Page 37 of The Torment of Two

“The real Cedarwood Mansion has this,” Two explains. “All of my replicas are as exact as they can be.”

“I love this,” I tell him, truly meaning it. “It’s so impressive and well thought out. You should be proud.”

He pulls back and refuses to meet my stare, shrugging. “Hungry?”

“Yup.” I stifle a sigh of frustration. Just when I thought we were making progress, he pulls away again. “Do you make the furniture and stuff too?”

He drags another stool over for me to sit down at. After he’s seated, we dig around in our bags, and once our burgers are out, he takes a huge bite of his, dropping shreds of lettuce all over his jeans. Messy, messy boy.

“I make everything,” he says around a mouthful of food. “Even the stuff that goes in the cupboards.”

I shove a napkin at him so he’ll deal with the ketchup on his lip. “Really? You must have tiny tools, huh?”

He nods, snatching up one of the little tools with his free hand. “The hardest part is finding the right tools for jobs like this. I’ve collected a lot of these over the years.”

“You should see my nail art arsenal.” As soon as I blurt it out, I freeze. Everyone in my family knows I do my own nail art, but it’s not something I tell my followers. They always ask where I go to get them done and I just tell them it’s a secret. My nail art is my hobby that feels sacred and something I don’t want to share with the world.

So why did I just tell Two about it?

“Nail art?” His eyebrow arches high.

“Yes,” I tell him with a smirk as I grab my phone. “This isn’t easy. It’s intricate and takes a lot of time. You of all people should get that.”

He takes my phone from my hand when I thrust it in his face and starts scrolling through the photo album. “You did all of these?”

“Yup.”

“Interesting.” He lifts his gaze for a moment, locking his intense eyes on mine. “What do your followers think of this?”

“They don’t know about it,” I mumble. “It’s my thing.”

“I share my thing with anyone who will listen to me about it,” he challenges. “Why don’t you show your zillion followers what you can do? It’s actually pretty good.”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “Because I’m not great at it. What if they think it’s stupid? What if they start expecting me to share about nail art all the time? Worse, what if they hate it and yell at me to share more makeup and hair stuff?”

“You really do worry about what others think. Just like the Enneagram website says.”

Oh great, we’re back to this.

“I guess I do.” I shrug my shoulders and sigh. “That’s dumb, right?”

“You said it, not me.” His grin is back. “Maybe I’ll let you do something on the replica since you’ve clearly got skills.”

I gape at him in mock surprise. “Ooh, I get to help on our project? You’re so generous, Two.”

He simply laughs, which makes my heart stutter a bit. Tonight feels like we’ve made progress. I actually had fun, too. Maybe this class won’t be so bad after all.

Two

She makes it difficult to hate her.

Having her in my space last night and showing her Cedarwood was…nice. Even Dax doesn’t have the patience to sit and listen to my ramblings. Gemma, to her credit, took everything in that I said and then asked questions that proved she was interested.

Of course the first girl to not think me and my hobbies were freakish would be my mortal enemy.

You’re being dramatic again, Two.

I try to ignore the warring thoughts in my mind. On one hand, I want to ignore her and pretend she doesn’t exist. Each night since I met her in the flesh, I’ve lain awake in bed, thinking about that picture with her name on the wall. It hurts being around her. Knowing her. Talking to her.

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