Page 110 of Regal Feather
“I’m not.”
If anything, he was mine.
Maybe there had been more to it when I’d joked about codependency. Was it codependency or interdependence? Because the latter was good, I knew, but there was so much discourse online about the two. I wasn’t sure I could tell them apart.
I wasn’t sure what it meant that I couldn’t.
“I can’t risk it.”
I couldn’t.
Now he had put that image there.
“I’ll drive you, then.”
“It’s fine, I’ll?—”
He had dropped me off. If I wanted to get home, I’d have to grab a taxi, but Carlos didn’t need to go through all the trouble. I wasn’t planning to get behind a wheel.
“I wasn’t asking, Ev.”
“O-okay.”
“Let me just fetch Danny.”
I nodded. “I need my phone, too.”
Why, I wasn’t sure. I supposed I could text him, and that would ease some of the climbing anxiety. Some of the pressure that had taken hold of my chest.
Everything had been going so well.
No.
I couldn’t keep having these thoughts. I couldn’t keep getting stuck in my head.
Instead, I was stuck in the car with Carlos and Danny. He’d been stepping out of the locker room when we showed up there. Apparently, I looked so pale, Danny’s reaction was to ask who he needed to beat up, quickly followed by demanding an explanation as to why Carlos hadn’t done it already, when he clearly could do some damage. There had been rapid whispers between the two of them in response. The whispers somehowtransformed into Danny grabbing me by the wrist and getting me in the car.
This was going to be embarrassing.
Santos had never been… He’d never thought of anything like that. We were going to barge into the villa, and he was going to be in front of a TV or some shit, and he was going to be so confused, and then that confusion would turn into wariness because of Carlos, and I’d be even more of a mess trying to explain it, and…
“Hey, look at me.”
Danny.
Fuck.
“I’ve just ruined everyone’s night.”
And I’d made Danny give me the look he saved for people who were spouting absolute nonsense. Great.
Could I make myself any smaller without drawing too much attention to what I was doing? It didn’t help that he was riding shotgun, and the car had stopped, but instead of unlocking the doors, he was twisted around so that we stayed trapped in the car, and I had no means to escape.
“Tell me you haven’t been part of Plumas for long without telling me,” Danny scoffed.
“I’ve literally been a member for years.”
“Yeah, but you joined when everyone had their shit together already,” he retorted. “This is child’s play.”
