Poem beams. “Thank you!”
“And where’s my compliment?” I ask, frowning.
“I gave you several compliments this morning,” Poem reminds me. “When we were flirting.”
“Those weren’t compliments, and it wasn’t flirting,” I retort. “Plus, they didn’t come from Emerson.”
“What do you care about getting praise from Emerson?”
“I don’t,” I answer. “I just don’t want the special attention going to your head. You’d never shut up about it.” And, much as I like Emerson, I do not want to listen to Poem waxing poetic about him boosting her ego. Unless, of course, it’s followed up with discourse about how he joins the ranks of men she’s not attracted to, resting beside my dear brother.
“You don’t think I deserve special attention?” she pouts. “You don’t like when I talk?”
My eye twitches. “Nevermind,” I tell Emerson. “We’ll be around back in five. That give you enough time?”
He nods, lips curved in amusement. “Plenty of time for me to do nothing out of the ordinary at all, you handsome, intelligent, wonderful man.”
Ah.
My lips thin. “Double nevermind,” I decide. “I didn’t need the compliments.”
They laugh as I shake away the sensation of Emerson’s words, pinpricks of distress leaving a sting on my skin. I wait fortheir laughter to fizzle out to request an audible agreement that he will not be complimenting me out loud to my face ever again.
Thankfully, he agrees.
Suitably assured that he will never make such a poor decision, we leave him to make only perfectly reasonable ones instead.
Five minutes later, Poem slips into the house after one of his reasonable decisions provides her with the perfect avenue for retrieving her things.
Twenty minutes after that, I regret every decision made today, reasonable and unreasonable alike.
Chapter Thirteen
?
There is no mood a nap cannot make better. And I live by that.
Poem
“You could have at leasttriedto hit, oh,anything but me,” Fox grumbles. Again. For the four-hundredth time.
“You could have at least tried to, oh,move out of the way,” I suggest, again, for the four-hundredth time. “Who sees stuff flying at them and just stands there to get hit?”
“Who throws stuff in theonespot there’s a person standing?” he counters, teeth grinding. His knuckles whiten around the handles of a substantially hefty duffel bag full of clothes, having acquired it when it fell directly on his head because hedidn’t movein the face of a rapidly approaching object.
The bumbling idiot.
I sniff. “You’re being awfully sensitive about this. And annoying.”
“I’mbeing annoying?” he asks. “Me?”
I turn, narrowing my eyes as I bump the door to Blackwood Brew open with my shoulder. “Yes,” I answer. “Supremely, if I’m honest.”
Genuinely, I think his head is going to explode.
I twist, dragging a second duffel full of odds and ends behind me. As I stomp across the bar floor, I huff. “You know,helpingis usually something a person does with a good attitude. A kind heart. Happiness. Joy. Generosity. It is not generally accompanied by enough complaining to fill a stop atone’s sister’s house, a trip to the grocery store, a pop in at the convenience store, and a pit stop to fill up gas.”
“Helpingis usually voluntary,” he retorts. “And neither of us volunteered for this situation.”
