Page 10 of Now Their Starlet

“Sorry,” Ezra bites out, his voice rough. “I’m not mad at you, if you were worried about that.”

The earnest apology leaves me speechless as I creep along the edges of the room towards my vanity.

“What were you mad at, then?” I ask, perching myself on the vanity stool, my muscles tense and ready to jump up at any moment. My knuckles go white as I pick up the fork from the tray.

“Your mom, duh,” he says. I can practically hear the sassy eye roll in his tone, even though he’s facing away from me. “Only buying you things a size or two too small is fucked-up shit.”

His words have me freezing in place. They’re such a casual acknowledgment of all the things I was feeling. I’ve spent the past week justifying my own feelings to myself, convincing myself that I wasn’t crazy for feeling like everything my mom has done in this situation is calculated.

It makes my heart ache in my chest.

Because before my guys? I had Ezra. And Ezra, despite all the terrible things he did to me, was the first person to look me in the eye and tell me what my mom was doing to me was fucked. Obviously, he did it in an almost self-centered way, encouraging me to move out so I could spend more time with him after we’d graduated high school, but still… no one had done that for me before.

And because my mom has ensured that I haven’t been able to have any contact outside her staff, no one else has done it for me now.

“You can turn around now, I’m dressed,” I say, trying to find something to say instead of acknowledging the heavy emotions threatening to drown me.

He does, slowly, like he’s expecting me to change my mind. His gaze rakes over the old high school gym uniform before he lets out a sharp bark of laughter.

“Those things really were ugly as hell!”

I roll my eyes, picking up the tiny bowl of salad, making sure to never turn my back to Ezra.

He notices, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Small blessings, I guess.

“Yeah well, I’d rather not look like an exploding “sausage casing” in the clothes my mom bought for me,” I say, waving my fork around.

A heavy silence fills the room between us. Ezra’s jaw works as his eyes focus on the bowl in my hand. He’s known my mom and me well enough to know that she’s definitely said that sort of thing to me before.

“That why you’re eating bird food?”

“I’ve been calling it rabbit food, actually,” I say, cringing at the bitter taste of raw kale in the salad. The balsamic vinaigrette of this salad is more like the whispered hint of dressing than an actual sauce. “My mom thinks there are too many calories in nuts and isn’t that what birds eat?”

Ezra just shakes his head before tipping his head back to face the ceiling.

“So... She’s really doing this, huh?”

“Looks like it. You’d probably know better than me,” I say with a bitter shrug, forcing myself to chew the next bite of bitter greens. “I don’t have access to anything in here. Not even a clock.”

“Seriously?” Ezra asks, his eyes flaring wide as he glances around.

“Yeah,” I nod, the half chewed leaves scraping their way down my throat as I swallow. “Plus, my mom hasn’t even spoken to me since everything went down. I—I didn’t push her.”

“I never thought you did.” Ezra leans against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. “Not your style. Plus, she hasn’t been acting like someone whose kid just threw them down the stairs. She’s been acting happy as fuck.”

“Really?” My voice is soft as the word leaves my lips. Almost childlike. Pathetic as hell, if you ask me.

His jaw works as he takes a deep breath, tapping his fingers against his forearm, almost like he’s counting. Is he... doing deep breathing exercises?

He is.

My eyes go wide.

Wow, that’s a big change for him.

“Yeah, and it pisses me the fuck off. She’s been miserable all your life and she only seems happy when she’s making you miserable.”

The small amount of food in my stomach, nothing more than a few leaves really, feels like lead in my stomach.