Page 35 of sWitch

“Hey.”

“Look, I don’t like fighting with you. What I did with Mary Jane… It’s just as fucked up, if not more, than what you did with Fauna. Even though you didn’t know we weren’t really dating, I could tell you liked her—” He paused and looked over my shoulder. “Is something meowing behind you?”

With a sigh, I took off the backpack, knelt, and released the kittens. “Have you heard from her? From Fauna? I just went to her place, and she’s not there.”

Trevor inspected a jar of pickles before putting them back in the fridge. “No, not since the fiasco at Mom and Dad’s.”

“You fake-dated her to protect her, right? What do you know about that?”

“Look, I know it was lame, but I wanted to impress Dad into thinking I have my shit together, despite him thinking I’m kicking a no-future-ball around all day, and she was being fucking harassed by that chick. I think they had feelings, it went sideways, and ever since then, Prue has been on a rampage to ruin her.”

Turnip pawed at my jeans, and I scooped him up and scratched his ear. “I’ll forgive you for being an absolute bag of dicks if you help me with something.”

“Fuck you. I deserve an apology too.”

“I’ll order us pizzas.”

Trevor thrummed his fingers along the top of the fridge door. “Meat lovers? Beer too?”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s how much it takes to buy my twin’s forgiveness and help? A couple large pizzas and beer?”

“Six pack of beer.” Trevor crossed his arms. “What are we doing?”

Turnip purred into my chest, and all I could see in the whiskers and fur was Fauna’s soft green eyes, her freckles, the way she looked up at me. That was real.Wewere real—and I had to save her. “We, my brother, are beating V for Valin—tonight.”

Trevor arched an eyebrow. “Why?”

I pulled up the pizza delivery app on my phone and ordered enough food to feed an army—or just my brother and me—and began setting up our controllers in the game room. “Because Ithink there’s a reason she played so religiously, and it wasn’t for fun.” I passed him his controller and pulled up the game’s home screen.

“We played together too. She’d send me on quests to beat levels like it was her job. I knew it had something to do with her falling out with that girl, but I didn’t want to pry. I thought maybe she was just competitive.”

“It’s more than that.” We settled into our virtual characters and refreshed our memory of basic controls. “How’d your game go tonight?” I asked, breaking the silence.

“Postponed—lightning. How’d your show go?”

“So you did remember?”

Trevor snorted. “Twin-sense. Your schedule is engrained in my brain.”

“That’s really creepy, dude. But yeah, I abandoned the Mall Ratz mid-set to steal kittens from a cat-napper. Then, I went straight to Fauna’s, and she wasn’t there. I’m sure everyone fucking hates me now.”

Trevor’s beefy avatar took off a robot head with a giant hammer. “I know I do.”

“Fuck off, you do not.”

“You stole my girlfriend,” he huffed jokingly.

“Yeah, but I’m a better boyfriend to her than you were. And I bought you pizza.”

Trevor raised an eyebrow. “I really do like Mary Jane and her kids. It wasn’t like…a personal thing against you. Honestly, you didn’t even seem to like her that much.”

I shrugged a shoulder. He wasn’t wrong. “Can you email Fauna? She doesn’t text. By the way, why the fuck doesn’t she text?”

“I think after whatever onslaught of cyber-bullying she experienced from Prue, she went dark on everything. Got a dead flip phone, never goes out anymore—well, until we linked up and I was her bodyguard.”

“Yeah, well, I’m her bodyguard now.” I paused before taking a hit from a zombie. “Did you two ever…you know.”

Trevor arched an eyebrow. “No, like I said, it was an arrangement. Also, I’m pretty positive she’s as gay as you are.”

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