Page 92 of You're so Bad

Mira:You two are killing my vibe.

Message from Grandpa Fruckface:

It’s been thirty-nine days since you last responded to my messages.

“Fuck. Why didn’t you tell me it was this bad?”

Rafe’s in my studio at The Waiting Place, looking at my ugly babies. I’ve been on a monster-making spree this week, and each is uglier than the last. My latest creation, which took me most of the last two days, is a foot-high basilisk with a woman’s face, a forked tongue, and scales shapes like razor blades.

She looks a bit like Bianca, which wasn’t intentional.

Inspiration’s had me in a literal chokehold. When Rafe showed up to check on me, nearly giving me a heart attack, I glanced out the window and nearly did a doubletake when I realized it was getting dark. I’d meant to take fifteen minutes off for lunch, but that must have been hours ago.

“Shauna?” Rafe says, his brow knitted with worry.

I run a hand back through my hair. “I didn’t want you to worry, which is exactly what you’re doing right now. I’ve got to work through it—you know that. You’re the same way when you’re on tear with something. I mean, you must’ve painted five thousand portraits of Sinclair.”

“Sure,” he says, “but this is disturbing, Shauna. I’m going to have nightmares.”

“Want to bring one home to Sinclair?”

He pretends to laugh. Shit, he reallyisworried. Should I be more worried?

I started out the week strong. The piece I made on Monday is the exception to the monster rule. It’s a mug with a man’s arms holding a kitten as the handle. His eyes are Leonard’s eyes. Full of wonder and love and fear.

I made it in two hours, my hands moving constantly, inspiration a sticky flame inside of me, and for the first time in weeks, I was proud of something I’d molded with my hands. I wanted to make the gazebo next. But on Monday night I offered to drive Leonard around his neighborhood to look for Reese since he’d said he planned on canvassing it on foot, and he refused, saying he needed the exercise.

And when I asked if he felt like watchingThe Sopranoson Tuesday night, he claimed he was going to bed early.

My ass. I doubt he’s ever been to bed before midnight.

Sure, he did send me photos of hideous outfits we could wear to the photoshoot before Bianca moved it, but I know when someone’s avoiding me. My stomach’s felt like it’s an hourglass full of sinking sand all week. I keep telling myself that it’s okay, that he was never mine to lose, but it had sure as hell felt like he was last weekend. And the connection we’d formed wasn’t so easy to shake loose.

He’s avoiding Nana, too, because last night she poured each of us a stiff drink and said, “You haven’t heard from our boy, have you?”

“I don’t think he’souranything,” I scoffed, because I felt burning in my eyes, and it pissed me off.

“This is the storm before the calm, Shauna May,” she said, pouring a little more liquor into the glasses. “But it might be a longer storm than we’d like.”

“I think you got that saying wrong,” I told her.

“I said what I said. Have you texted your grandfather back? The old fool’s resorted to textingme.”

No, I haven’t.

I’ve meant to, actually.

What Nana told me last Sunday has stuck with me—the image of Grandpa Frank crying because he had to send me back home with people who didn’t love me.

But something’s held me back.

“I’m not sure I can forgive him for hurting you,” I admitted. Then took a sip of my drink before pushing it back.

Of all her hobbies, the home-mixed liqueurs are the worst.

“Why not?” she asked, raising her eyebrows and waving a hand as if to encompass our newly feng-shuied home and Bertie’s crocheted collar. “If he hadn’t gone and left, I never would have discovered what I’m capable of. What I had sleeping inside of me.”

“So you’ve forgiven him?” I asked in disbelief.

---