Page 169 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“It was embarrassing,” I admitted. “And I didn’t want you to say it was a bad idea to go.”
“Itwasa bad idea,” he frowned, “but I wouldn’t have stopped you.”
“Why not?”
“He’syourestranged father.” He waggled a bit of his cake on the end of his fork at me. “Why would I get an opinion?”
“I dragged you there without letting you know what you were walking into.”
“I knew what I was walking into.”
“Did you?”
“Areallyboring lecture.”
I threw a pillow at him, and he dodged it with a grin.
“Watch the cake!”
“It was on sale. You’re fine.” I poked at my own slice of cake with a plastic fork. “I wish ithadbeen boring, but he’s a genius. And funny. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so crappy if he had been crappy too.”
“He is crappy,” Liam said through a mouth full of cake. “And you know it. Didn’t you say that you wrote your entire admissions essay on how terrible he is?”
I smiled in spite of myself.
“I did, yeah. And then they waitlisted me.”
Liam set his dessert to the side and leaned forward with a new glint in his eyes.
“I want to read it.”
“What?” I recoiled, drawing the heels of my feet up onto the bed.
“Do you have it on your phone?”
I pulled my overnight bag over from where I’d left it at the foot of the bed and pulled a folder out from inside.
“I have a printed copy, actually. For tomorrow. Just in case.”
Liam abandoned his cake and his pull-out bed, pushing me over in his haste to take the folder. He sat on his knees next to me, and held the papers close to his face to read the essay in the dim light of the bedside lamp.
“‘My father is a world-renowned geophysicist with research that has shaped modern understanding of continental shift, and yet I’ve never met a greater failure. Except, that’s not entirely true, because I haven’t actually met him.’” Liam slapped the essay into his lap and gawked at me with a massive grin. “You’re kidding me. You submitted this, and theydidn’timmediately admit you?”
“They love him! And I’m pretty sure he donates to the geophysics program. There’s an entire study room named after him in the science buildings.”
“And someday you’ll be a bigger deal than him, and they’ll rename it after you.”
“Or,” I suggested, “they’ll bulldoze the entire building, hire some ice-cream scooper to design a new one, and they’ll namethatafter me.”
“I like it. Tell me more about this ice-cream scooper. He sounds handsome.”
I shoved him and retreated to lean against the pillows with my arms crossed. He flashed a devilish smile before returning to the essay. He read it under his breath, and I watched his lips move with the words, occasionally quirking upwards in a smile.
“This is amazing.” He looked up at me with shining brown eyes when he reached the end. “Wren, you are incredible.”
“It’s just an essay.”
He flourished the paper in front of him for dramatic effect and read from the pages.
