by Nicole Thorn
Jasmine and Zander immediately started flirting heavily and playing the license plate game, cheating and all. In the back, Kizzy leaned on Jasper, and both of them promptly fell asleep.
“Are you still angry?” Verin asked.
I shrugged. “I’m always angry about something.”
“Why?”
I didn’t have an answer for that.
“Are you mad that I kept trying to hold your hand?” he asked.
I sighed. “You were interrupting my visions. I was seeing you instead of the dog.” Belatedly, I realized how Verin would probably take this explanation. Before I could correct him, he did just what I thought he would.
“Oh, so you like holding my hand? That doesn’t surprise me. I’m very good at it.” Then he took my hand, and entwined our fingers. I gave him a flat, pointed look while I peeled his fingers away from mine, and drew my hand back. He frowned at me. “You are a difficult woman, Juniper.”
“If we’re lucky, I’ll only get more difficult,” I said with a sarcastic little salute. Then I turned back to the window, hoping that he would leave me alone. No such luck. His hand ended up around mine again. And one more time after that. I thought about smacking him, when I noticed the little twinkle in his eye.
Did he think we played some kind of game? I thought about kicking him in the ankle, but the angle wouldn’t have been right and the monster dog in the back seemed rather fond of him. I didn’t want to get murdered that way.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked Verin.
“Because I like you,” he said without hesitation.
“Why?” I asked. “Do you like getting yelled at on a regular basis? A glutton for punishment? Like projects? Because I won’t be your next art piece. What about this seems like a good idea to you?”
“Why do I need reasons to like you?” Verin asked. “Can’t I just like you?”
“No,” I said. “If you’re just interested in sex, then you should probably back off that angle too. It wouldn’t be good.”
“What on earth makes you think that?” he asked.
“Because I’ve never done anything like that,” I said. “I’m sure you’d rather have someone with a bit more experience than what I’m rocking over here.” I had been hoping that would turn him off, but instead, he smirked. “What on earth about this is funny to you?”
He shrugged. “If I told you, you would probably hit me.”
I took a deep, deep breath. “You’re right. Don’t tell me, you pervert.” All right, the sex angle hadn’t made him walk away like I thought it would. Maybe guys didn’t care about bad sex as long as they got to have sex. How the fuck should I have known? However, I thought I could drive him away with a different tactic.
Before I could say anything, Zander hit the brakes, and the seatbelt cut into my neck. I blinked, pulling it away. “What the fuck, Zander?” I asked, glaring at him in the rearview mirror.
He gave me a sheepish smile. It instantly made me suspicious of his motives. “Sorry. Rabbit in the middle of the road. I didn’t want to kill a rabbit. Would you want me to kill a rabbit?”
“We should stop for ice cream!” Verin said brightly.
And about ten minutes later, we sat in the drive-thru while Verin leaned over me, ordering ice cream for everyone, despite the fact that two people in the back were asleep, and I wouldn’t eat ice cream. At the window, he leaned across me again to pay, and then yelled at the man for ogling his lady. He had to have been joking, knowing that I couldn’t kill him with my hands trapped underneath his chest.
Kizzy and Jasper woke up when Verin handed them their shakes. He had gotten Jasper vanilla, and Kizzy got this weird concoction that had chocolate, caramel, and cookies in it. Then he put a shake in my hands, and I didn’t know what he thought would happen.
I glared at him. “I can’t eat this. You know I can’t eat this.”
He smiled. “We have an hour left before we get home. If you drink that shake, I won’t say a word to you the entire hour.”
Oh. He is a sly devil.
Glaring at him, I took a deep breath, and sipped the motherfucking shake. He had gotten me a banana shake. Creamy, and sweet, and banana-y. I wanted to hate it, so that I could throw it out the window, but it actually tasted amazing. I had already given up my pop tart for the week because of that fry, so I took another sip.
Guilt punched at me. Guilt, and the certainty that I did something wrong. Someone in the car would tell me that I shouldn’t be drinking this, and that I should throw the shake out the window, and that . . .
Only, none of them said anything. I ended up drinking the whole damn thing. It sat like lead in my stomach as I worried about what I’d just done to myself. As if sensing this, Verin reached for my hand again. This time, I let him curl his fingers around mine, and I just breathed.
It would be all right, I told myself. It had to be all right.
As we pulled into the neighborhood, Cerberus started barking and whining. He had been fairly quiet throughout the drive, but apparently didn’t want to do that anymore. His heads popped over the seat, and his paws touched the back of Kizzy’s head as he tried to fight his way over. She laughed, and pulled him into her lap. He flopped over, presenting his stomach.
“Aren’t you a cutie?” Kizzy said. “You’re so sweet.” Jasper more sedately rubbed him around the ears . . . on the left head.
The house came into view, and that made me happier than I could put into words. Verin’s mom had been doing a good job of keeping everything in order. It made me think she had been more observant than she let on because the front porch looked vacant of all leaves. I always cleaned them up before anyone else noticed them, but I hadn’t told her that.
I’d have to thank her.
Zander pulled into the driveway, and shut the car off. “When will you call your father to get Cerberus?”
Verin shrugged. “I’m sure he already knows. Dad will be along for him shortly.” He popped his door open and jumped out, leaving us there. I scrambled out when he opened the back of the car. “What are you doing?! The neighbors will see!”
He glanced at me. “Did they notice when furies were attacking your house? Or when the gorgons were attacking your sister? Have they noticed that you have a hydra as a pet, or that plants always seem to grow in your backyard, no matter the season?”
“Well . . . ” I said. “No.”
“I think we’re fine.” He took the dog out. Cerberus ran around my yard, sniffing every piece of grass, and rolling around in it like the puppy that he had been turned into. I frowned at the dog, then at the houses. No one came running out, screaming at the top of their lungs. All right, so maybe Verin had a point, and maybe our neighbors were a little ignorant.
That still felt like a bad reason to flaunt the dog in front of them. “You should take him home,” I said. “Get him comfy and stuff.” I fluttered my hands, like that would make him walk away. Nothing made him walk away. The guy acted like a boomerang. He always came back.
He smiled. “I think he’d like to see your house first.”
“No!” I shouted, but too late. The front door had already been opened, and the dog got inside. I ran into the house, my siblings following at a more sedate pace with all our luggage behind them.
I stopped about two steps into the house, because . . . because . . .
“Surprise!” Verin’s mom screamed, throwing her arms out with a wide smile. Her eyes sparkled with good humor. She wore a party hat that sparkled in the light, and stood under a banner that said, ‘Welcome home, Cerberus’. It was blue and purple, and had tiny three-headed dogs all over the place.
She had set up a table in the middle of my living room, and filled it with food. Every kind of food that a person could imagine, including punch. She had made punch, with actual fruit in it.
Oh, and Nemo wore a party hat on either one of his heads.
How the hell did she do that?
“Um,” I said.
“Mum!” Ve
rin said. He gave her a hug that lifted her feet right off the floor. She patted his shoulders before shoving him away. “Now, now, Verin. I want to see the puppy.” The second he put her on her feet, she dropped to her knees, and wrapped her arms around Cerberus, who proceeded to give her the sloppiest puppy kisses I’d ever seen.
I pointed at the banner above my head. “How . . . ?”
“I don’t ask questions like that anymore,” Verin said. “I’m sure whoever did the custom job loved doing it, and felt like they were doing Mum a huge favor. Don’t worry. They’ll be telling this story for years.” Then he wandered over to the food table and started picking through it.
I still stared at the banner when Jasmine came in. “Nemo!” she shouted, running straight at him. If you’d never seen a hydra ecstatically cuddling someone they missed, then there really wasn’t a way to describe it. He had one head against Jasmine’s stomach, and the other head against Zander’s. He’d always played favorites like that.
I had no order in this house. Sometimes, I managed to convince myself that I had, but how could there be order with three demigods, a hydra, and now a puppy with three heads?
I needed to sit down. My couch looked marvelously unruffled. I took a deep breath, and looked at everything around me. Panic tried to push into my mind, but then I saw what Gwen had really done. The table looked brand new, but it had been placed in a spot that wouldn’t disrupt any of my furniture, and all the food on it had been put in bowls and dishes that I didn’t recognize. The carpet felt fluffy, like it had been freshly vacuumed. The banner hung on with strings and some kind of putty that wouldn’t damage my ceiling or walls.
The area around Nemo looked absolutely clean.
She had set up a party without disrupting my house at all.
While everyone played with the puppy and ate the food Gwen had made, Verin made his way over to me. He sat down on the couch, close enough that our arms touched. It didn’t bother me right then. “You okay?” he asked.
I nodded. “Your mom is kind of amazing.”
“I know,” he said. “She has to be, what with me as a son.”
I rolled my eyes. We sat quietly for a little while. When Gwen bounced over with a cup of punch in her hands for me, I took it gratefully. I had little doubt that it would be fine to drink. What with everything she had already done to make me comfortable, I refused to believe she would stop now. I sipped it. It tasted tart and sweet at the same time. Perfect.
“Has she always been like this?” I asked.
“Amazing? Yeah, she has,” Verin said.
I snorted. “You know what I mean.”
He paused for a long moment, and I wondered if I had offended him. While I came up with a thousand apologies, he answered. “Yes, for as long as I can remember. Does it bother you?”
“No,” I said. “I like her. She’s a much better mother than my dad was a father. It’s nice knowing that not everyone has shitty childhoods like . . . ”
He nodded, without asking me to finish my sentence. And I was happy that he had someone worthy of being a parent. Our father had been a monster, and our mother only had us to save herself. We hadn’t seen her since we were three years old. Kizzy and Zander’s mothers abandoned them at birth, and left them to suffer through horrors that no one should have to live through.
Kizzy and Zander argued that as gods, they had rules they needed to follow. But we all knew the truth. Their mothers cast them away to sink or swim on their own. It would have bummed them out if their children didn’t make it, but I didn’t think they would have been devastated.
So yeah. It felt nice seeing something like Verin’s mother.
Gwen plopped down on the floor with the puppy. She sat next to Nemo’s kiddy pool, and introduced them. Cerberus sniffed Nemo, while the hydra seemed more interested in the cupcake that Gwen had in one hand. Leave it to her to introduce the two of them.
I got up, and wandered into the kitchen, away from all the noise. I went over to the cabinet, and opened it up. Eighteen cups. Six white. Six gray. Six black. I closed the cabinet, and opened up the silverware drawer. Big forks, little forks, big spoons, little spoons, butter knives. I fixed the butter knives, and then closed that drawer too.
“Juniper?” Verin asked from behind me. I jumped about a mile into the air, and tried to hide it with a scowl. He put his hands up. “Sorry,” he said. “Just wanted to see what you were doing.”
“Nothing,” I said, closing the drawer a little harder than it needed to be closed. “Why are you checking on me anyway?”
“I like you,” he said.
“Stop saying that,” I barked at him. “You don’t like me. I don’t know what kind of sick game this is to you, but it’s not funny. I’d rather you stop now, before I really have to stab you in the throat with the nearest sharp object.”
“What makes you think I don’t like you?” he asked, cocking his head to the side. He had infinite patience in his voice, but his eyes told a different story. They looked dark and unhappy.
“Because I frustrate you for one thing,” I told him. “I frustrate everyone, but you especially. We do nothing but bicker and insult each other. You could have anyone else, but you want me?” I scoffed. “That’s bullshit, and you know it. I know it. Everyone in this fucking house knows it. The kiss was a mistake. The sooner you admit that, the better off we’ll be.”
“Then I guess we’re fucked, because I’m not saying that,” he said. “Why are you so sure that I can’t want you? Is this more of that ugly bullshit? You are not ugly, Juniper.” He took a step towards me, and I took one back from him.
Naturally, I snapped back. “You’re probably just hard up. Why don’t you go find some other random girl and stick it in her?”
“Because I don’t want to,” he said.
“Great. So that means you’ll be bugging me until you finally take care of that? What every girl wants. An irrational stalker.”
His hands balled into fists, and he took one big step toward me. It didn’t look aggressive, or fast, or violent. He took a step toward me . . . and I flinched back, shrinking against the counter like a coward. The second I did it, I tried to backpedal, and act all tough and brave again.
Verin stared at me, eyes hard, but a different kind of hardness than the irritation had brought a second before. When he took another step forward, I didn’t flinch. My heart tripped against my chest, but I didn’t flinch. He stared at me, and I could see in his eyes that I hadn’t fooled him.
“Juniper,” he said.
“What?” I asked, looking away from him. I pulled open the silverware drawer again, looking at the contents. I fixed the knives once more, taking care of each one, so that I wouldn’t have to look at him. If I didn’t have to look at him, then everything would be fine.
He turned me around, closing the drawer in the same motion. It banged shut, and I could hear all the contents rattle around. He didn’t say anything when he had me facing him. He just examined my face, looking at every detail. My heart tripped against my ribs. He wouldn’t let me go. Not until I told him the truth.
I squirmed out of his arms, and fixed him with a glare. If I told him anything, then I would have to be angry with him while I did it. The glare didn’t seem to bother him. “I know you can’t want me,” I told him. “No one wants me. When I was a teenager, there was this boy next door that I had a crush on. Kendrick. We almost never saw each other because my dad wouldn’t let us out of the house. He almost never let us out of his sight.
“But we talked over the fence sometimes. He was really nice, and I liked talking with him. After a year of that, Dad had to leave with Jasper and Jasmine. They caught some kind of stomach flu. It’s rare for us to get sick, but when we do, it’s ugly. He had to take them to the hospital, and he left me behind, because he was worried I’d catch something too.” I had started rambling, so I stopped, and went back to the main part of the story.
“I snuck out back, and was talking with Kendrick over the fen
ce. I told him that my dad was gone if he wanted to come over. So, he hopped the fence, and we sat on my back porch, talking. Then we started kissing. It was nice. After a while, I got worried that my dad would come home, and that he’d be angry with me for letting Kendrick over, so I pushed him away, and said he had to go home.
“Kendrick didn’t like that. He started getting aggressive. Shoving me around. Hitting me. Pushing me down when I tried to get away from him. And kissing me. Always with the kissing. He told me I was a tease, and that I shouldn’t flaunt myself if I wasn’t willing to give it up. He finally got me on the ground.”
Verin’s eyes sparked with such pure fury that I almost couldn’t keep talking. But somehow, I managed.
“And Dad hit him with a rake. It left ugly red marks across his face that bled. Kendrick ran home, leaving me. I hugged my dad because he saved me, and I was scared that he’d still be angry. I asked him why Kendrick would do that when he seemed so nice, and Dad said, ‘He is nice. It’s you that’s the problem, Juniper. You make it too hard for people to love you.’” I could still remember the look in his eyes when he said that, the way he threw down the rake and walked back into the house. Like I disgusted him.
I shook my head, dislodging the image. “That’s how I know you can’t want me.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:
Eyes Wide Open
Verin
I . . . did not know what to say. I’d never felt such a potent mix of rage and sorrow at the same time. Both so intense that I couldn’t believe they shared my body without bursting my skin. I blamed my inhumanity.
This pain ran so deep inside of Juniper that I knew I couldn’t shake it out of her with some kind words, as true as they would have been. She was not ugly, or hard to love. Juniper made it easy to want her. I could have stood there and listed a hundred reasons to argue her point, and why I wanted to be with her. They would have fallen on deaf ears.
I held her instead.
My arms went around her slender body, and I said not a damn word to her. I felt better with her body against mine. Like I could protect her.
