Freddie:No. I will not be involving myself in that. If you want posters, ask your husband for free merch.
I scowl at my phone. He’s such a brat.
Lia:Why’d you even ask, then?
Freddie:I thought you’d want, like, something cool?
I scoff.
Lia:I do want something cool.
Freddie:I’ll see you tomorrow.
“He wouldn’t know cool if it bit him,” I grumble, setting my phone on my desk.
Bemoaning the lack of Archie posters in my room, I pick up my laptop and wander downstairs. Rain patters against the windows, beckoning me to the catio. Pesky appears, winding through my feet as I open the door to the comforting sound of rain on metal.
“You’d like posters of Archie, wouldn’t you, Pesky?” I ask, giving her a light scratch behind her ear. “We could put one out here for you, so you’d never be without him.”
Pesky meows her agreement, then jumps into one of the round yellow chairs to settle in for her morning nap.
“Exactly,” I say. “Because you’re cool, like me. And cool cats like us know just how cool Archie is. It’s instinctual!”
Pesky purrs and licks her paw.
I sniff, taking the seat she didn’t and opening my laptop. Before I get lost in concocting stories about my dashing knightor editing videos of his perfect, beautiful,coolface, I turn to the camera in the corner of the catio and blow it a kiss.
I can’t see him, but downstairs, I know that Archie smiles softly at his computer screen and blows me one back.
I sigh, marveling at how perfect he is. How perfect being here is. How lovely and wonderful and kind everyone has been to me, how lovingly my sweet Pesky purrs beside me, how beautifully my husband and I play.
Contentment covers me as I type my password into my laptop and open my favorite video editing software, angling the screen so that Archie gets a direct line of sight to what I’m doing. He told me one day that he’s fascinated by my processes—by how neatly I make lists for every little project and then check them off, one by one. He likes to watch my mind work.
So I let him watch my mind work, and I rest in the knowledge that I’m living my absolute dream every single day with nothing to mar it.
Well.
Almost nothing.
A tiny niggle of anxious unease worms its way through my nervous system as our playful morning wears into an afternoon spent sitting next to Archie at his desk watching him work on CubeCraft, then an evening with our lips pressed together and our hands roaming.
Yes, nothing could mar this time with my knight, my love, my dream come true.
Except, of course, my parents.
Chapter Twenty-Two
?
Archie
Mr. and Mrs. Prim are a polite, upper-middle-class couple who clearly love their son, Fred, and their daughter, Sarelia.
They are also the worst case of helicopter parenting I have ever seen.
“Fred, stick with us, please. You’re in a place you’ve never been before. You mustn’t wander off.”
“Wander offwhere?” Sarelia’s tall, lanky brother asks, throwing his arms out. “The only thing around here is woods, and I know I’m a teenager, but I’m notthatstupid.”
