“Gimme.” I hold out an upturned hand for the camcorder.
“Excuse me?” he asks, quirking a bushy eyebrow at me.
“The lighting in here sucks, they positioned me on my bad side, and I’m certain you’re not familiar with flattering camera angles. You’re no Annie Leibovitz.”
“And you’re no hotshot celebrity, so I guess we’re both disappointed.”
I gawk at him. “Just give me the damn thing. I need to delete any evidence of this encounter before it ends up online and in the wrong hands.” I leave my palm there but, even with my airtight explanation, he makes no move to meet it.
“It’s a family photo for Facebook, not the cover of a fashion magazine. I think you’ll survive if a single hair was out of place,” he says, iciness evident. I rock back, physically stunned. Nobody ever takes such a cold tone with me. Yet there I go, like a fool, patting my head for flyaways that may or may not be there. He smirks at that.
I squint back at him, off-balance. “Do you have a problem with me?” I ask outright. Needing to hear it for certain. People usually course correct their attitude when I call them out on it.
“No,” he says, unperturbed by my defensiveness. “It’s just…for someone whose last name is Prince, you’re not very charming.”
The cutting remark causes my mouth to fly open and a surprising tingle to race down my spine. I struggle for a comeback, which is so unlike me. “Well…well, for someone who’s a guest here, you’re not very polite.”
He laughs. “If I’m a guest, what does that make you?” He motions down toward my bursting-at-the-zippers baggage.
“Aprisoner,” I retort.
Annoyed beyond belief and needing to remove myself from this conversation before I get myself into trouble, I struggle with my bags toward the guest bedroom. Hector doesn’t offer to help. Not that I expected him to after needling me like that. My cheeks are still burning from the exchange.
When I kick open the door, I’m faced with multiple full bookshelves and Gramps’s ring-stained desk. The room has been transformed by antique lamps with gold-balled chains and fine art pieces, gifted by my parents, that have been cramped into craft-store frames. A crime of the eye, truly.
I see they’ve done some reorganizing. This all used to be in the basement study. What once was Mom’s childhood bedroom, as hinted at by the faded pale-pink border paper still lining the tops of the walls, became the guest room where I stayed every Thanksgiving while my parents luxuriated at the fanciest (read:only) inn in town.
This room was the one bit of normalcy I was counting on. Change and my anxiety are not compatible.
“Oh dear. Didn’t you read the text I sent you?” Grandma asks, appearing down the hall.
I did not read her text. It was at least two paragraphs too long. I deleted it because I felt if I could ignore the situation, maybe it would go away.
“With Gramps’s bad back, he can’t do the stairs so well anymore. We moved everything up here so he’d have easier access.” I’m aware this is information I probably should’ve had already, but I’m not in the mood to shame myself for more of my shortcomings right now.
“Okay then.” Exasperation rolls right off my tongue. “Where am I supposed to stay?”
She gestures for me to follow her. I don’t even dare attempt sliding both my suitcases down the steep steps into the basement. I hoist up only one, regretting it with a throaty groan, and leave the other on the landing.
Their house sits on a hill, so the basement is a walkout. There’s a sliding glass door at the base of the staircase that leads to the icy-looking patio.
Around the corner, there’s still a threadbare rocking chair and a brown rug, an end table and floor lamps, but now there are alsobunk bedswhere the bookshelves used to be. The top bunk has disheveled flannel sheets and dog-eared paperbacks sprawled across it. The bottom bunk is made up for, gulp,me.
“What is that monstrosity?” Dread envelops me. When I look over, Grandma’s biting her nubby nails.
“I know it’s not ideal,” she chirps around her cuticles, “but you’ll have to share the room with Hector while you’re here.”
I’m going to be sleeping underneath astranger? It wouldn’t be the first time I found myself lying beneath someone whose last name I didn’t know, but these circumstances are much less enticing. Especially since his dismissive attitude rubs me in all the wrong ways.
“What happened to the twin bed from the guest room?” I ask.Is it too late to hitchhike back?
“We got rid of it when we moved the office. You stopped visiting, so we had no use for it.” There’s a bit of accusation folded into her voice. I refuse to feel guilty for having a life. “Nevertheless, when we decided Hector was to move in with us, the best we could find in our price range on Facebook Marketplace was this beaut.” She slaps the side of the bunks, and I swear the wood wavers and creaks like it’s about to comically crumble.
I can’t sleep in that death trap. This couldn’t possibly get worse.
“You’ll have to share the bathroom too.”
Just kidding. It’s worse. So, so, so much worse.
