Page 37 of No, You Hang Up

“Well, I thought it was. She said she was hoping to, uh, reconnect and everything. Asked if I wanted to video chat.”

“Oh no,” Mads frowns in sympathy. “Not the gaslighting video chat. Your mom? Dad?”

“Both.” I give them both a tight, anxious smile. “No cousin. Just my parents having borrowed her phone. They said it wasn’t fair that I wouldn’t talk to them.” I stop there, leaning over with my arms in my lap.

“And?” Em presses.

“And I hung up on them and blocked my cousin.” With a snort, I shake my head. “I’m not dumb enough to entertain that after the funeral and…”

After all the fucking attempts, the chances, the effort I put into having a decent relationship with literally anyone in my family. It never works, and I can’t do it anymore.

I’d rather be alone than with people who blame me for something I didn’t do, and who continue to take the word of a skeevy dead man over my own.

Fuck them.

Something in the way my brain whispers the words reminds me of Huxley and I blink, looking at my friends shyly as if they somehow could hear it too. But they can’t, and with a glance at each other, Mads goes back to hunting in my closet.

“I believe you,” she assures me, when I make a noise of dissent. “But that isn’t stopping this from happening. We’re going to the bar. You’re going to take two shots, because three makes you sloppy.”

She’s right, but I don’t have to like it.

“You’ll flirt with a guy you never would’ve spoken to before, and all will be well. Maybe you’ll even get a number or seven.”

“Can I opt out? I’d really rather stay home and do literally anything else,” I groan, and flop back into my chair.“Anythingelse. We can even watch those shitty comedies that Em likes. You know, the sexist ones.”

Em makes a soft sound that might be frustration, though it’s definitely not anything major as she slaps her makeup bag down beside me. “Bringing Up Babyis cute,” she disagrees. “And no one asked what you wanted to do. Because this isn’t a democracy.”

“Yeah,” I groan, submitting to the way she drags my face up to her. “It never seems to be.”

Mads chuckles, tossing out a couple of shirts from my closet. “You never seem to mind this isn’t a democracy when I bring you leftover appetizers from the bar kitchen,” she reminds me. I watch as she throws a pair of black denim shorts onto my bed, and reaches down to fling out one black combat-ish boot, then the other. Last, she finds a pair of tights that make their way to the bed as well, and I look back at Em.

At least Mads isn’t making me wear something from the hidden depths of my closet that I’ll inevitably feel uncomfortable in, or be tugging down all night, I suppose.

“Any way I can avoid this?” I grumble, giving Em the big, sad doe eyes.

Her smile is sweet and caring and truly the kindest thing I’ve ever seen on a real person.

She could be saintly.

She could be one of those cherubs that, thankfully, Aunt Hortense never used to decorate her house, God bless her.

“No,” she says oh so warmly and oh so amicably. “No, you can’t. And you’re going to have a good time, even if we have to make you.”

I open my mouth, wanting to say that I don’t think it’s possible for them to force me to have a good time. But at the look Em gives me and the way Mads is now rummaging through my sparse jewelry collection, I decide it’s really not worth it. I’d rather save my energy for later, when both of them are drunker than they intend to be, and I’m hauling their asses to the car like a fireman in training.

seventeen

Ilike the backseat.

It’s still a bit of a newer feeling to be part of a comfortable friendship where I don’t feel ignored or left out. It’sniceto just sit here and obsessively gnaw on my thumbnail while Em and Mads discuss which bar to go to between their two favorites.

“What do you think?” Mads glances at me in the rearview mirror, making eye contact for a split second before her gaze flicks back to the road.

“I think I’m just along for the ride, so I don’t have that much of a preference,” I admit. Though I’d still rather be at home with takeout and watching an all night marathon ofCheatersthat always feels way more dramatic than it needs to be.

“Then she’s voting with me,” Em says sweetly, and flashes me a grin. She’s not always this assertive with her opinions—unless she has strong ones or ulterior motives—but I definitely don’t mind tonight. Em’s idea of a good time is a lot tamer than anything Mads will come up with. If I vote with her, we’ll end up at some low-key bar with a chill atmosphere versus something I’m not emotionally prepared for.

Like a fetish club, complete with dungeon monitors and kink demonstrations.

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