Page 166 of Mad Girl

“What’s wrong with you?”

“Well,” you said, voice dropped low, your gaze still pointed at the painting ahead, “I’ve committed the cardinal sin of taking from you. So you’ve taken from me, too.”

“What did I take from you?”

Several seconds slipped by before your tortured gaze met mine and you huskily replied, “Yourself.”

The answer slammed into me, hard enough to make my eyes water. Instantly, I regretted the harsh tone of my question. Regretted being a bitch. Regretted a lot of things.

“You do it to your dad when he takes something,” you added. “You completely withdraw, and there’s no getting you back until you’ve decided to open up again. I’ve been waiting you out, thinking you’d come back to me after a couple of weeks, but it’s been months now, and you’ve completely shut me out.”

I tore my eyes from yours to study the swirling colors of the painting before me. Baby blue. Flash of red. Tawny brown. Bright yellow.

But I could still feel your gaze, like hot coal, raking over my face.

“It feels like I’ve lost you,” you said wretchedly. “Even when it’s just us at the house—even when you’re sat right across from me—it feels like you’re gone. Like you’re unreachable.”

It felt like you were trying to reach me right then—trying to tug me back to you in that art gallery—while we were semi-alone for the first time all day, and there was nowhere for me to escape.

But I couldn’t voice the myriad ways I’d been hurt—by you, by my dad and John, by Michael—over the last few months without crying and humiliating myself all over again, so I didn’t say anything at all.

“Like now,” you added with a snort, “I know you’re not fine. But you won’t talk to me about it.”

How could I stay mad when you were saying things like “It feels like I’ve lost you” and “come back to me”?

So I said, “I’m pissed about the clothes.” It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was something. Clothes shopping with my dad always pissed me off.

“The dresses were nice,” you said. “You looked great in them.”

“But how many girls do you know whose dads have to approve their entire wardrobe? He buys me those dresses because they hide my figure in a way that normal clothes don’t. You saw how he instantly vetoed the tighter one, even though it was up to my neck.”

“I offered my full support on that one,” you said.

“Which I appreciated, but it only validated his decision to say no.”

“What would you rather wear?”

“If he’d let me? Leggings and jeans like all the other girls in my school wear. But God forbid that someone should be able to see the shape of my ass.”

“Um”—little throat clear here—“the dresses you wear don’t hide that nearly as well as you think they do.”

Were you admitting that you had noticed my ass, Casey?

“Whatever,” I said. “The point is, no one dresses up at my school.”

“Tinsley does.”

“She does it for me—so I’m not the only one.”

“I actually love your outfits. Especially the one you’re wearing right now,” you said, gaze drifting down my body. I wore a long camel sweater coat over a silky cream blouse, a cropped sweater in a lighter shade of camel, and a high-waisted plaid skirt with knee-high cognac boots. “Your style’s very…Blair Waldorf. Right down to the patterned tights you wear every winter.”

I lifted my eyebrows, fighting back a smile. “You’ve watched that show?”

“Claire used to be obsessed with it. I watched with her sometimes.”

I nodded, unable to hold it back any longer—my laugh.

You drew back. “Why are you laughing?”