Still zero clues, but I have the rest of summer to figure things out, and speaking of...
Huh.
There’s this other thing that I also want to get to the bottom of, and well, I think I have my answer, with how I’ve been here for some time now, surrounded by a smorgasbord of good-looking billionaires of all ages, and it’s just not happening at all.
My skin, that is.
It’s not crawling!
Not a bit. Not a twinge. None of the I-need-to-leave-this-room feeling I’ve had around every other good-looking boy I’ve ever shared air with. And it’s been—I check my phone—nearly an hour. An hour with four of them. Four. And nothing.
Which is weird.
It’s not the kind of weird I want to examine right this second, though, because the dinner has started to do something I also wasn’t expecting.
Joy is asking me about Cornwall and actually listening when I answer. Aldrich is slicing into his steak with the calm of a man who has never rushed a meal in his life. Raiden says something absolutely shocking to Icelle, purely to gain a reaction from his sister, but when it just makes her blink—
We all laugh.
Her family. Me. And it’s all natural, and that’s when it hits me.
These people are my tribe, just a billion dollars richer. They talk over each other and they argue about small things. They switch once in a while between English and Mandarin, and this istotallynormal for me, too (it’s just like Mom switching between your-average-broke-person-English and rich-people-English), and it’s somewhere in the middle of all this that Aldrich glances down the table, andwow.
Joy nods, Icelle turns to him like she’s ready to take notes, while his sons snap to attention and all of this from a single look?
Was he, like, army or something before he inherited his billions?
“Speaking of tomorrow—”
The mildness of Aldrich’s voice reminds me of Ark—
Stop thinking of him, Ti!
“We have an event to attend as a family.” His gaze turns to his daughter. “I need you to start practicing your smile in advance.”
“I understand.”
I honestly thought Icelle was joking, but then her lips start moving, and wow.
Just wow.
I have never seen anything this grotesque, and it’s a terrifying, lightning-quick transformation, too, with her beautiful face resemblingBarbieone second, andAnnabellethe next second, and I just...I just can’t hold it back any longer.
Snough.
That’s a new word I’ve made up on the spot. From now on, it’s what I’m going to use to describe when you’re snorting and laughing at the same time because that’s just what came out from my mouth, and the moment the sound explodes in the dining room—
Everyone’s laughing, too.
Not sure if they’re laughing at me or at Icelle since she’s laughing, too—or at least as much as her RBF is capable of showing—but who cares, right?
Because this right here, this is a good moment shared by good people while enjoying good food, and everything’s just so, so good—
Buzz.
That I’m not even surprised when my phone lights up on my lap at that very moment. It’s the story of my life. Whenever something really good happens, life finds a way to remind me that good things never last.
Mom: How’s Texas?