Page 81 of To Have and to Stalk
“I know better than to ask if you’re nervous,” Olly said. “But you do look distracted.”
Oh, you know, the usual. Just wondering why my stalker has decided to stop stalking.
I dragged my hand through my hair. “It’s nothing.”
Less than thirty minutes later, I was called up to present. As expected, it went off without a hitch. There were other talks after mine, but I couldn’t focus.
Calder still hadn’t reached out.
It made me irrationally angry.
I went back to my room, in a bit of a daze, and showered off the day. I lathered my hair, trying to do the responsible adult thing and focus on my job, not the boy in my phone. I stepped out into the steam, noticing Calder’s bite was yellow and nearly faded. Like a visual reminder of time passing.
An insane, reckless idea overcame me. I grabbed my phone and took a picture of the bite, then slammed it down on the counter, like I hadn’t done it.
Maybe that would get his attention.
chapter
twenty-seven
CALDER
Shay knew who I was. How long had she known? I glanced to my phone, making a conscious effort not to pull it out and look for the fiftieth time at the photo Shay took. At the bite mark. Tried not to think about what itmeantthat she knew. Or about how I’d dashed out of there like a fucking coward.
Because I was at lunch with my siblings.
And it was going terribly.
Kids ran wild around us. It was almost impossible to hear anything other than digital dings and mechanical music from various arcade games.
Fig’s favorite restaurant growing up had been a Chuck E. Cheese knockoff, some Utah-only chain where instead of a giant rat for a mascot, they had a bee.
I was starting to realize maybe this wasn’t the best choice of restaurant for our first meal together in years.
“Whose idea was this?” Fig asked after a third kid rammed into the back of her chair.
“You love this place,” I said, somewhat sheepishly.
“When I was twelve. I’m twenty-nine.”
Another silence fell.
Well,wefell silent. The restaurant was ear-piercing with dings and buzzing and screaming.
Fig sat to my left, and Stone was across from me, barely fitting into the chair. If I had a swimmer’s body, then Stone had a prison body. He was massive, bulky, and built to fuck you up.
He also looked deeply uncomfortable, shooting side-eyed glances at Fig, like that one monkey meme.
With more tattoos than could be counted, black hair and blacker eyeliner, a silver lip piercing, and a penchant for black, Fig looked every part the kind of person who would live next to a graveyard (which she did).
My sister was five years younger than me, having just barely turned twenty-nine. She was normal. Well, as normal as a person could be when working with dead bodies. She wasn’t like me, though, and she wasn’t like my brother. Her memories of our childhood weren’t bloody.
“So how are things?” I asked.
“What?” Fig yelled.
I yelled back, trying to be heard over the sound of an obnoxious arcade game. “HOW ARE THINGS?—”
