Jilted by Lilah Suzanne

Author:Lilah Suzanne [Suzanne, Lilah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Interlude Press
Published: 2018-10-28T02:28:41+00:00

Twenty-three

Paige doesn’t return until early the next morning. She pads upstairs and peeks into Carter’s room. He’s cross-legged, back propped against the wall, making one last run through a blueprint to ensure all the measurements are accurate and the codes all legal so construction can begin. After this, he’ll have to tell his firm that he isn’t coming back. And after that he’ll have to find a new job.

“Good morning,” he says.

The upstairs is flush with sunlight in the mornings, and Paige stops in a slanted beam of it. She’s wearing the same thing she was last night, only much more disheveled.

“Morning.”

She smiles. Carter hasn’t stopped smiling since last night. “Sorry for ditching you. Were you able to get home okay?”

Paige squints, puzzled. “Obviously I did. Why do you look so happy, what’s your angle?” She looks above and around her, panicked. “Are there more spiders? Are you keeping me here until one drops on my head? Is there one on my head, Carter?” She frantically smacks at her head and spins around.

“There’s no—” Carter sighs and goes back to his work. “I’m just in a good mood. Or I was. Anyway, thank you for making me go out last night. I could have done without the water torture and threats, but you were right. And I’m glad I went.”

Paige’s head tilts, and she squints at him again. Her hair was already a mess when she came in. And after the spider panic, it’s standing up in frizzy tufts. He wants to make fun of her, but he’s trying to move past that.

“You’re welcome or whatever,” Paige finally says. “I’m gonna change.”

As she thumps around in the bathroom, Carter congratulates himself on having an entirely pleasant interaction with his sister. Things can be different for him.

“By the way,” Paige sticks her head out of the other bedroom to yell across the hall. “I heard about your makeout in the parking garage. Classy.”

Carter says nothing, and takes out his phone to snap a picture of her hair in its disastrous state. He holds up the picture. “I’m posting this all over social media.”

She scowls. “Like you even know how.”

“Suit yourself,” Carter says, and goes back to his work. After wrestling for his phone for a while, Carter agrees to delete the picture if she goes and gets breakfast. It’s hardly even a win because Carter is paying for it, but she looks put out enough to satisfy him.

They eat biscuits and eggs with little cartons of orange juice in the camping chairs set up in the living room. It’s been stripped to the original wood floors and plaster walls; both are desperately in need of refurbishing before he brings in any furniture. “Maybe I’ll start with a table,” Carter says. Greasy wax paper is spread across his knees to catch biscuit crumbs.

“Finally decided what to do with the place?” Paige sits cross-legged, not bothering to worry about getting crumbs everywhere as she eats with one hand and texts with the other.

“Not really.

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