Page 123 of Darling Venom
It was nearly two in the morning.
Of course, she’d eaten.
“Tonkotsu ramen from the place down the street.” She didn’t look up from her knitting needles. “Leftovers are in the fridge. The noodles are probably soggy by now.”
“You dined in?” I stepped into the living room, sitting on the floor an adequate distance from her.
It wasn’t lost on me that I treated my sister like a homeless dog, afraid she’d flee before I could save her.
Leah sent an are you dumb? stare my way. “DoorDashed.”
“Living the good life.”
The look she gave me made me want to keel over and throw up. Of course, nothing about her life was good, and it was all my fault.
Sometimes, Leah seemed like a statue, frozen in place for the past eight years.
She only ate food that came delivered, went straight from work to home, and spent any time outside of the house with animals, because at least they never judged. She’d even chosen the most silent, lonely hobby ever.
No way she enjoyed it.
I wanted to say something. To encourage her to get out of the house. Maybe even beg her to believe me when I told her I found her pretty, scars and all.
That Jonah did, too.
But I knew she wouldn’t hear it.
Worse, I knew she’d get angry.
In fact, the exact words she’d used last time were, “You don’t know what it feels like to be beautiful one day and wake up the next with it stripped away. Try scarring your face, Charlotte. Then, get back to me. Until then, anything you say will just be seen as a selfish attempt to make yourself feel better.”
I couldn’t do anything, so I inched closer on the carpet until my back hit the base of the couch on the side opposite hers. Her needles paused. She reached for the remote, raised the volume of the television, and continued to knit.
Message received.
And ignored.
“What are you going to do with all these?” I watched the light-blue yarn transform into a blanket.
I’d put money on Leah’s ability to knit in front of the TV all day, if only to achieve her real goal of staying away from other people.
But she couldn’t avoid me even if she wanted to.
When she didn’t respond, I pressed, “Who are these for this time?”
Because they were always for someone or something else.
“The cat shelter down the block.”
“So, you’ve moved on from single-handedly making the streets of New York more hospitable for the urban coyote population to helping the cats they want to feast on. Got it.”
She set her needles down. “What do you want from me, Charlotte?”
“I want to go out, and I want you to go out with me. Will you? Please?” I hopped to my feet, speaking over the obnoxious volume of the show. “Let’s watch a movie. I’m sure we can find a decent flick at the twenty-four-hour theater down the block. Maybe one of the ones in that never-ending car series. We could invite Jonah. He’s a mechanic. He has to like car movies.”
Was that the mechanic equivalent of saying Tate was a gynecologist, so he had to like all vaginas?
My cheeks flushed.
