There’s a sadness coating her words reminding me her mother’s no longer here.
She inspects the cookies through the glass before pulling out the tray. “She died last March,” she adds, grabbing one cookie then quickly dropping it to pinch her ear. “Hot.”
“No shit, you just took it out of the oven.”
A sweet smile lifts the corners of her lips and... what the fuck is happening inside my chest right now?
I don’t like this girl. Not one bit. But for reasons I’ll never understand, that tiny smile while her eyes teared up has my heart beating faster.
“They’re best when they’re still warm.”
“Warm, not hot,” I agree, grabbing a glass serving bowl and a spatula to transfer the cookies. “I’m sorry about your mom.”
“Don’t be. She had a horrible life. Maybe death will be kinder.”
My eyebrows pull together, but she doesn’t elaborate. Sensing she doesn’t want to share, I change the topic again.
“So you play chess?”
“I do. I’m pretty good, too. It was the only thing my mom liked when she had good days, so I got fifteen years of practice.”
Fifteen years. Shit.
She was five when her mother got sick. I doubt she remembers her before the illness. I don’t know Blair’s father. Never seen the guy, which, now that I think about it, is fucking odd. I don’t recall anyone ever showing up for Blair’s cheer practice. No one picked her up from school or came to see her perform...
Shaking off the undesirable sense of sadness on her behalf, I cross the room and pull a chessboard from the cabinet. On my way back, I tuck Noah back in, moving him closer to the backrest of the couch before he takes a dive.
“Alright, show me what you’ve got.”
I set the board up on the breakfast bar and she eyes it while I snatch a cookie from the bowl, the condo filled with an aroma just about as sweet as the heaven melting on my tongue.
I know what she’s thinking; she’s wondering why I’m keeping her here. I’m wondering that, too.
Why have I invited her in the first place?
Fuck knows. I can’t explain it. Hatred still sizzles beneath my skin, but there’s something more there since she spent the night crying in my arms. Empathy.
She’s obviously been going through a tough time for a while. Losing her mother couldn’t have been easy, no matter how little contact they had. She died last year, just as Blair was left with no one in her corner. Everyone turned their backs on her after what Mia went through, and—
What if her mother’s death triggered the bullying again? Blair left Mia alone in college. Didn’t bother her until after the Spring Break party in...March.
“You know what, let’s get it over and done with now,” I say, needing to find out more because things just don’t add up. “We’ll have to go there at some point anyway. Tell me about the bullying. Don’t give me excuses, just the truth.”
She squares her shoulder, moving her e-pawn two spaces after I moved my f-pawn up by two. “Okay, you’re right. I’ve been trying to apologize and explain for a long time.”
I believe that. Blair’s tried to approach Mia on multiple occasions this past year, but she’s hardly ever alone, always under our care, and when we’re not there, the football team guys are looking out for her. The few times I caught Blair lingering nearby, she was too afraid of a backlash to approach.
Since she moved in across the hall and started interacting with those littleheys here and there, I’ve grown increasingly curious about it. All the more after she spent the evening here with River and me.
There’s something disturbing about how she can spin on a dime from this caring person before me to the A-grade bitch I know so well.
There are two sides to Blair Fitzpatrick. What’s even more disturbing is how she keeps her vulnerable side buried, always on guard even among those she considers friends.
The nagging question returns: who is she playing?
Them or me?
“I bullied her because she was an easy target,” she whispers, firing a fucking bazooka with the first sentence. “She was weak, quiet, closed-off. Never talked or fought back... seeing her cry gave me a sense of power.”
