Page 62 of Turnabout Is Fair Cosplay
He pushes the copy ofNorthanger Abbeythat I’ve been fiddling with in line with the other books. “Adam asked me to mention that he could use some more help at the escape room, if you wanted to pick up some shifts.”
He’s herding me toward his door. Before I can figure out how he’s organized the titles. Before I can grab the copy ofRichard III.
I snort. “Pass.” Could I use the money? Absolutely. Am I willing to orbit Mike while he’s in cosplay with my brother and all his cast there to see the messy push-pull I feel for this man? Heck no.
Mike closes his bedroom door firmly. “Well, if you change your mind, let me know. Always happy to carpool.”
I follow Mike back out to the kitchen, not that it looks like a kitchen. Just a wall with random hookups jutting out. “You don’t even have a sink yet.” He does have a wooden table with a toaster oven on it and wire shelves with kitchen gadgetry behind plastic tarping. “How do you eat?”
“I manage,” Mike says, sliding a box of tiles away from the wall.
I spy a jar of cookies on the wire shelf and dive behind the tarp. “So you were here every day after school and every summer until your move?”
Mike measures the wall behind me. “Yup.”
“What did you do? Apart from eating garbage.”
Mike takes more measurements and makes some notes on his phone.
“Did you learn to surf?” I bite into the cookie and quickly grab two more from the container. They’re delicious. Taste like they came from one of those fancy bakeries I walk by with my four-legged clients.
“Of course.”
“Do you still surf?” I survey the wire shelves serving as Mike’s makeshift pantry for licorice but find none.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Bea, I’m not sure you know this. Seeing as how you are retired or whatever, but some of us have to work for a living.”
“I thought you were a student.”
“Some of us have to work for a living even while going to school.”
“Hey! I worked my butt off. Worked so hard I burned out. Don’t talk to me about work ethic.” This is the first time in my life I have space enough to breathe and have conversations that aren’t about law.
“Must be hard walking the occasional pooch and still being able to afford everything you want.”
“What is your problem? I asked if you still surf, and all of a sudden, you’re biting my head off.”
“My problem, Princess, is that you are in my way, and I have to order these cabinets by tonight if I want to get the sale price.”
“You could have just said that.” I smooth the plastic back in place. “If you need a kitchen sink or more fridge space”—I spy the mini fridge in the corner—“you know where to find me.”
Mike sighs. He straightens and looks me up and down. “And this generosity would come with what sort of strings attached?”
Why can’t it be easy? Why is everything impossible? He could have just said,Thanks. And I could have said,Anytime, and that would have been that. But no. He wants to talk terms and negotiate, and that’s something Lawyer Beatrice is always willing to do, but I don’t like that side of me. I don’t like weighing being a decent human being or good neighbor against quid pro quo, not anymore.
I shrug. “You’d owe me one, I suppose.”
“Pass.”
“Fine. Enjoy washing dishes in your bathroom sink.” I bite into my third cookie before I show myself out.
Chapter 21
It’s not fair. I go to the art museum, and I can’t just sit and read books. I have to roam now, looking at all the art. Even art that I don’t understand. Even art that is silly or garish. I see it differently. I can’t unsee it. I want to unsee it. I want to put the genie back in the bottle, but I can’t. And it is all Mike’s fault.
