“Lo,” I say.
He turns on me with heated eyes. “This conversation is over.”
“I’m trying to imagine what Lily will look like pregnant,” I say casually. “Would her entire body swell or just her belly?”
“At least I’m getting laid,” Lo refutes, pure malice edged in his voice. “How long have you been fucking your hand?”
He clenches his jaw after he says the words, holding back a grimace. Lo has a way of cutting people up with words, and he’s improved from the first time I met him. He was a drunk asshole. Plain and simple. Now he’s a sober asshole who regrets when his filter doesn’t work properly.
Lucky for him, I’m difficult to piss off.
“My hand and I go way back,” I say nonchalantly and even produce a smile.
He seems to relax when he knows he hasn’t pushed me away.
“I’m not your brother.” I motion towards the crawl space where Ryke has effectively disappeared. “I’m not going to curse you out for doing something stupid. But I am dating your girlfriend’s older sister, so my own balls are on the line here.”
He nods like he understands. “The repercussions of getting into bed with a she-devil.”
“And I fucking like her,” I refute, “so make my life easier and use a condom.”
I don’t tell him that he’s not ready to be a father, that the idea (for anyone) of Lily becoming pregnant is frightening. I don’t tell him that alcoholism is hereditary or that he’s too busy to raise a kid right now. He knows all of this. He’s heard it a thousand times from Rose and his own brother.
What Rose and Ryke don’t understand is that if you say something over and over again, you can become desensitized to it. Andy Warhol used the theory in his painting of the electric chair. He repeated the image until you could no longer see it as something heinous.
It lost its meaning.
I don’t repeat what’s already been said. I want my words to mean something.
So I gave him my selfish reason.
I’m the asshat who only cares about himself.
I am what he needs me to be.
He stares at the ground for a long moment, processing. “I’ll be better about it,” he mutters under his breath.
Noise from the crawl space ends our conversation. Ryke must knock into three pipes at once. He coughs and says, “There’s so much fucking mold down here. No one should be fucking living on this floor until we hire someone to clean it.”
Lo bends down to the door again. “If this is your way of getting Daisy to room with you, you can forget it. I’m just barely tolerating your friendship.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Ryke retorts. “There were rats in her room, she’s living near mold, and your first assumption is that I want to fuck her?”
Loren’s eyes narrow. “I didn’t say anything about fucking her.”
Ryke groans.
Daisy is a sore subject between them, clearly. Since Ryke and Loren have a new relationship—just meeting a year and a half ago—there’s tension involving the Calloway girls. Loren grew up with them. Ryke did not. Naturally, Lo would be protective of Daisy, but the problem I have is that he’s constantly consumed by Lily, always taking care of her, that he has no room to do so for another girl, not even one he sees as a little sister.
So while Lo believes he’s protecting Daisy from his half-brother, he’s really creating a barrier between Daisy and the only person here who’ll look out for her first rather than last.
And yet, I can’t say a word about it. I have to let these things play naturally. My interference won’t do any good. My words wouldn’t resonate with Lo the way I’d want them to. So I stay silent on the matter.
“I’ll fucking room with Scott,” Ryke says, speaking loudly so we can hear him from the hallway. “Daisy can take my room. Or I’ll stay down here and switch with her. I don’t give a shit. None of the girls should be around this.”
“And what if she hears Lily and me fucking through the walls? There’s a reason she’s on the lowest level.”
Ryke says nothing, but I can practically feel him fume from far away. Lo looks over his shoulder at me, asking with hard eyes whether he’s right or wrong.
“You can’t censor a girl who’s nearly seventeen, especially not a high fashion model,” I tell him, my words not harsh like his or rough like his brother’s. I’m one-hundred percent even-tempered, calm. At ease. It gets him off the defensive. “She’s heard and seen everything you have, if not more. I’ll call someone to look at the crawl space, but until it happens, Rose would want her sister somewhere clean.”
After a minute digesting my words, Lo sighs and lets go of the argument. “Ryke, you’ll room with Scott?”
“I said I would.”
“Fine. More eyes on that prick, the better, right?”
Ryke says something in affirmation, but I can’t quite hear. He thumps around too much. “Fucking A,” he curses, his voice much louder. He tries to pull his body out of the tiny space.
Lo grabs Ryke underneath his arm as he squeezes through the door.
When he’s on his feet, he holds up the trap with the dead rat, the tail mangled like it dragged the weight from its backend.
“Have we found you a new profession?” I ask, my lips rising.
“At least I can get my hands dirty, princess.” He waves the trap (and dangling rat) at my face.
I don’t even flinch.
Ryke rolls his eyes and goes to toss it into the garbage bag.
“Wait,” Lo calls. “Maybe we can do something with this thing.”
“No,” Ryke and I say together. I contain my grimace. Even though Ryke may be one of the smarter people living in the apartment, I don’t enjoy agreeing with him. It’s like siding with a guard dog instead of a human.
“You didn’t even let me finish,” Loren says angrily.
“You want to use it against Scott,” I reply.
“He’s the fucking producer,” Ryke reminds him. “You start a war with Scott and he could turn you into a psycho on the show. Just fucking relax.”
“He made Lily bawl!” Lo yells. “I’m not going to sit here for six months and ignore all the shit he says. This is different than social media and gossip blogs. We’re living with this bastard.”
Footsteps sound on the staircase, and all of us go suspiciously quiet. When the body rounds the corner, Brett emerges, breathing heavily with the steadicam attached to his chest, and he only sprinted down one flight of stairs.
“Scott wants…you all in the living room…for the lap dance,” he pants.
Scott Van Wright is dictating everything. When. How. Where.
I fucking hate him.
Lo looks to me, waiting for me to nod in approval of his methods to fuck with Scott.
I may hate Scott, but I’m not to that point yet. I won’t do something malicious or cruel that’ll have him checking into a psychiatric hospital, mentally torn to shreds.
I fight my battles much differently than Loren Hale. And while it may not be as quick or effective—I have to trust that I have the power to keep my friends from falling tragically apart.