Page 61 of Like A Moth To A Flame

I huffed, my face scrunched up and my lips pulled into a frown. I began to type, but he cut me off before I could.

Get that look off your face, you little brat.

With another huff, I darkened the phone and tossed it down onto the couch, crossing my arms across my chest.

That was the moment Amelia chose to walk back into the room, and she gave me the oddest look from the doorway as she sipped her coffee, and I couldn’t blame her.

Not even a little.

“Did someone shit in your cornflakes, dude?” she asked, stepping toward me and plopping down on the couch.

“No,” I said, quickly wiping the pout off of my face.

Just came in your coffee.

This time, the voice in my head made me chuckle at the ridiculousness of it all.

“I’m just really tired,” I said, looking over at her.

“That’s to be expected, ya know,” she said, drinking deeply before sitting her mug on the cluttered table. “But I can help you make dinner tonight?”

“Meh,” I shrugged. “I dunno. I don’t feel like shopping, and I’m not a good cook, anyway.”

“Shopping?” she pulled a face. “For what? You’ve got a fridgefullof food in there?”

I went completely quiet, dumbfounded.

“I do?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Did your neighbor say—”

“She must have,” I grumbled, snatching up my phone.

I already had a text from my little black heart.

You’re welcome.

There was a pause. I spent it staring at the texts, and Amelia spent it staring around the room, taking in every little detail. Conflict raged in my head like a hurricane, and I was stuck in the eye. I’d gone from terrified to angry so fast that I should have had whiplash, and now I was just… what? Indifferent? Darkening the phone, I dropped it into my lap and looked over at Amelia.

“So, do you wanna see the rest of the house?” I asked.

She jumped up with excitement.

“Yes! Right now?!”

I laughed and stood up off the couch, my feet bare as I stepped around the room. I showed her the old boarded-up fireplace in the corner that had worked at one point, and maybe could again. I showed her all the crown molding the previous owners had painted over and told her all my mom’s plans for stripping and restoring them. I showed her the window I cracked with a baseball when I was twelve and told her about how scared I had been that my dad would be mad that I hid in the barn loft until well after bedtime.

“I bet he was mad!” she laughed.

“He didn’t start off mad,” I said, grinning. “He didn’t get mad until my mom called it in as a missing person, and the whole force was all over the property looking for me.”

We continued through the house. I showed her my dad’s office, my mom’s old ‘closet room’ that she’d never cleaned out, still full of her old clothes, and my dad’s bedroom. She sighed when we reached the guest room I was staying in.

“This house is so beautiful,” she said as we went back downstairs. “It’s like something you’d see in some fantasy novel. You sure Narnia isn’t hidden in a closet around here somewhere?”

Not Narnia, but maybe a stalker?

I ignored my thoughts and moved out onto the front porch. She followed me, and I pointed out the rusted old hooks where my mom’s favorite porch swing had once hung.

---