Page 113 of You've Got Hate Mail
Lavender trails me outside, asking if the chicken can be a dragon at her birthday party.
Nothing’s broken.
Nothing but me, breaking out of what’s become a very, very narrow comfort zone here at Makepeace Cellars.
I’ve snapped.
And I’m taking back my life.
Now.
20
LIE HARD
Heath
You wouldn’t thinkheavy metal blaring as loud as my phone will blare it would take the edge off of a hangover, but it’s at least distracting me from replaying what I can remember of yesterday as I lay out laminate tiles on the kitchen floor of the mother-in-law house with Lav’s help.
Cricket has to get out of my house.
And the only way that’s happening is if she has somewhere else to go.
So I’m fixing the flooded mother-in-law house ASAP.
It’s dried out. The subfloor was replaced three days ago.
Flooring came in two days ago.
Plumber finally fixed the main line into the house and got the kitchen plumbing repaired yesterday while I was—never mind.
Not important what I was doing yesterday.
What’s important is that the mother-in-law house is at the top of my priority list.
The only thing I’m doing until it’s done.
I even called in sick to the job I had scheduled this morning, promising to do it tomorrow instead.
My music abruptly stops as Lav and I are both wailing along. Olivia brought her by a bit ago, which was only frustrating since I hadn’t realized Lav had disappeared while I was working.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Mabel says as she leans in the doorway, making me flash back to Cricket leaning in the storage room doorway in the fermentation building.
Everything makes me think of Cricket.
I sit back on my heels and reach for my water bottle.
“I’m an alien who delivers these weird rectangles from space!” Lav tells Mabel, still talking as loudly as the music was playing while she shows Mabel a floor tile. “Bee-boop-boop-boop-bee-boo.”
“Have all of the dragons left? Do we not need the dragon slayer anymore?” Mabel asks her.
“I’m a dragon-slaying alien.” Lav points to the rhinestone dragon on her pink shirt, then to her headband, which has two springs making giant foam eyeballs dance all around.
That and her green dragon scale fingernails are new since yesterday.
Ginny pops into the room too, sliding her phone into a pocket of her dress. “Thank goodness we’re still protected from the dragons.”
“I’ll protect you forever, Ginny,” Lav says.
