Then he closes the door, and sometimes I have to wonder how he’s so friendly to literally everyone he meets. It’s second nature to him, as easy as breathing. I can barely talk to one person without slipping up and blurting out things I’ll later send myself into a panic spiral over.
Dad holds up his bounty as he parades it into the kitchen. “Dinner has arrived! It makes miso happy.”
I stare at him. “Dad.”
“I know, I know,” he replies dramatically, and he sits down opposite me again. I close my laptop—it’s wishful thinking that I’ll be able to write that essay tonight—and shove it to the far side of the table. He begins to unpack the food from the bag. “I’m soy awesome you can’t stand it.”
“DAD.”
“I’m on a roll.”
I begin to melt under the table.
He smiles and hands me a pair of chopsticks. “Okay, okay. But you gotta let me have a little fun sometimes. Some people would kill for my pun skills.”
“Yeah, they’re to die for.”
He jabs a chopstick at me. “A-ha! See! Aren’t they fun?”
“Whatever.” I tear open a packet of soy sauce and pool it in a corner of the plastic sushi tray. Dad takes out the spring rolls, putting one on his plate and giving another to me.
He slides the last one to the third seat at the table, and there is a quiet moment.
“Hey, Dad?”
“Yeah?” He pulls out a pair of cheap chopsticks.
“I love you.”
He smiles. “I love you too…and dim sum.”
“Ugh.” I roll my eyes and throw a chopstick at him. It clatters across the table, but he catches it before it rolls off and hands it back to me in a truce.
THE ROOM IS TOO BRIGHT because for some godforsaken reason all of the curtains have been pushed back, and it makes my headache sharper. Who in the bloody hell opened them? The culprit soon becomes clear. Elias stands to the side of my bed, waiting patiently. I snarl against the light and press the palms of my hands against my eye sockets.
“For the love of God, please close the curtains.” I groan.
He shakes his head defiantly, hands on his hips. “It’s a beautiful morning and you will leave your room today.”
“Whatever for?”
He opens his mouth, and then closes it again. “Because…it’s a beautiful day?”
I grab the covers and pull them over my head. “Good night. Close the curtains as you leave—”
“Vance.” He tries to stop me.
“Elias, what? I’m here, okay? I am here, in the middle of nowhere, wasting away. I don’t exist. So let me bloody well not exist.” I grab my pillow and pull it onto my head.
He sits at the edge of my bed, and he says softly, “Your mother called.”
Of course she did.
“She wants to speak with you.”
Oh, she wants to speak with me now, but she had nothing to say when my stepfather banished me here?
That’s rich.
She tried to confront me before I left last week, and we ended up having a row. She said some nasty things. I said some things back. That was when it was decided that my stepfather’s best friend, Elias Rodriguez—my godfather, essentially—would look after me in the interim. My stepfather certainly wouldn’t. He paid more attention to the movies he produced than to his own son.
Tragic, I know.
It’s just so hard being Vance Reigns, heir to Kolossal Pictures, prince of Hollywood, et cetera, et cetera.
Whatever.
I figure if I ignore Elias long enough, he’ll leave, and finally he does and closes the door behind him. If I never talk to my mother again, it will be too soon. She can leave voice mails all she wants.
I don’t care whether it’s a beautiful day. I don’t care what I’ll be missing. I don’t very well care about any of it. I just want to exist here, do my time out of the media, and leave. It’s not as though I wanted any of this to begin with.
Yes, I like a little bit of chaos. And yes, I might have gotten into some easily preventable trouble more often than not. I mean, wouldn’t you want to shake things up now and again if everything you ever did was watched over, quite meticulously, by not only your overbearing mother but also hundreds of thousands of fans?
I suppose I could have called a taxi for Elle after the Starfield: Resonance wrap party. I could have just ignored the paparazzi. I could have not lost control and careened my Tesla into a small reservoir half a mile from where Elle wanted to be dropped off.
But I’d be out of my mind to think that was the tipping point. It was an amalgamation of all of it—the late-night parties at the flat, the clubbing, the revolving door of men and women throughout my dating life. The stunt with Jessica Stone last year at ExcelsiCon didn’t help matters, either.
Everyone loves the allure of a bad boy. They love him right up until he crosses that invisible threshold. They cheer him on, they fall in love, they protect him—
Until, suddenly, they don’t.
And then they become the villain. The cautionary tale.
In other words: me.
ANNIE AND QUINN ARE WAITING FOR ME outside Quinn’s house at the end of a beautiful tree-lined street. We’ve all been together for as long as I can remember. One day we all sat on the same tire swing in kindergarten, the one under the big oak tree in the corner of the yard, and—well—that was it. History was made and the bonds of friendship forged, and we didn’t even have to go to the summit of Mount Doom to do it.
I can’t imagine a single day of my life without either of them.
My best friends wait at the edge of the driveway as I pull up. “Hurry, hurry, hurry!” I say as Quinn and Annie climb into the back seat. I lift the drink carrier with two coffees over the passenger seat and hand it to them. “Java Hutt took way longer this morning.”
Annie pulls her springy red hair back into a scrunchie and buckles up. “Can we blame Java if we miss homeroom?”
“I’d rather miss first period,” Quinn says, taking the two coffees. They hand one to Annie. Quinn is one of the best-dressed people I’ve ever met. They’re stylish and cool, the kind of person you wish you could dress like. For instance, today they’re rocking plaid straight-legged pants, suspenders, and a Starfield T-shirt. They pull a lock of their short teal bob behind their ear. “I didn’t do the reading for Gunther’s class.”
“Oh, the one on microorganisms?” Annie asks. “I can give you my notes.”