“What?”
He’s looking at me like I’m crazy. Right now, I might be.
He sighs and shifts his weight, releasing his daughter’s hand to pull out his phone. He puts it on speakerphone as he dials up my brother’s number, and it does that wacky international ring with an elongated beep and a click about five times before Micha picks up.
“Hey!” he greets Aston. “Any trouble getting in?”
“You mean other than the fact that your sister is squatting here?”
“I am not squatting!” I snap indignantly.
“Oh, shit.”
“Uncle Micha!” Zoey scolds.
“Sorry! Crap. Take me off speaker and hand me to my sister.”
Aston does exactly that, and I snatch the phone and turn my back to them as I head into the kitchen so they can’t hear me eviscerate my brother. “What in the absolute fuck did you do?”
“I messed up. I told Aston that he and Zoey could live in my house because it’s unoccupied.”
“It’s not unoccupied!”
“Yes. That’s where I messed up. I completely and totally forgot you moved in after you broke up with Dickface.”
“So, what am I supposed to do? Move out? I have to move out?”
“Nooooo. Don’t move out. You can’t. You have to stay.”
My hand flails about. “How?”
“I don’t know, but I can’t kick out my sister, who just broke up with an abusive man, or my best friend and godchild, who just lost her mother.”
“This doesn’t work. Not even a little.” And he doesn’t even know the half of it. I lean my hip against the counter and change the phone to my other ear. “It’s weird, Micha. I can’t live here with Aston and his daughter.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t even like him!”
“I heard that,” Aston yells.
“You’re not supposed to be listening,” I fire back. “See what I mean,” I say, returning to Micha as I walk in a circle between the stove and the island. “I can’t live with him!”
Except Micha’s laughing. “Why don’t you like him?”
Um, how about because he called me immature and a mistake?I go with the second half of my truth. “Because he’s an insufferable, arrogant dick and always has been.”
He sighs. “Sky, Zoey already has a bedroom at my house, and it’s near her preschool.”
Hmm. I was wondering why one of the bedrooms had a pink princess theme, but then again, this is Micha we’re talking about, and I assumed it had been there when he bought the place and was too lazy to redo it.
“There are three bedrooms, so it’s not like you’ll have to share. You can still do whatever it is you do, as long as it’s not an asshole or a rando in my house.”
“Tell me you’re kidding.”
“On that, no.”
I stop my circling. “I’m twenty-five. Like you weren’t screwing random women at my age.”
