“Leave him alone,” Flick said, giving her a playful slap. “Look, they match,” she said, nodding at my equally worn sneakers.
The back of my neck itched as blood rushed to my face, but I wasn’t about to give them the satisfaction of rubbing it.
Not even if I was starting to wish for a sinkhole to open up directly under me and suck me into the molten core of the Earth.
“Come on,” Flick said, tugging on Pippa’s arm. “Catch up later, Kit.”
They click-clacked over the small stretch of floor that was bare polished floorboards instead being covered by an area rug, and then bounded their way up the stairs, eventually disappearing around the corner.
I was embarrassing Kit.
My ancient shoes and my frayed jeans and my holey sweater were an embarrassment.
Iwas an embarrassment.
I wanted to leave, but I didn’t even know where the hell I was. I didn’t know where the hell Kit lived, either, or whether or not I’d be welcome if I showed up on my own.
“Pippa is my cousin,” Kit said. “So you can see that the madness runs in the family.”
“Who the hell names their kid Pippa?” I asked without meaning to. “Or Flick, for that matter?”
Kit chuckled. “Pippa is short for Philippa. Flick is short for Felicity.”
“And Kit is short for Christopher and Teddy is short for Edward. What is it with you people and nicknames?”
“Your name is Andrew,” Kit pointed out, half a smile quirking his lips. “And yet everyone calls you Andy.”
“Yeah, but that makessense,” I defended. “It starts with the same letters, at least.”
“So do Pippa and Felicity.”
“Kit and Teddy don’t, though,” I said. I still wasn’t convinced that Pippa and Flick made sense, but I couldn’t quite work out why.
I just knew they didn’t.
“An excellent point,” Kit said. “My father and I have silly nicknames, Pippa and Flick are perfectly sensible,” he added sagely, but I could see the laughter in his eyes.
“You’re laughing at me,” I said, deflating. Of course he was. In front of his rich, educated, polished friends, he must have been reminded that I was an idiot slob with a few hundred dollars to my name.
“You’re making fun of my name!” Kit said.
“I’m not making fun of your name,” I said. “I was trying to make fun of your cousin and her girlfriend.”
“I don’t think Flick’s her girlfriend,” Kit said.
Apparently his gaydar was broken.
“They’re girlfriends,” I said. “Trust me.”
The door the muffled music was coming through opened before Kit could object again, and the guy I’d caught a glimpse of yesterday peered through it.
“I thought I heard your voice out here!” he enthused. “Come in, come in, where the bloody hell is Barrett?”
“I told him not to disturb everyone,” Kit said, heading for the door. I trailed after him, both hands shoved deep into my coat pockets.
“He could at least have taken your coats,” the guy—Will, wasn’t it?—said, tugging at Kit’s insistently until Kit let him do it.
I shrugged my own off to avoid the same fate and handed it to him when he held a hand out. A spike of anxiety hit me at the thought of someone taking my dad’s coat away, but I knew I couldn’t say anything.
