Page 62 of Make The Cut

“Do you think what you did to Ryder is wrong?”

She sighs, resting her cheek against my chest. “Yeah. I know it was. I did it anyway. What does that make me?”

“Human,” I say. Is it wrong of me to cut my father out of my life, even if he’s done one of the worst things a married man could do? Maybe. “It makes you human.”

“Why couldn’t I just be happy for him?” she whispers. “I mean, I was, but there was that whole mess with Skye, and… I don’t know. I just wanted to get back at him for hurting her. I took her side over his.”

I sigh. “Trust me, I know all about taking sides. Sometimes, you just find it so exhausting to be in the middle that you pick a side, even if you’re not sure it’s the right one, just because you’re tired of being pulled back and forth.”

I took my dad’s side over my mom’s. Then my mom’s side over my dad’s. Now, I’m still unsure of what side I should be on, only that I wish there were no sides at all.

I rest my chin on top of her head, the red wig slipping off her head slightly and revealing her jet-black hair beneath.

“That’s how I felt,” she says, blowing out her words in a long breath. “I mean, Ryder stole from her. But, she had opportunities to introduce him to important people, and she never did. I don’t know. I was just caught in the middle of their whole relationship drama, and I never knew who was right.”

“Sometimes, both sides are right. And you just have to choose which right you can live with.”

We stay like that, holding each other at the top of the stairs, divulging our darkest fears and keeping our biggest secrets, until someone comes up the stairs and brushes past us. I let go of Poppy, and one of the clips holding her wig in place latches onto the bottom of my Spiderman mask, tugging at it.

It rips off my face.

Oh, crap.

Just then, the door flies open, and a gaggle of partygoers rushes in.

“Hey, aren’t you Naoya Sugawa?” asks a guy dressed in a jellyfish costume.

I decide to go with my usual response for getting out of these situations, which is to pretend I don’t speak English. Poppy just laughs, grabs my hand, opens a random door, and drags me into it after yelling, “Who’s that?”

That works, too.

Chapter Thirty: Poppy Black

The morning after Sasha’s party, having sent my letter to Ryder a few weeks ago, I finally receive a response.

One in the form of having my brother show up at my apartment unannounced, which is one way to reply to my letter/care package.

After a tumultuous first meeting in which he accused me of doing something extraordinarily shady to support myself (I mean, I kind of did, but that’s beside the point), we meet again. In his glass and steel, concrete and chrome bachelor pad, which holds all the warmth of a corpse left in a walk-in freezer. This place brings back bad memories. The last time I was here, we ended up having a catastrophic argument and didn’t talk for, well, almost forever.

Except for the time at Skye’s wedding when I asked him to bring me the shoes that I forgot at home, but aside from that…

I couldn’t forgive him for telling me what I’d done was unforgivable. He couldn’t forgive me fordoingthe unforgivable.

Now I fear we may never heal our relationship if he finds out who I’m dating.

His worst enemy. Naoya Sugawa.

They’ve hated each other since Ryder was first starting out and Naoya stole one of his demos and released it himself.

Their feud has only worsened with time.

I definitely donotwant to be in the middle of a horrible, catastrophic relationship again, which is why I’ve made the executive decision to hide my romantic life from my brother. This lack of communication has worked perfectly well for us in the past, so there’s no reason it shouldn’t work now.

After all, what older brother wants to hear about who his younger sister is dating?

Not mine, that’s for sure.

“One large pizza, half with pepperoni and meatballs, the other half with olives and peppers,” Ryder says into the phone as he sits on the couch, one ankle propped on his opposite knee. I sit next to him, curled into a ball while an oldFriendsrerun plays on the TV.

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