Page 53 of The Marriage Narrative
“I saidno. Throw all the damn tantrums you want. I don’t care.Boyfriendsare not family.”
Lulie’s face transformed into a blistering-hot thunderstorm. “I hate you.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“You won’t let me leave, he can’t come here, I might as well go full Juliet and fucking elope and die!”
“Lulie!”
“Sorry, Daddy.” She threw her napkin down and ran out of the room. “I hate it here!”
Amber’s furiously red neck and glacial blue eyes turned to Zinnia.
Post-brunch face-off, they’d had almost no contact with each other. Clearly, that was for the best. Never had she ever felt anyone look at her with so much concentrated loathing that it raised every single hair on the back of her neck. Alarm sirens blared in her head because Amber’s warning touched down faster than a tornado.
Her earlier defense was pure calculated offense.Or elsehad just been set into motion.
Lulie left an uncomfortable silence in her wake. Only Wylie continued eating, unbothered, as if this was nothing more than a regular Saturday night.
Zinnia accidentally caught his eye, and he winked.
In many ways,the Zaffres werenormal. Expected their kids to do chores just like any other family and everything—at least while being filmed anyway. Zinnia’s and Jordan’s camera pods hovered around them as they cleaned in the kitchen.
“Lulie’s outburst seemed a little overdramatic,” she said while scraping the dinner plates over the food waste bin and stacking them by the dishwasher.
He was emptying the serving dishes into portioned to-go containers. The Zaffres also believed in leftovers, something she hadn’t expected. The crew were free to take whatever they wanted from the fridges and pantries as long as it wasn’t labeled.
“She just wants to see her boyfriend.” He gave her a sad look, the kind that said he knew exactly how his sister felt. “She’s only nineteen and has been through so much—she literally has stalkers. I think being with Eric helps her feel like a normal teenager. Cut her some slack, okay? Please?”
That explained why he didn’t say anything to defend their honor. He’d chosen compassion over fighting—a very Jordan thing to do and not at all what the network wanted fromAlfie. He knew their show, inside and out, but she suspected they didn’t know him at all.
Zinnia stacked the last plate and leaned against the counter while watching him. She was beginning to think she’d never see Jordan in anything that wasn’t black and long-sleeved. Even his pajamas were all like that—oh no, wait. Once he wore dark gray and she almost fainted from shock.
Odds were inevitable that she’d see him naked someday, though. They lived together now. They planned to live together indefinitely. Statistically speaking, at some point, she’d walk in and…
“What’s going on in there?” Jordan was suddenly in front of her, grinning like a fiend. He lightly tapped the middle of her forehead. “You had aninterestinglook on your face.”
“Practice makes perfect—I mean, interesting how?”
Jordan cocked his head to the side. “Interesting like I’ve never seen it before so I can’t tell what you’re thinking.”
“I didn’t know you were a telepath.”
“Empath,” he corrected with a laugh. “But it only seems to work for you.”
“Hate to burst your psychic bubble, but that’s more a me problem than a you ability. My face has always been too damn loud. I hate it.”
“I don’t. It’s the perfect volume for me.” He picked up the stack of plates, kissed the tip of her nose, and walked toward the sink.
That was Jordan’s first drive-by kiss on camera. She fidgeted, adjusting her cardigan. What could she do to volley such a great opening move?
Her newly installed seduction light bulb clicked on.
“Seven.”
He turned to her with a confused expression and a question in his eyes.
If affection was step one in their playbook, mastering near-silent communication had to be step two. It was a hallmark of close relationships, and they had to prove they could do it, especially since Lulie rocket launched that fake-marriage accusation. That was absolutely going to make it into the show.
