Pandora. How had she managed to sneak upstairs without me hearing her?
She smiles and waves at me. “Hey, boyfriend! Blaze said you’ve barely left your room in the past two days. Something about studying for your fake scholarship.”
The words are like a knife to the gut, and I narrow my eyes at her. “I still need a good GPA,” I tell her, my voice stiff. “Whether the scholarship is real or not. Shouldn’t you be studyingfor biochem?”
“Yep! I did that yesterday though.” Pandora steps inside, walking around a small pile of papers and over a discarded sweatshirt.
She also steps directly onto one of the shirts I think might have been clean with her heavy boots.
“You need to pick up your stuff,” Pandora says as she sits down on the bed, smoothing down her skirt over her legs. “How did you even accumulate this much after the fire? It’s only been like, six weeks.”
I grit my teeth, my cheeks heating up. “Did you just come in here to make fun of me, or did you actually want something?” I ask her, getting up and starting to pick up some of the laundry from the floor so I can throw it in the laundry hamper.
She’s not wrong that I barely have anything now.
Blaze bought it all for me, and he’s probably regretting it, given that it means I’ve been able to make my room such a disaster already.
Every time something new shows up for me, it crushes my pride all over again. It’s not like I can refuse basics like clothes, though, and even though I’d protested the new laptop, he refused to take it back.
“I came to make fun of you,” Pandora agrees. She picks up the shirt she’d stepped on and adds it to the laundry hamper. “Actually, I haven’t seen you in a few days and I thought you might be missing me. You didn’t even react to the joke I’d sent!”
“That’s because it wasn’t any funnier than any of the other jokes you send,” I tell her. “Blaze really needs to stop encouraging you by pretending any of it is funny.”
Even though he thinks it’s all hilarious.
“Why are you so cranky?” Pandora asks. She picks up the sweatshirt and walks over to me to wrap her arms around my shoulders. “Can I make you feel better?”
“No. And I’m cranky because you came in here and started in on me immediately, and I’m trying to study,” I tell her.
And because I don’t know what to say to my mother, and I’m stressing about exams.
Not to mention the fact that we’ve gone and pissed off the entire Bouchard Syndicate.
“Are you actually studying?” Pandora peers at my laptop. “Blaze said you haven’t even come out to eat with him. River said you skipped sparring. How are you supposed to absorb information if your body and mind aren’t being nourished?”
“Yes, I’ve actually been studying,” I retort, but I close my laptop because there’s no sense in even trying to study when Pandora is in here distracting me.
I’ve studied about as much as I can, but I’m still not sure I’ve retained the information I’ve been staring at. With everything going on around me, how can I be expected to continue like everything is normal when it’s anything but?
Pandora finds more clothes to pile on top of the hamper. “I thoughtIwaited too long to do laundry. Come on, let’s do this load together. Actually, let’s strip your bedsheets too because I don’t want to fuck in sheets that have been marinating for a year.”
My jaw clenches. “Lay off, Pandora,” I snap at her. “I washed them.”
I don’t actually remember when I washed them last, but it hasn’t been all that long.
Although these are new sheets, and the last time I’d done laundry it had only been clothes.
“I’m helping!” Pandora insists. She smiles at me. “It’s fine, Asch. My brothers are pretty bad too. Kratos especially. He forgets what he’s doing half the time. He pissed Daddy off so much with how often he left things undone. Once he tried to hide evidence of… well, he tried to wash away evidence, only he got his clothes down to the laundry room, filled up the soap dispenser, and wandered off without actually putting anything into the laundry machine or hitting the start button.” Pandora laughs to herself. “Ares and I didnotlet him live that down. Y’know, after Daddy and Papa laid into him.”
Knowing the Pavone family,evidencecould mean multiple things.
“At least tell me it wasn’t dish soap or something,” I say, sighing as I strip my bed. “Fine, let’s go do laundry, then. I think I have an extra set of sheets somewhere.” I toss the dirty sheets onto the hamper and grab it. There’s no way this is only going to be one load of laundry. “Come on.”
Pandora ends up carrying the items that fall off the hamper, all while chattering away about her family.
Meeting her family had not exactly been the highlight of my year, though enough has happened to where it wasn’t the worst thing, either. I can’t imagine regularly being around so many people. It’s always only been my mom and me, and it’s not like I could ever have anyone over at our house.
If Pandora thinks my room is bad…
