Page 4 of The Amazing Alpha Tau Fratmas Experience
“Didn’t you already put your laundry in?”
“Yeah, but I forgot to save some for the dryer.”
Trey rolled his eyes, but he pulled some coins from his pocket and handed them over.
“Thanks!” I left him loading up his own machine and went back upstairs. When I got to the living room, everyone had disappeared except Scout, who was sitting on the couch, picking the pepperoni off a slice of pizza and glaring at it.
I sat down next to him. “Did you know that it takes fifteen hundred hours of logged flight time to become a commercial pilot?”
Scout’s left eye twitched. “Please tell me you’re not planning on becoming a pilot.”
“No. That would be awesome, though. I’m just saying. Flying issupersafe.”
“I know that,” Scout said.
“Well, just in case you didn’t, now you do. So you don’t need to worry. Also, I found out those singing nuns aren’t real.”
Scout opened his mouth then closed it again.
A thought struck me. “Hey, can you bring me something back from Vienna? Like, a snow globe or something?”
“No,” Scout snapped. “I’m not fucking Santa.” He stood and stalked—no,stomped—from the room, leaving me staring after him.
For all he pretended to be an asshole, Scout hardly ever actually said no when I asked him for something—and he didn’t stomp off like a toddler either.
Something was definitely up, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t just fear of flying.
And I was going to figure out exactly what it was.
CHAPTER ONE
SCOUT
Sometimes, being an adult meant making sacrifices.
At least, that was what my father had said when he’d called and told me that there was a temporary vacancy for an intern working for a Justice of the Supreme Court and that he’d recommended me for it, but that it would mean skipping my family’s trip to Vienna.
And he was right. Five years from now, I probably wouldn’t even remember where I’d spent this Christmas. But my resume would sure as hell reflect that I spent three weeks working at the Supreme Court. You couldn’t buy that kind of placement, or the prestige that came with it. It wastotallyworth missing the holidays with my family.
That was what I told myself, anyway.
Except now, watching all the brothers packing up for the break and listening to their plans, it didn’tfeellike it was worth it. This was more how I imagined the only five-year-old not invited to a birthday party with a bouncy house might feel—like I was missing out big time.
Which was dumb, because even at five I’d known that bouncy houses were undignified, and because this was going to put me on the radar at the freakingSupreme Court. Who cared if itmeant spending Christmas alone in an empty fraternity house while everyone else was having a good time? It was only for a week, and then I’d go to DC and fill in for whichever one of Justice McDaniel’s random low-level staffers was on vacation and be back at Lassiter around the same time I would have been arriving back from Europe. Nobody would be any the wiser about how I’d spent the month.
Because that was the other thing.
I hadn’t actually told anyone I wasn’t going to Vienna—including my boyfriend, Trey.
Because how would that conversation even go?
Trey, I’m a poor, sad Christmas orphan who can’t go to Vienna because I have to go and work at the Supreme Court of the United States, an opportunity you would give your left nut for, because you are smarter than me, more ambitious than me, and you’re going to be a hell of a better lawyer than I’ll ever be. Ain’t good old nepotism grand? Also, feel sorry for me!
I wasn’t that pathetic.
And anyway, if I told Trey what was happening, he’d just invite me to spend Christmas with his family because he felt sorry for me. No thank you. My parents had raised me better than that. You didn’t go where you weren’t asked, and youcertainlydidn’t guilt trip someone for an invitation if one hadn’t been forthcoming.
Miss Manners would not approve.
