ME: Lucky me.
PEAK: Lucky you.
God, this girl. This girl. She makes me feel like my brain is electric, in a good way for once. And I don’t know. Maybe other people have felt like this before, but I haven’t. Not like this. I don’t know how anyone could? How do you go to the store, how do you eat, how do you buy toilet paper and brush your teeth and do anything other than sit inside your head with this feeling? I thought I had this before with Chandler, but this, this is next-level stuff, and I don’t even know what to do with it.
I don’t even know.
* * *
? ? ?
A knocking sound pulls me from my sleep, and I jolt up in bed. Suddenly, I am seven years old and I overslept again, and maybe it’s my dad coming to wake me up for school. But he never would, not even then, and I’m a decade past seven, so.
The knocking continues, and it’s not a hard knock, not a Dad knock, and not my sister’s either.
“Ridley?”
Shit. If there was anything that would make me crash hard after getting high on Peak—or Jubilee, I don’t even know how to keep that sorted or separated anymore—it would be the she-devil on the other side of my door. Satan’s Comics indeed.
“Ridley?” Allison calls again, still knocking.
I glance at the time; it’s nearly midnight. “What?” I groan, yanking open my door. I’m standing in boxers and no doubt have pillow creases on my cheek.
“Huh, and your dad said you never slept.” Based on the way she crinkles her nose when she glances over my shoulder, she appears to find my room lacking. It’s not my fault that the only thing my dad kept in here after I moved to Seattle was my old twin bed.
She walks over to where my duffel bag sits open on the floor and nudges it with her foot. “Is this all you have still?” Her tone changes then, pity lacing her words.
I cross one arm across my chest, grabbing my shoulder hard so I don’t say something I’ll regret. Yes, it’s all I have. Yes, it’s all that’s mine. Yes. Yes. Yes. It’s fine.
Allison shifts her weight. “We expected your first report tonight. Your dad wanted me to check on it, since he’s held up at the aquarium thing.”
Oh. Right. I was supposed to do that before I went to bed. Oops. And then the rest of what she said hits me, and okay, sure, it doesn’t bother me that both he and Gray did the charity event and neither of them invited me. It’s whatever.
Allison lifts up one of my shirts strewn across the floor, frowning. “If you won’t send it out with the wash, you should at least have our girl steam the wrinkles out before you wear it again.”
“You don’t steam T-shirts, Allison,” I say, ripping it out of her hand and tossing it on top of my bag.
“Well, at least put them in the dresser, then,” she grumbles. “We’re all stuck together for a while. Might as well make the most of it.”
“A while?”
“At least till the end of the month,” she says.
nonononononono
I thought I’d have more time. I thought it would be different. I thought—
“That’s not enough time,” I blurt out, because two and a half more weeks sounds like nothing at all.
“Not enough time?” She turns back toward me. “Enough time for what? We already know what they’re doing. We just need you to find us a new angle to approach a deal, and your dad will take it from there.”
I swallow hard, switching gears. “Why is he so obsessed with Vera Flores?”
“It’s a pride thing. You wouldn’t understand.”
I roll my eyes at her insult. “Don’t you feel shitty, though?”
“About what? It’s not like we’re trying to put them out of business. Ultimately, we’re looking for a partnership.”
“Yeah, like when he partnered with Trinity Comics?”