Page 84 of Make The Cut

Before he can leap out the window, however, his and Poppy’s phones ding with texts and calls. Poppy checks the screen. “It’s Mom.”

“Funny, mine is from Dad.” Ryder snorts. “Hi, Dad… Yes, I’m fine… Tell Isla I’ll call her later…”

I wonder who Isla is. Then again, I care about Ryder’s love life as much as I care about learning Ancient Greek, which is to say—not at all.

Poppy starts texting her mom back, reading her text aloud as she types. “No, they didn’t get arrested…”

“Unless one of you presses charges, that is.” Poppy casts a glance between the two of us. “Are you pressing charges?”

I rub my jaw. “It depends on whether I lose a tooth.”

Ryder hangs up on his dad. Either all he needed to tell him was that he’s alive, or he and his dad have the same relationship I do with mine.

“Wouldn’t you be spitting them out already if that was the case?” Ryder grumbles, touching his nose gingerly. “I think you broke my nose.”

“So… mutual brawling, no charges necessary,” Poppy says, sounding awfully calm for someone who’s just been filmed onstage shortly before inciting a fistfight between two of the world’s biggest pop stars.

“Maybe someone should press charges onyoufor disturbing the performance,” Ryder says, pressing his cheek against the window of the car as the driver pulls up to my house. “I still can’t believe you would do that.”

“It doesn’t mean you had to punch Naoya in the face.” Poppy folds her arms over her chest after unbuckling her seatbelt.

“Who’s paying?” the taxi driver asks.

“I’ll get it,” Poppy says just as Ryder and I reach for our wallets at the same time. He gets his out first, and we shoot each other with mutual glares.

Turns out our truce has been blown to smithereens, torpedoed, and maybe fed to the sharks for good measure.

All because I kissed his sister behind his back on live TV.

* * *

“Security guards had to escort Naoya and Ryder off the stage after an altercation broke out between them during their duet…”says a reporter from E! News. “This fight happened after Ryder saw Naoya kissing a previously unidentified woman onstage, which was definitely not a choreographed part of their performance. This woman has now been identified as Poppy Black, Ryder’s younger sister. It is unknown if Naoya was with Poppy when he was dating Rose Mc—“

Muting the TV, I watch the entertainment news channel in silence. The hashtags are already spreading faster than E. Coli through a pack of ground beef in a sketchy burger joint’s broken freezer.

“Why would you do this?” Gustav interrupts as he walks into my living room, where I’m holding a bag of cold peas to my face and Ryder has a frozen tuna steak against his nose. “Why would the two of you get into a fight and force me, your security guard, the one night I’m not working, to get up in the middle of the night and come to your rescue?”

“Some rescue you did,” I mumble against the bag of peas. “He hit me first.”

Gustav sighs, pacing the living room. “You provoked him.”

“If anything, Poppy provoked him.” Technicalities aren’t going to get me out of this, I know, but I can at least try.

Poppy, who’s been dozing off on my shoulder, making my arm fall asleep (though I don’t have the heart to complain and wake her up), jolts up when I say her name. “Huh?”

“Nothing, Petal. Go back to sleep.”

Ryder mutters something about being sick to his stomach as he adjusts the frozen fish on his nose.

“Don’t worry, I brought in a private doctor to examine both of you on such short notice. Dr. Jacobs, please take care of these two reckless men,” Gustav says, beckoning a petite woman with a no-nonsense black bob into the room. As the doctor enters, he shakes his head at the two of us.

“Good evening,” she says. “Who should I treat first?”

I point a finger at Ryder. Just in case I actually did break his nose.

She obliges, telling him to lower the steak and pressing on the area around his nose to examine for any fractures. “Hmm.”

“What?” he says, his voice nasally.

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