I stumbled upstairs without so much as a hello to Harold, tears streaming down my face, and headed straight to the secondhand dresser I kept my alcohol in.I needed a drink after an announcement like that.Pulling out my one bottle of cheap whiskey, I poured a drink.And then another.And another.
Before long, I was drunk off my ass.
“And another thing,” I slurred at my houseplant, “why didn’t they tell me sooner, huh?”I hiccupped.“They hid this for two years.Why tell me nowwhen stupid-sexy Liam Bishop is here, with his stupid-hot body, and his dazzling ice blue eyes, and his great smile, and good hair, and muscly thighs, and-and-and hismajestic penis…” I trailed off and took a sip of my latest invention: whiskey, orange juice, and root beer.It was a crime against nature, but I sucked it back all the same.
“What was I saying?”I tipped my glass to my leafy companion, but no answer came.“Yeah, I don’t remember either.”
Flopping back with a strangled groan, I threw my legs over the arm of the loveseat and stared at the ceiling.My beloved stockpile loomed over me—comforting, but suffocating at the same time.
How could I already miss Andie and Sierra so much, with how mad they’d made me?
I groaned.I didn’t know.But I couldn’t stay mad forever.Could I?
And if I couldn’t stay mad at them … did that mean I shouldn’t stay mad at Liam either?Gah!This was all so much easier when I hated him.
nineteen
no coffee for you
Liam
“Iwouldn’tgointhere if I were you.”Sierra’s voice carried from across the street, stopping me as I reached for the door to Bishop’s.
After the worst night’s sleep on the lumpiest mattress known to man, I woke up to an inbox full of rejection emails from recruiters, all claiming the positions they’d been considering me for were no longer available.At the last second, I decided risking Maya’s wrath was better than drinking the brown sadness water the Pattersons tried to pass of as coffee, so I made my way to the shop.
“Maya is in a mood,” Sierra added, as if that explained everything.
Maybe I should have risked drinking the lousy coffee at the B&B after all.Maya had just finally started to tolerate me rather than blatantly disliking me, but a bad mood would probably change that.I took my hand off the door and stepped away.“Definemood,” I yelled back.
“Oh, you know.The kind of mood where your entire belief system implodes, you alienate your best friends, and now one of those friends is too afraid to check on you, so she’s stuck drinking shitty instant coffee like a chump.That kind of mood.”
I chuckled, taking in Sierra’s frizzy red hair, haggard features, and purple-tinged under-eye circles as I crossed the street.“Are you sure you’re not the one in a mood?I hear that drinking instant coffee after a sleepless night can do that to a person.”
She gasped, clutching her chest.“Who, me?I’m a ray of sunshine, same as every other day.”She gestured to the door.“But you might as well come in here.I doubt she’ll have coffee for you today, either.”
I followed her into the pet store.“What happened?”
“Well,” she said, smirking, “that’s the funny thing.And I hope you’re ready to take responsibility, because it’s all your fault.”
“My fault?What did I do?”
Other than when she’d abruptly shoved me out of her apartment yesterday, Maya and I had almost been getting along lately.Besides the never-ending barrage of death threats, of course.
“You didn’t visit your Nana.”
Sierra disappeared around the corner, reappearing moments later with a cup full of ice and a bottle of water.She emptied a packet into the cup, poured the water over it, and stirred the contents before passing it to me.
The chunks of unmixed powder clinging to the ice cubes were unappetizing as hell, leaving me wishing I’d had some coffee at the B&B after all.
“Wait.What?”I blurted when her words finally registered.
She heaved a sigh.“You didn’t visit your Nana for three years, and Maya has some strict ideas about how a person should treat their family.”
“Okay,” I drawled, making a mental note to examine that more another time.“So why is she mad atyou?”
“Because we pointed out that we haven’t visited our out-of-town families once in the two years she’s lived here.”
“Why on earth would you do that?You had to know how she’d react.”
