“Oh, the trauma,” Parrish spits back at her, and then the two of them get into some sort of physical tussle that has me raising my eyebrows. What was it that Tess told me on my second day in Washington? “We do not resort to physical violence in this house.”
Hilarious.
I ignore them while Paul deals with the altercation, following Tess into the front door after she punches in the key code.
“Hello?” she calls out, lifting her sunglasses up and perching them in her hair. She looks around the relatively small bottom floor without going into any of the bedrooms, and then goes up a set of stairs on the left. I go with her because … what else am I going to do? I can’t use my secret phone around her, and she monitors everything I do on the one she gave me. For all the use it has, it may as well be a paperweight. “Laverne?”
“There’s no need to shout, I’m right here,” a woman snaps as we round the corner at the top of the stairs. The woman—I’m assuming this is Laverne Vanguard, Parrish’s paternal grandmother—glares at us from her spot at the head of the long dining table, a glass of wine in her left hand.
“Laverne,” Tess says, as pleasantly as possible. There’s an edge to it though that scares me. Fantastic.
Parrish is right behind me. Actually, when he comes up the stairs, he pauses way too close to my back, and I swear that we’re vibing off of each other. It’s as if there’s this magnetic pull between us. All I want is to be close to him, as close as I can get.
“Who are you?” Laverne asks, looking right at me. Her gaze is sharp and cruel, and not terribly unlike her grandson’s. The same toasted coconut color, the same almond-shaped eyes. But there’s a coldness to her expression that makes every look Parrish has ever given me burn like fire.
I swallow and take a long, slow blink to steady myself. Her words are intended to hurt, just the way Parrish’s did when I first met him. I’m prepared for this.
“Dakota Banks.” Just that. I step forward and hold out my hand. Laverne looks at it like it’s diseased, but only until her grandson slides up beside me.
“Dakota is Tess’ daughter, but you knew that already,” he says in just such a way that I can tell he’s used to having sway with his grandmother. “Be nice, Grandma.”
“I’m trying,” she whispers under her breath, the autumnal shade of her hair so similar to Kimber’s that I can’t help but wonder if Kimber inherited Laverne’s rotten personality along with it. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, Dakota. Since you don’t have a bedroom here yet, you can pick one out in the basement.”
“Um, thanks?” I query back, glancing over at Parrish to see his jaw clenched, teeth gritted together in annoyance.
“I’ll take a room downstairs, too,” he says, reaching down to grab my hand. I’m so surprised by the move that I don’t protest when he drags me toward a separate staircase past the kitchen. I let out a whistle as I pass a wine fridge on the right, a gargantuan kitchen island on my left.
Surprisingly, the basement stairs are carpeted and not hardwood like the rest of the house. When we get down there, I’m even more shocked to see a pool table, a shuffleboard table, and a few vintage arcade machines in the corner. It doesn’t look quite like the fancy pants palace upstairs.
“This was the first house my grandfather ever bought with his own money,” Parrish tells me, letting go of my hand and looking down at me. We’re just staring at each other, and it’s impossible to deny that something has changed, that even though he’s been ignoring me for weeks, it’s been as hard on him as it’s been on me. “My grandma was the one with the family money; she’s the Vanguard.” He looks past me, toward the cozy basement area that feels so much more like home than any place I’ve been on my journey thus far. It’s practically normal down here. I say practically because most people I knew back home—besides Nevaeh—couldn’t afford a pool table let alone have a place to put it. But it’s better, much less extreme and gauche than the rest of the house. “Anyway, this is the only part of the house that my grandma didn’t remodel. She couldn’t bear it, since my grandpa was the one who designed it before he died …” Parrish trails off and then shakes his head, exhaling sharply and then pushing those foppish waves of his back from his forehead.
“I love it.” Parrish startles a bit at my words, but I ignore him, moving into the room and opening doors. The first one leads to a surprisingly spacious bedroom with a queen bed, a desk, and a dresser. There’s even a small coffee maker, an electric teapot, and a series of teas and coffees in a tray beside them. “When she said basement, I’ll admit, I got like, Harry Potter under the staircase vibes, but this isn’t like that at all.”
“Mm.” Parrish follows behind me as I continue down a short hallway, pausing to open another door and finding a fancy-pants bathroom with a huge tub. “Okay, so my grandma did get her hands in the bathroom, but that’s the only part of the basement she touched.” I grin as I close the door, continuing around the corner and finding yet another bedroom. This one is much smaller than the last with a pair of twin beds and a desk with an ancient looking desktop computer on it.
I turn around to find Parrish waiting in the doorway, one arm outstretched, palm pressed against the doorjamb. He’s frowning gloriously at me. Like, the expression is so exaggerated that it’s almost cute.
“This will be my bedroom,” he declares, his tone one that’s intended to brook no argument. I cock a brow at him.
“It’s so sterile in here …” I start, looking around at the mostly bare walls, the small beds, the dinosaur of a computer. “What does your other room look like? The one that isn’t in the basement?”
“I’d rather be down here—away from Kimber and my dad and my grandma and …” He trails off and then stops himself, as if he almost let some secret piece of information slip. “I’d rather be down here.”
“Away from Tess?” I query, but Parrish gives me such a dark look that I decide not to push it any further. I move towards the door, pausing just in front of him when he makes no move to scoot back or drop his arm. “Into your stepsister, huh?”
“Jesus.” Now he really does drop his arm and move away from me, heading right for one of the arcade machines. And … oh my god. Oh my god. I let out a small shriek, squeezing in beside Parrish and bumping our shoulders together.
“This is … it’s Gauntlet Legends!” I choke out, turning an excited look his direction. This time, it’s his turn to raise his brows.
“So?”
“So?! This is a classic! Late nineties, totally iconic.” I press the two-player button and flash Parrish a grin. “Play with me?” He looks back at the screen with a strange expression, but I’m already picking my character—blue Valkyrie for the win. “One of the best multiplayer dungeon crawlers ever made.”
“You really are a gamer nut, aren’t you?” he asks, sounding exasperated, but he picks a character anyway and off we go.
Kimber eventually finds her way downstairs, scowling when she finds us engaged in the game together.