Page 42 of Cloudy With a Chance of Bad Decisions
“It’s been a year since you broke up with Brendon, George.” Mom peeked up at me through her off-center, overly glued false eyelashes. “Besides…Alex isnice.”
“Uh-huh.Sure.” I tried to hide my smile, but I couldn’t help it. “And I’m a leprechaun.”
“You could do a lot worse,” she wheedled.
It didn’t take a genius to understand the implications of that statement. Mom had never liked Brendon. Ever. I knew what she’d wanted to say. She’d wanted to say, “You’vedonea lot worse,” but had been too kind to outright call me out.
She looked cute when she was guilty. Like a naughty pug. Her figurative tail was between her legs, her face scrunched up, and her skin was flushed splotchy. Huh…I was now realizing that it was probably genetic.
“I’m riding with Mavis,” I reiterated.
“Fine, fine.” She sighed, giving up on me. She paused, her blonde hair bouncing. It was clear she was debating whether or not to speak. Braving my ire, she added on, “But you can’t blame me, can you? I worry about you, that’s all. And that ex of yours was a real piece of work.”
Her face did the scrunched-up pug thing again, and I hid my smile against my shoulder, shaking my head.
“You just want more grandbabies,” I accused to lighten the mood.
“George!” She slapped my arm, but then her face twisted into a wry grin. Her blonde hair bounced again. Like Jell-O.
“You’re not as sneaky as you think you are,” I teased as I leaned down to kiss her cheek.
“Soyouthink,” she said, though she did pull me into another hug, showing me that we were okay. It’d been so long since I’d felt this warmth, I almost didn’t know what to do with it. Her meddlesome kind of care was as welcome as it was foreign. The perfect edges of the sheets she’d folded were another reminder of how deeply Mom loved me.
Deeply enough I couldn’t be angry—not when she so obviously only wanted to see me happy.
I figured the whole thing was resolved.
I was wrong.
As I settled onto the too-firm mattress in the guest room at Roderick’s parents’ place later that night, I couldn’t help but feel off-kilter. I’d slept in this same bed more times than I could count—and never once realized how unyielding the surface was. Like every spring poked into me, a constant prickle of unease I couldn’t shake even if I wanted to.
Over the course of their six years together, June and Roderick had made a habit of auto-inviting me to a variety of different activities. Camping trips, day-dates, and movie parties—among other things. I’d never minded. Nor had it ever felt odd to spend so much time with my sister. Lord knew, aside from her, the only friends I had were the guys on my recreational hockey team—the very same team I’d met Roderick on, before I’d hooked him up with my sister.
June and I were close.
We always had been.
Even for twins.
Sometimes it felt like we each had half of the same soul.
And though our personalities could clash on occasion, at our core, we always aligned.
I’d taken a liking to Roderick right away.
He was a boring guy. Plain, honestly. He wore long socks with his sneakers, only ever replacing them when they were full of holes. He only knew what hair gel was because I’d shown him. And I was pretty sure he thought that Gucci was a kind of cheese.
Suffice to say, he was perfect for Juniper. A girl who’d grown up in the suburbs, fallen into money in her teens, and spent the last decade warding off people who wanted to use and abuse her just to get to her wallet.
Roderick wasn’t like that.
Which was why I felt remorseful that I’d caused a commotion at his party earlier. Though, if I were being honest, Roderick’s feelings about the barbecue were the least of my worries. No, what was keeping me up wasn’t the too-hard bed, but guilt over the face I’d caused George to make.
Shame, because my actions had caused him pain.
And even though I’d set out to prove we weren’t compatible—something I figured we were in mutual agreement about, considering his apparent lack of interest—instead, all I’d managed was to genuinely hurt him.
“I haven’t been home for eight fucking years. Eight. Years. And after the shittiest year of my life, all I wanted was to come here—to see my mom—to get to pretend for one fucking week that my life isn’t a goddamn shit show.”
