over me like a ghoul.”
I’m sure he’s going to refuse me in his tough, manly man,I-must-always-remain-on-guardkind of way. But he does sit. I hear the chair whimper as it takes his bulk.
“But if you’re gonna sit here,” I warn, “you gotta cool it with the huffing and puffing.”
“I’m not huffing and?—”
“Oh, yes, you are. We’ve already got one moody teenager in the house. The last thing we need is another one of them sighing broodily at all hours of the day and night.”
“Someone woke up on the sassy side of the bed,” he remarks.
“Fate may have taken my home and my eyesight, but it will have to pry my snark out of my cold, dead fingers.”
I’m pretty sure I’m being hilarious. But, contrary to my warning from two seconds ago, Bastian sighs broodily. “That just might happen, if you fools insist on this plan.”
The ominous way he says that makes my hair stand on end, but I defiantly raise my chin high in the air. The last thing I intend to do is sell out my collaborators to the man who insists on trying to talk us all out of this. “‘Insisting’ is exactly what we’re doing.” Then I lower my chin and lose some of the insolence. “You knowit’s the only way, Bastian. I actually think you know that better than all of us.”
I wish I could see him, because I’m sure he’s scrunching his face into a scowl that acknowledges that what I’m saying is true.
“Maybe” is all he mumbles, though. “Doesn’t mean it’s not stupid.”
“My mom always used to say that stupid is as stupid does.” I pause, then admit, “That usually preceded her doing something stupid, but the point stands, even if she did steal it from Forrest Gump’s mama.”
“From who?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never—” I stop, pinch the bridge of my nose, and tell myself to calm down. “Never mind. I’m not even surprised. I bet you’ve never seen, like,Home Alone,either.”
“Was I supposed to?”
This guy.Ugh.
“I’m starting to think you were created in a laboratory, not raised amongst normal humans,” I say. “I’ve never seen such a lost cause.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It wasn’t one.”
“Still.”
“MyGod.”
“Yes?”
I wrinkle my nose. “It’s way too early for you to be this annoying.”
“My talents are not constrained by the clock.”
I’d squint at him suspiciously, if I could. Since I can’t, I just scowl up at the ceiling. “You’re in a strangely good mood for someone who was frothing at the mouth with rage just a couple days ago.”
That observation deflates whatever joy might’ve been in the room, like I stuck a needle in a balloon. “No,” he mutters, “I’m not. I still think this is the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. None of you have any idea what you’re proposing.”
I drain the last of my tea and start to look for a flat surface to put the mug down on. Before I can find one, I feel Bastian gently pry it from my fingers. “Let me,” he murmurs.
I let him take it, both because fighting over a coffee mug seems like a waste of the precious little energy I have left, and also because it really is very early and I slept like a baby—a.k.a., waking up every few hours and crying.
I hear him move to the kitchen, the clink of ceramic being lowered into the sink, the swish of the faucet. I have to pee, so I force myself up and start tottering down the hall toward the bathroom.
“You should eat something,” Bastian says as I pass by the kitchen.
