Page 49 of Bad Luck Club

Only after she finished her opening spiel did she realize she was still looking at Lee, not the others.

There was a flash of something in his eyes, but then he glanced away. She wondered if he was embarrassed. He didn’t like to be the center of attention, at least not when it involved his vulnerabilities, and she didn’t want to make him uncomfortable. Bear would say being uncomfortable was a good sign—it meant important work was happening—but she wasn’t so sure Lee would see it that way. At least not right now. So she settled for, “It felt good to make a decision for my own reasons, not because someone else wanted me to…or influenced me to.”

Lee made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a snort. “Except Beardidtell you what to do, didn’t he? Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?”

His voice held a challenge of its own, and his words startled her. He finally met her eyes again, and she saw a flash of anger in them. From the way he was looking at her, that anger was directed ather. Maybe he was pissed about the car incident after all. Or pissed that she’d brought him here. Or infuriated by the fact that she’d wanted to help him and was bold enough to admit it…

Except she didn’t really believe that the anger she saw in him was directed at her, or at least not only her. He was angry at the world. She suspected he had been even before he found out about his father and his ex-girlfriend.

“No, Lee,” she said. “There’s a difference between giving someone a nudge to make the right decisions for themselves and shoving them toward the decisionsyouwant them to make.”

He didn’t say anything to that, just studied her for a long moment. He nodded, but his lips were still pressed into a tight, colorless line, and she suspected he was only holding back because of where they were.

“Well said, Blueberry,” Bear said, but it didn’t feel like she’d expressed herself well at all. Somehow she’d ruined everything. The sponsorship. Whatever romantic entanglement they’d had.

“How do we know she actually did the challenge?” Augusta said. “She deserves a strike as much as I do.”

“We know because the evidence is in front of us, Augusta,” Nicole said sharply, as if she were biting off aduhat the end.

“What do you mean—”

“All right,” Bear said, clapping his hands. Ruby perked to attention, hopping to her feet so quickly the witch hat finally came tumbling off. She immediately forgot her interest in Bear and snatched the hat up in her jaws and started chewing it. “Time for the fishbowl.”

Lee didn’t ask any questions this time. Maybe because he was busy contemplating his chances if he ran out of the house and bolted down the mountain (not good, Harry, who was an actuary, would say, but better than if it had been dark). But Blue, feeling nervous and ill at ease about his reaction to what she’d said about the challenge, decided to explain. It was her job as his sponsor, after all, to ease him into the club.

Like he’s actually going to come back.

“We all write down a theme on a piece of paper and someone picks one out. That’s the theme the sponsors use to create the challenges.”

“Do they come up with the challenges on the spot?” he asked. At least he was talking to her, but there was something forced about his tone. This wasn’t the Lee of this afternoon, in the car, or yesterday, in her house.

“We have twenty-four hours,” she said. “Then you have until the next meeting—two weeks from today—to do it.”

“What about Cal and Bear? Don’t they have to do the challenges?” he said, some hostility slipping into his voice.

She shook her head. “They’re the ones who run the club. They don’t have sponsors.”

He gave a little huff to show what he thought of that, and Augusta agreed. She was always a bit of a curmudgeon, but others had been known to play that role too. Sometimes, when someone was feeling particularly aggrieved about their biweekly challenge, they made noise about it. But Bear and Cal had made the rules, and they did help the others fulfill their challenges. Occasionally they even made challenges for themselves or each other.

She said as much, but Lee still had that huffy look about him.

“They’re not bullying us, Lee, or trying to control us. It’s like I said, nudges not shoves.”

Cal got up to grab the fishbowl and the paper and Sharpies, and Augusta and Nicole headed back to the kitchen to refresh their snacks or grab drinks. Bear started chasing Ruby around to retrieve the hat, but it clearly wasn’t long for this world.

“Lee,” she said, touching his arm. He flinched a little, as if her touch wounded him, and she pulled away, hurt in a way she couldn’t fully understand. “I’m sorry I caught you off guard. Maybe I should have told you about my challenge before we got here, but the thing is…Bear challenged me to help someone because Iwantedto. I wanted to be there for you. I wanted to bring you here. He just helped me find the bravery to ask. And the reason I wanted to help you is because I feel a—”

But his eyes hadn’t softened, and his mouth still had that hard, ungenerous look. “Blue, I’m not—”

But she didn’t find out what he wasn’t, because of course Harry came up to them just then.

“You feeling better, Blue?” he asked. “I think your mom’s probably fine. I saw that documentary too. Blocked anything that even looked like a camera with tape. My roommate thinks I went a bit too far, because I taped up the microwave display and the smoke detectors and the power light on the TV.”

Lee shot her a look, and she inwardly cursed. She hadn’t told Lee she was worried about her mother. She’d already sliced herself open and showed him her jumbled insides—her past, her messy relationship history—what piece of baggage would be one too many?

He’s already pissed at you, a voice in her head whispered.Maybe it’s already too much.

“Thanks, Harry,” she said. She followed his gaze, realized she still had her hand on Lee’s arm, and drew it back as if she’d touched something poisonous. “I hope you’re right. I’m not sure I agree with the wholethey’re watching usthing, but I guess you’re far from the only people who believe it.”

---