Page 77 of Late Bloomer
I roll my eyes as a flash of lightning illuminates the room.
“And the letters will spell out…” She pauses for dramatic effect. “Fuck You. Brilliant, right?”
I flick my wrist, palm up, as I stare at her. “That is the mostobscure and unrelated pop-culture reference you could have come up with.”
“Lily Allen’s iconic song ‘Fuck You’ is anything but obscure!” Opal squeals, cheeks turning pink. A howl of wind knocks at the windows.
“It’s a no,” I snap. She’s tying my brain up in knots with all her bizarre ideas. I poke at the fire, but it’s burned down to a few embers now, ready to snuff out fully any second.
She sulks for a moment, glowering out the rain-soaked window. I close my eyes to the patter of the storm, enjoying the simple quiet.
“Can we at least revisit the Orlando Bloom idea?”
“Goodbye.” I stand, marching to the kitchen and rinsing out my mug.
“Listen, grumpy goose, I feel like you’re stifling my creative brilliance at this point,” she says, following close on my heels.
“Suggesting celebrities with anything even remotely flower-related in their name is not creative brilliance,” I say, taking her empty mug and rinsing it out too. “At this point, it doesn’t feel like we’ll ever land on a winning idea.”
“Ye of little faith,” she says, leaning against the counter and watching me wash the dishes. “I’ll make you see the light one of these days.”
“More like you’re trying to seduce me to the dark side.”
“If that’s what it takes,” she says with a sniff.
I glance at her, and the tiny menace is grinning at me with more than a little mischief in those big blue eyes. I swallow, fixing my gaze back on the soapy bubbles as I set the cleanmugs on the counter. How can someone so cute also be so terrifying?
“Don’t waste your energy,” I mumble, dragging a towel over the dishes to dry them.
I hear the pop of Opal’s lips as she starts to argue, but a booming crash from above rattles the frame of the house, cutting her off.
Our eyes meet for a terrified moment, and then she bolts from the room, feet banging up the stairs.
“Oh shit,” she yells, my own legs burning as I sprint after her.
I almost collide into Opal as I enter her room, her short frame stopped inside the doorway. I follow her gaze to a fissure in the ceiling, a steady drip of water falling on her comforter with an audibleplopevery second or so.
“Is that aleak?” Opal shrieks as if the ceiling weren’t obviously leaking.
The wooden home creaks and groans around us like its bones can’t settle into place, the shriek of wind sending a chill down my spine. Another crack of thunder is followed by the dull thud of the large oak tree’s branches being blown against the cabin.
I was supposed to get that tree trimmed months ago.
“Um, Opal?” I say, a sense of apprehension coiling at the base of my neck.
Opal ignores me, taking a step farther into the room. “I willnottolerate this,” she says, as if giving the ceiling a stern talking-to will magically seal it up. She grabs one ofthe many discarded sweatshirts littering her floor and scrambles to stand on the bed. She balances herself on the squishy mattress, pressing up onto tiptoes to shove the sweatshirt in between the slats.
Another groan.
“Opal. I think—”
“Can anything goright?”
Groan. Creak. Thud.
“You need to—”
“Stop telling me what I need to do, Pepper!” Opal says, planting one hand on her hip while the other is stretched to the ceiling, glaring at me all the while. “The roof is leaking! I—”
