The release of tension in my shoulders when Wolfe tells me that, no, he can’t take her, calls me a liar.
“Perfect!” Poem declares. “Just you and me, big man. Besties in the making.”
Grimacing, I decide at this stage my best option is to let her do whatever she wants to do and simply do my best to survive through her whims. It’s what I’ve been doing for years already, and the worst this plan has resulted in is my continuous torture, temptation, and torment. Tried and true, basically.
I turn on my heel and calmly go to my office, doing breathing exercises with every step I take. Left step, breathe in. Right step, breathe out. Left step, breathe in. Right step, breathe out. By the time I’m encased in the soft, worn leather of my desk chair, I’ve managed to bring my heartbeat down to a livable level. My eye only twitches a little bit when Poem makes the hair-raising decision to take a seat on my desk. Papers scatter as she shimmies to find a comfortable position on the wood.
My nostrils flare, and I start my breathing exercises over.
She kicks her feet, looking around my office. “You know, I don’t think I’ve really been in here since you took over. It looks a lot different from when your parents were here.”
That’s because my parents had it decorated in sad beige baby. I think my dad touched color once, exploded in hives, and said never again. Or possibly he’s colorblind and terrified of making the wrong decorating decisions because of it. Same thing.
Regardless, I couldn’t work in a space with absolutely zero life to it. I tried, of course, in the first year when I was so terrified that my parents would swoop in at any moment to tellme I’d failed and that they were taking it all back—my bar, my apartment… my birth.
On my one-year anniversary of No Longer Being A Total Screwup, I bought myself a gallon of pale purple paint and spent a Tuesday covering the walls in it. The following week, I bought plants. Knick-knacks from my apartment slowly made their way downstairs to add even more color to my shelves, slotting amongst the framed family photos like they were always meant to be there. I switched out the old, cream desk chair for a more ergonomic green one. If a corner of this room lacked depth and warmth and brilliance, I added it. Eventually it became an eclectic mishmash of whimsy and joy, just how I like my spaces to feel.
Of course, my parents could still swoop in at any moment and take it all away from me. Which is why I keep two neatly folded cardboard boxes behind the bookshelf, ready at a moment’s notice to carry my whimsy away and toss it off a cliff for daring to present itself in a place of business. Afterward, I’ll toss myself off the cliff, too, for failing to make my parents proud.
“You need another chair in here,” Poem says, poking at a stack of papers she failed to upend when she heaved herself onto the desk.
“By all means, make sure you mess upeveryportion of my organization before you scurry away to bother someone else.”
“Thanks! I will!” she beams, prodding my stapler askew. “There won’t be any scurrying, though. I’m all yours for the day, as mentioned.”
“And asImentioned, I need to work.”
“Exactly.” She nods. “Which is why I bring up the chair. You have nowhere comfortable for me to sit in here.”
My eye twitches. “This is an office,” I inform her.
“Anuncomfortableoffice,” she corrects.
“Offices don’t need to be comfortable. They aren’t lounge spaces. They’re work spaces. Theonlything that needs to be comfortable in this room is my chair, and that is only to facilitate my long hours ofwork. If you want to be comfortable, there’s an entire apartment upstairs that you can go to or a plethora of friend’s spaces you can invade instead. No one is forcing you to be here.”
Her pale gray eyes drop to my chair. “That’s comfy?” she asks.
“Poem,” I snarl. “Pay attention.”
“I am,” she replies. “It’s just that everything you’re saying is in direct opposition to my goals and desires, so I won’t be heeding your directives or advice. Super sorry. Maybe try again next week?”
My teeth grind. “You’re being a brat.”
She kicks her feet, knocking them into the desk with every swing. “Very sisterly of me, isn’t it?” she asks, eyes glinting with mischief and an innate desire to see me at her mercy.
“No,” I grunt. “It is not.” It is an entirely different sort of bratty altogether, one that hits me in the chest in a way that doesn’t feel familial at all, raising goosebumps on my skin and shortening the breaths in my lungs.
She frowns, her lush lower lip pushing out in a pout. “Not even a little bit?” she asks. “I’m trying really hard here, you know. The least you could do is feel alittlebit brotherly toward me. I’m being a total pest.”
“Maybe this plan of yours would work if my actual sister had ever been a pest a day in her life.”
Her face alights. “Aha!”
I blink. “Aha?Ahawhat?Ahayou’ve realized your endeavors are going to be fruitless because you haven’t a clue how to be as sweet as Almond is?Ahayou’re giving up, going upstairs, andleaving me alone until I’m done working?Ahayou’re going to forget this stupid bid to make yourself my sister?”
“AhaI’m going to teach you about what having a sister who isn’t an angelic being from heaven above is like,” she retorts. Her hand reaches out to pat my cheek, brushing against the stubble on my skin one, two, three times. “You poor thing,” she murmurs, passing her thumb over my jawline as it clenches. “You don’t have a clue what you’re in for at all, do you?”
I grab her wrist, forcibly removing her delicate touch. “Don’t patronize me,” I snarl.
