No. That was too complicated. So I grunted, “Food,” again, my jaw locked to hold back everything else.
CHAPTER 26INWHICHWEFUCK… UP
COURTNEY
Half an hour and lots of hangry bickering later, Bryce and I managed to get a small fire going. The wood crackled, cicadas whined, and fireflies flickered among the swaying grass.
“What do you think?” Bryce pulled me from my thoughts, presenting a slab of bark with a pile of pizza rolls on it. He wouldn’t meet my eye. He hadn’t met my eye properly all day.
“The bark will burn,” I said.
“This is how the cavemen did it.”
“You have a fully stocked kitchen of bark cutlery and dishware?”
“Ha.”
“The instructions said to arrange them in a circle,” I said, trying not to notice how nice his skin looked in the light of the flickering campfire because only serial killers had creepy thoughts like that.
Bryce arranged the pizza rolls in a circle, fingers deft and sure.
I crossed my legs a little tighter, trying not to think of the places those fingers had been.
Bryce Flannery was mouthwateringly attractive when he was obliviously excelling at something, like fingerbanging or accounting or cooking. Maybe him heating pizza rolls for me shouldn’t have been a turn-on, but it was.
His competence had always stirred something in me—like that time I almost got scammed by a door-to-door vacuum salesperson before Bryce stepped out on the porch to spew a bunch of numbers, outlining how the payment plan was a total predatory rip-off, leaving the salesperson nearly in tears. His brain was like a fleshy calculator. Meanwhile, I didn’t even understand why the wordmortgagehad a silenttbecause I’d always been too scared to ask; it seemed like one of those things that adults had silently and collectively agreed to accept and never discuss.
I’d never had anyone stand up for me like that—without prompting and not out of familial obligation. But Bryce had gone out of his way to rescue me from debilitating vacuum debt, and I’d never felt more noticed or cherished. Our whole duplex had felt safer, like as long as he was on watch, protecting us from solicitors, I could breathe a little easier. I didn’t need to know why there was a silenttinmortgage. I didn’tneedto know everything or be perfect. Bryce didn’t expect me to fix my shortcomings; he anticipated them, silently stepping in to have my back when he noticed me struggling.
In return for his help, I’d decided to repay the favor. For some reason, spiders liked to build their homes in the corner of his doorframe, and he was always walking through their webs and shuddering with revulsion. So I started checking every morning and rehoming any eight-legged friends I saw. I didn’t know if Bryce noticed their absence, but it made me feel good to make his life a little better where it truly mattered, even if I enjoyed making it worse in every area it didn’t.
After the vacuum incident, I’d thanked Bryce via my Wi-Fi router name: ThxForMansplaining.
A few hours later, his Wi-Fi name had changed from cwwwwwwoissants4lyfe to: SucksUcantSuck.
I’d happened to catch the switch, and approximately thirty seconds passed before he corrected his name to: BecauseUdontHaveTheVacuum.
And again: NotInASexualWay.
And again: ImSureUcouldSuckIfUwanted2.
InASexualWay.
AndAlsoNot.
And finally: AtLeastURpersonalityStillSux.
I’d never mentioned the blip. I told myself it was normal for my enemy to think about how I sucked.
But now here he was making me food. And he’d braved my sharp teeth to poke my supposedly soft heart with a stick. Perhaps my make-Bryce-like-me plan had worked a little too well. Then again, I still wasn’t shooting light from my hands, so it couldn’t have been that effective.
“There. Pizza roll summoning circle complete.” Bryce waved his hands over the bark platter.
“It’d be great if it could summon us some power because Amy’s methods are worthless,” I grumbled.
“Maybe you have to trust the process. Wax on, wax off, and all that.”
Annoyance flared in my empty stomach. “I bet that cantankerous old man could tell us in two seconds how to save the world, but he won’t because he wants to teach us a lesson.”
