Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Parker

It had worked.

I slipped the phone back into my pocket, leaning back against the elevator wall with a sigh of relief as I approached floor twelve. Unicorn beamed in the picture along with maybe fifteen different teenage girls who all looked like they were meeting the damn queen of the universe, and judging by the fact that it was clearly Market Corner upstairs and her caption said to meet her on the first floor, she was moving away from her ill-advised meeting with Gary.

“Will you get off your phone, Amy?” my mom sighed from next to me, a forty-eight-year-old woman who looked a hundred, gray hair cut short and enough wrinkles to make a dry cleaner cry.

“I just put my phone away. And for the millionth time, if I’m giving you money, the least you can do is use my regular name.”

“Amy is the name I gave you. It’s insulting that you won’t even use it.”

The elevator stopped at floor twelve, opening up to the hospital hallway, and I stepped out ahead of her, eager to not see her dark eyes judging me anymore. It smelled sterile, the taste of antiseptic lingering in the air and stinging the back of my tongue, and I walked ahead down the hallway with my shoulders hunched.

I hated hospitals. Malaise hung in the air worse than a seedy casino, and all the antiseptic smell just reminded me of death. Hard to believe this was supposedly a place of life.

“Besides, it’s ridiculous you’d even complain about having to give a little back to your parents—”

“Who spent so much raising me. I know.” I put a hand up. “Trust me. I have the finances of exactly how much you spent raising me all mapped out. It’s in Excel and everything. I’m on track to have it all paid off in three and a half more years, and then you can leave me alone. Just make sure you can support Sutton after I’m done paying it off.”

I left out the part that I didn’t know if I’d be able to make my next payments, with where Express was going now.

I knocked on the door before she could get in a snarky reply, and I slid it open, stepping into where Sutton lay on one of the two beds in the room, the other one empty. She almost fell out of the bed at the sight of me, eyes wide, sitting bolt-upright.

“Oh, crap,” she said. “Parker’s here to beat me up now that I’m weak and vulnerable.”

“Give us a minute, Mom,” I said, shutting the door with Mom still on the outside, and I turned back to Sutton. “You got that right. Your time’s finally come.”

Sutton was a wiry little thing who didn’t look a lot like me. I’d gotten my dad’s pale blond hair and light eyes, and Sutton had gotten my mom’s dark eyes, and red hair from somewhere. When I said I was jealous of the genetic mystery that was her red hair—especially given the way she took zero proper care of it, wild tangles sticking off in every direction all the time. She was scrawny even next to me, barely five feet and stick-figure thin, and the cast on her arm and leg just served to add some bulk where she really needed it.

“Dude, give me, like, some warning you’re coming all the way up from ‘Drea and crashing my hospital room?”

“I paid your hospital bill, the least you could do is quit calling it ‘Drea.” I pulled up the chair next to the bed, sitting down as Sutton went wide-eyed.

“You paid it? Uh… why?”

Ugh. This was the last thing I wanted to do right now, but she needed to know, because there was a very real chance these payments might not have been forthcoming anymore. “Look, Sutton, really didn’t want to have to tell you this, but I’ve been sending plenty of money Mom’s way over the years. That’s probably most of her and Dad’s income.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’re shitting me.”

“Hey. Don’t say that one, either. Christ, dude, am I your only real mom?” I sighed, sinking back in the chair. Plenty of flowers left here for Sutton. From the sounds of things, her classmates loved her. They’d all gotten their parents to help bring over flowers galore, visiting one after the other after the other… I, for one, couldn’t see the appeal of Sutton Ferris. “I didn’t want to tell you, because I didn’t want you having to get involved in family crap, but there’s a pretty good chance Express is going to go belly-up once I have to renegotiate contracts in a couple weeks. Mom knows, but I figured no way she was going to tell you, so… things might get rough for you guys.”

She went wide-eyed, just staring at me, but for once in her snarky little life, she didn’t have a response. I looked back out the window.

“If I’ve got to put a pause on sending over money, tell me if Mom tries to do something shitty like shortchange you while still throwing money away on house crap. Maybe Thena’s right, and I will become a hitwoman if this doesn’t work out, in which case Mom would be my first target.”

“How are you going belly-up if you have Cassie Peterson working with you?”

I put my hands up. “Hey, dude, contrary to what you seem to think, Cass isn’t some kind of goddess. She’s just some chick with a lot of followers who shakes me awake in the unholy hours every morning to torture me.” And Gary is threatening to out her, and she’s probably two seconds away from bailing on Express altogether. But Sutton didn’t need to know that.

“Don’t lie, dumbass. I know she’s your girlfriend.”

“Contrary to what straight girls seem to think, a lesbian can be in a room with a girl and not want to be her girlfriend.”

Sutton rolled her eyes so hard I almost heard it. “Come on. I’ve watched your videos and stuff together. You’re always looking at each other like newlyweds. I’ve never seen you look at anyone like that.”

Maybe Sutton was more perceptive than I thought. I sighed. “Talking about my love life with my sister is one of my least favorite ways to spend a Sunday afternoon.”

“So you are a thing.”

“No, we’re not a thing. She’s straight.”

She stared at me. Eventually, I took my glasses off and rubbed the bridge of my nose.

“Okay, I like her. Shut up.”

“You like Cassie,” she sang.

“Dude, don’t try me. I’ve got every advantage in a fight right now.”

“Parker and Cassie, sitting in a tree—”

“What the fuck are we even doing in a tree? I’ll stay on the ground.”

“Parker and Cassie, standing on the ground, K-I-S—”

“Stop. Please.” I put my glasses back on. “Look, I yelled at the billing people, got an itemized bill, and argued on the phone with some douchebags for an hour, and I got your bill cut in half, and I paid that, but that’s still a big blow to my room for upfront buyers’ commitment. I’m probably screwed on those contracts now, and Express is in trouble. How’d you even land in the hospital?”

“Jason crashed the car.”

“Who the fuck is Jason? Like, hockey-mask Jason?”

“No, dude. My boyfriend.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Ew. Dump him. His name’s Jason and he almost got you killed. Hell, I’ll go bill him.”

“He’s fourteen. You can’t bill him.”

“What—” I rubbed the bridge of my nose again. “And that raises the question of why he was driving a car, doesn’t it, Sutton?”

“We were going to Dairy Queen.”

“You steal a car and drive it illegally, all for Dairy Queen? Dude.”

“Look, I already dumped him. It’s fine. I didn’t like him that much anyway, the car crash was kind of just the last straw.”

“I gotta say, you’re a great reminder to be glad I’m a lesbian.” I dropped my arms by my sides. “Just… be careful, okay, Sutton? And don’t tell Mom I told you about the money thing. She’ll be pissed.”

“Yeah, yeah. Bring Cassie over. I want to meet your girlfriend.”

“She isn’t my girlfriend.”

“She isn’t my girlfriend,” Sutton said in that nasal mocking tone. I rubbed my forehead.

“You’re the worst person in the universe. Never mind, I just remembered Gary exists. You’re the second-worst person in the universe. Fine, I’ll ask Unicorn if she wants to meet an asshole in the hospital who got in a car accident with some shitty boyfriend named Jason who was driving a car underage in the world’s worst heist to Dairy Queen.”

Sutton did a fist-pump. “Fuck yeah. I’ll take a selfie with her. My friends will be so jealous.”

Ugh. I really hoped Cass would say no, even though asking her to see Sutton had already been my intention from the get-go.

Because even though I was… trying something, I really hoped to god I would fail.