“I know, but that isn’t going to happen.”
My head snaps up and I stare in his direction, feeling the jagged pieces inside of me shift around and cut. But Parrish doesn’t look mean right now, just contemplative. He moves over to stand beside me again, crouching down so that we’re eye to eye.
“When I told you that Tess was never letting you go, I wasn’t just being mean.”
“I hate her,” I tell him, and he looks away, toward the windows and the weak flicker of sunshine on the surface of the lake.
“You shouldn’t,” he says, his voice this deep but apathetic drawl. Just a boy with too much money and idle hands. I suddenly want to kiss him because I must be a goddamn masochist. “She’s a good person, a good mom.” He looks back at me then and his pretty eyes drop to my lips, taking them in like he thinks I might have some pretty features, too. “Usually,” he adds, standing up suddenly.
I follow after him, wringing my hands.
“You know, girls are conditioned to be people-pleasers,” I start, and Parrish gives a small smirk.
“Well, you could’ve fooled me.” He says it in just such a way that it straddles the line between insult and compliment. I take a deep breath as I move over to my backpack and lift it from the floor by a single strap. It’s ripped, too, sewn back together by my grandfather’s careful hand. I added a piece of hot pink duct tape to keep it altogether. When Tess saw it, she cringed.
We don’t understand each other, like, at all.
Two sides of one coin, the faces forever separate, never able to look one another in the eye.
“But I’m so tired.” I rub my hand over my face before tossing the empty backpack on the end of the bed, bending low to gather the emptied contents. It’s like a timeline of my life at the Banks’ house: the stuffed unicorn I’ve had since the day Saffron brought me to her parents, a framed picture of my first camping trip when I was seven, a sweatshirt from my middle school. Go Lions! “I know I should be able to be happy here, with such a big house, and I mean, they bought me a freaking sportscar—”
“If money and things equaled happy, then my dad wouldn’t drink a fifth of scotch every Friday night and Tess wouldn’t have spent every February twenty-seventh crying over a cake with the words Happy Birthday, Mia written on it.” Parrish shoves the top drawer of the dresser closed and comes over to stand just behind me. Too close, really. Way too freaking close. I can feel his warm breath stirring my hair, that fresh citrus and clovers scent giving way to goose bumps on both of my arms. “Just let me know when you’re ready for that design, Dakota. My ink is ready.”
Parrish moves away from me, heading into the hallway before I can think up a reply, and closes my door behind him. I wait a moment, text Chasm a quick I’m sorry and curl up on my bed for the rest of the day.
The Martina Cortez Show is the most watched talk show in the world with over four million viewers tuning in via live stream, daytime television, and app viewership; it’s propped up by the host’s granddaughters and their famous TikTok channel. They have more followers than any other account in creation.
I am not happy to see them waiting when we arrive on the set.
Crap, crap, crap, I think as I follow Tess down a long hallway, assistants fluttering around us like birds, flapping their hands like wings and talking into microphones. My bio mom seems perfectly comfortable in this environment, strutting toward hair and makeup like she’s the damn host of the show. Makes sense, I guess, seeing as this isn’t exactly her first time being interviewed. Being the most famous crime/thriller writer since Agatha Christie might have something to do with that.
Personally, I’m freaking out on the inside. I do okay in social situations, but only ones that I choose. Being forced into a situation that I don’t want to be in gets my heart fluttering and my palms sweating. I suppose I could throw this whole thing by giving into the panic attack waiting in the wings, but I just can’t bring myself to make a scene.
That … and Parrish is here. It seems sacrilegious somehow to keep showing him all these deep emotions when he’s given me almost nothing in return. Glancing back, I see him slouching in a Whitehall Academy hoodie and slacks, hands tucked into his pockets. He gives me a look that would take a team of specially trained psychiatrists to unpack, so I just turn back around and pretend like I’m not hyperaware of his every move.
“Mia Patterson!” one of the Cortez girls says as they appear on either side of me with matching white smiles and flawless cat eyes; they’re not twins but they might as well be. “Who’s your friend?” Francisca Cortez—she’s the older of the two, the one with a pierced nose, I recognize her from her videos—says as she glances over my shoulder and bites her lower lip flirtatiously.
A small spark of alarm goes off in my chest, but I don’t look too closely into it. Doing so would be akin to admitting that I give at least a few fucks about Parrish Vanguard.
“Uh.” That’s how eloquent I am. Uh. It’s all that’ll come out as I glance back and see Parrish smiling in a way that isn’t human; it’s supernatural, how pretty he is.
“Parrish Vanguard,” he says, holding out his hand and offering a coy look to both girls. “Mia’s brother.”
I grit my teeth.
There’s no way that was accidental; he’s coming for me in a big way.
“My name is Dakota, first off,” I begin, but nobody’s looking at me. Parrish is eying up the two sisters like he’s getting ready to do another bullshit TikTok on their fuckability rating. By the time he’s finished shaking their hands, I can see that he’s settled on Francisca as the better of the two. I can practically see the gears in his head turning: charm activated, debonair smile initiated, flirtatious laugh on full-power. The urge to kick him in the shin just takes over me, and I end up heeling him hard enough in the leg that he curses. “And second, he is not my brother. Stepbrother, actually.”
“Oh, stepbrother, huh?” the younger girl—I think her name is Maria—says as she rakes her gaze up and down Parrish’s lean form. “I sense a forbidden romance in the making.”
“Maria,” Francisca scolds, having apparently forgotten that I exist as she twirls some dark hair around her finger and moves in so close to Parrish that they could kiss, if they were so inclined. “Are you going to be on the show, too? Because we have our own hair and makeup people.” Francisca lets out this horrifically fake laugh, one that’s dripping with promise and innuendo.
I envy her in that moment. She seems so confident, so sophisticated and self-assured, so comfortable in her own skin. Meanwhile, I trip over shadows and spend more time plugged into online games than conversations with real people.
One quick glance between Francisca and Parrish and it’s obvious that he’s buying what she’s selling. His gaze flicks briefly back to mine, but he yanks it away just as quickly and I’m left wondering if I imagined it all.
“Last thing you need is some Millennial in skinny jeans screwing it up,” Francisca continues, hooking her arm with Parrish’s.
“How does being a Millennial have anything to do with hair and makeup?” I ask as the girls exchange looks and then laugh. Guess I just don’t get it.