Page 29 of Brazen Mistakes

Trish blinks at me. “Are you actually mad? At Pops? Atme?”

The edge is there, the anger boiling, threatening to melt out and overwhelm me.Not now, I beg myself. I have too many people counting on me right now. Losing an hour would be hard; losing days would be catastrophic. I throw myself from my chair and start tossing my laundry into my basket. “No,” I force out in answer to her question.

Trish plops into my chair, kicking it in a circle. “Right. Sure.” When I don’t respond, she pulls up to my desk to look over my monitors. “Who’s this Bryce guy?”

Sure enough, one of his socials is up so I could double-check that I was scraping the right info for my newly named Bryce Alert System, B.A.S. for short. I’ll be pushing it out to Clara’s phone as soon as I’m done. “He’s nobody.”

“Then why do you have…seven tabs open to the guy?”

I bundle up the last of my laundry and chuck it into the closet. “Leave it, Trish. It doesn’t concern you.”

“Damn. Calm yourself.”

I fold myself onto my bed, head in my hands. “You’re right. Sorry. Tonight really wasn’t a good night, Trish.”

“I see that. Anything I can help with?”

“Not unless you’ve suddenly learned how to program social media scrapers.”

“Nope. But I am thinking of starting a YouTube channel.”

A laugh burbles up. “Really? Aren’t you busy enough already, Ms. College Freshman?”

“Probably. But I have a lot to say, and I’m bored trying to get you or Jade to have real conversations with me.”

“We have real conversations. And you have to be careful online. Those creeps are more dangerous than you realize.”

“I know how to stay safe on the internet, bossy brother man. And last night, both you and Jade just smiled and nodded when I brought up the way Hollywood views Black women. That’s not a conversation, RJ. But let’s leave it. I don’t want to fight. What are we doing with your hair?”

I shrug, letting her switch topics to whatever will get her out of here the fastest. “What can you get done in less than an hour?”

“You’re impossible, you know that?” She motions to the ground, so I grab all my pillows and set myself up in front of her as she pulls out the comb of exacting death and gets to work.

“You washed this morning, right?”

“Yeah. All dry by now.”

We sit in silence for a while before she lets out a long exhale. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“About what?”

“Whatever has you sitting in the dark, glaring at your computer while all your roommates are watching a movie downstairs?”

“No. Not really.”

She waits.

I relent.

“It’s my roommate, Clara. She has this stalker, and he’s escalating. I’m trying to keep her safe.”

The comb slides down my scalp twice before she speaks again. “Does she know you have a crush on her?”

I close my eyes. “Yeah.”

Her hands tremble in excitement for a second before she goes back to oiling and dividing my hair. “And?”

“And it’s complicated.”

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