Page 22 of Love Bites
“It would be different if they were laser swords.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Shut up. It makes total sense.”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” Luke finally joined me on the couch and took one of the cokes. "Thanks for inviting me over anyway."
"You're welcome any time."
"Yeah, you keep saying that, but you usually bring other people here when your roommate's away. If you know what I mean."
I was glad I hadn't taken a sip from my coke yet because I might have choked. "How would you even know?" And since when did my little brother care what I did here while Brody was away?
"Everybody knows." He opened one of the pizza boxes, spotted the pineapple and smiled. "If you didn't want us to know maybe you should stop bragging on Instagram."
"Unfollow me immediately," I demanded, grabbing the other pizza box to give myself something to do.
"Never." Luke laughed.
"Brat." I bit into a slice of greasy hot pizza and chewed. When had I even posted on Instagram last? I hadn't had anything salacious to post about in a while. Hadn't been feeling like it.
Truth be told, I hadn't been feeling great in general. Lately it seemed like I was always tired and always hungry—which was kind of a problem because once I ate more than a kids size portion at a time, I got sick. It wasn't only food that made me sick either. Smells could do it too. The season for pumpkin spice lattes was over at the cafe, but today I'd made one for poor Susi who'd been having a rough day, only then I'd had to rush to the bathroom to throw up immediately after.
"Pick a movie," I said, motioning at the TV because I needed something to distract me from seeing the contents of my stomach in a toilet bowl. “But notStar Warsagain.”
Luke shot me a look that told me he was judging me and my lack of interest in seeingStar Warsevery time we met but he didn’t say anything. He simply took the remote to navigate over to the streaming app. "Oh," he said then, stopping before he could pick something. "I brought you some stuff."
"Yeah?"
He sprinted back to where he'd discarded his shoes and picked up a brown bag that I hadn't noticed. "From your room. You said you needed a new pair of jeans but I knew you still had clothes at home so... I threw in some other things as well."
"You went through my stuff?"
"It's not like I rifled through your drawers or anything." He dumped the bag in my lap. "But it's stupid to buy new clothes when you still have so many."
I didn't bother pointing out to Luke that my sense of fashion had changed a bit since I'd moved out from home. The kid had no idea what fashion even was. "Thank you," I said instead, opening the bag. On top lay a pair of old denim jeans that I remembered as being ridiculously comfortable. Maybe Iwouldwear them again, if only at home. For now, I laid them aside to see what else my little brother had brought me. I found a picture frame that looked vaguely familiar, but I didn't recognize the picture in it.
"What's this?" I asked, showing it to Luke.
He scratched the back of his neck. "I wasn't sure if you wanted it."
I frowned at him, hoping it would prompt him to explain.
"I wasn't sure if you'd get upset," he said. "But if it was me, I would want it, so..." He finished with a lame shrug.
"Okay, but what is it?" Couldn't he just come out and say it? I pointed at the picture. "Who are these people?"
Luke's eyes went wide in confusion. "What do you mean? They're your parents."
"What? No, my parents..." I stopped. What I was going to say was that I knew what my parents looked like and these people weren't it, but... I couldn't conjure an image of my parents in my mind. It was as if I'd opened a drawer in the memory room of my brain and found it completely empty. Something used to be there but it wasn't there now. I knew that I'd had parents at some point and thatsomehowthose parents died and I'd been adopted when I was about five, but that was it.
"Collin? Are you okay?"
“Yeah, I'm fine," I lied, staring at the framed photograph of the people Luke claimed were my mom and dad. The man had kind brown eyes and the woman was wearing glasses that looked a little too big for her petite face. They looked nice enough, but how could these people be my parents when I didn't remember ever seeing them before?
Maybe it had been too long?
