Page 194 of Healed

“What’s wrong, darling?” Rachel asked, her back still to me. Bee pulled on her trouser leg and she looked down, stroking her hair. When she noticed how pale Bee was, her back stiffened. Then Bee pointed her skinny, traitorous fingers in my direction. As Rachel turned around, a scream ripped from her lips.

“Jesus ever-loving Christ, what in the actual fuck?!”

She shoved Bee to the side and grabbed a frying pan, brandishing it at me. I just about managed to duck as she threw it at me.

“This is not the welcome I expected,” I huffed. Gabriella chuckled and took her seat at the kitchen table, pinching a slice of Axel’s toast with a small wink.

“Well what did you fucking expect?” Rachel said, pressing her palm to her chest. “I thought you were an intruder.”

“And you were going to hit them with a frying pan, were you?”

“I’ve done more damage with less,” she shrugged. “Why on earth have you shaved?”

“I think it looks good.”

“You think wrongly. You look like a… I’m not going to say the word in front of my children, but it rhymes with ‘ponce.’”

Gabriella spat out her toast with a barking laugh. One she tried to cover with a cough.

I shot her a nasty look anyway, and she had the decency to shrink down in her seat slightly.

Though I had a suspicion she was doing that just to hide her laughter from me.

“What’s up?” Dante asked, pushing past me into the kitchen whilst I stood horrified in the doorway.

“Mummy says Uncle Vienna looks like a ponce,” Bee said.

Dante turned around to look at me and burst into laughter as well. “I think she means no—”

“Never mind what I meant!” Rachel interrupted. “Vienna, I’ll ask again—why the fuck did you shave your beard?”

“Still looks like Vienna,” Dante muttered around a mouthful of toast—toast that he had stolen from Gabriella’s hands.

Usually I might have said something, defended her honour and all that. But she was on her own this morning.

“You’re welcome,” she muttered, kicking at his ankles. He slapped her with the remaining toast before shoving it in his mouth.

“I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” Gabriella said. “I think he looks—”

“Oh, I’ve heard what you think I look like. Don’t you try getting in my good graces now.”

“Well, come on,” Rachel said. “To be fair to Gabriella, you went from bearded weirdo to a plain-faced weirdo. It was a lot to take in!”

“Oh, that’s it. Take her side.”

“I told you this would happen,” Gabriella shrugged.

“And I told the lot of you I would shave when Gabriella returned to me. I told you all. I told you specifically,” I said, snatching the last bit of toast from Axel.

The little devil had clearly decided he was against me, just like everyone else. He grabbed hold of my hand and bit down on the fleshy part of my thumb. I dropped the toast with a hiss, only to see Dante teaching his son how to fist-bump.

“This place sucks,” I sulked, flopping down into the seat furthest away from all of them.

“Don’t sulk, Vienna,” Rachel smirked. “We just thought you would trim it. We didn’t expect. Well…” she gestured at me, her lip curling. “This.”

“This feels like body shaming,” I said.

“Good. Because it is. We don’t like it.”