I’m lying in my perfect bed, in my perfect room, in this perfect gingerbread house, where everyone is so deeply flawed, they can’t even stand each other. Who would have thought pristine, gorgeous Daria Followhill was the black sheep of her family?

The worst part wasn’t that Mel ignored Daria’s existence. It was that she was casual as fuck about it. As if her daughter was an annoying fly.

Mel is batshit scared of her daughter, who acts like anything but her daughter, and Jaime is tired of choosing sides. And Bailey is in the middle of this mess, gathering some bomb-ass material for her future therapist to work on.

Earlier this evening, when I washed the dishes and Jaime towel-dried them, he asked if I wanted to join his friends and their boys for a camping weekend. I told him I didn’t think it was a good idea because Daria was already feeling fifty shades of messed up about Bailey and me monopolizing her parents’ time. The funny thing is, I don’t want their time. I just want their fridge. Bed’s nice, too, I suppose. Especially when their daughter’s inside it.

“Since when do you care about Daria’s feelings?” Jaime frowned at a plate he was drying. He couldn’t hide the delight in his voice.

“I don’t,” I confessed. “But your daughter’s got ammo for miles on my ass. And as she is very trigger-happy, I don’t want to be in her line of fire.” This part was bull wrapped in a lot of shit.

Jaime stared at me skeptically.

“Are you bullshitting a bullshitter, Scully? You don’t care if you go to war with Daria. You don’t even care if you go to war with Russia. You’d still show up. Probably in these jeans and your holey shirt, and maybe a cigarette.”

“Daria could tell people I live here.” I half-shrugged. She wouldn’t. I don’t know how I know that, but I just do. She’s not that much of an asshole unless explicitly provoked. Even then, she is more about the bark than the bite from what I’ve seen. She thinks she’s the Antichrist when, in practice, she’s more like Mary Magdalene. She’d watch Christ getting crucified without lifting a finger, but you better know she won’t be happy about it. No, sir.

“And if she did? You don’t need a scholarship,” Jaime gritted. “I’ll pay for your education.”

“Sir, I really appreciate your generous offer, but for the millionth time, I ain’t about to take your hard-earned money.”

“It’s not that hard-earned, boy. The good thing about money is that when you have enough of it, it creates itself.”

But it’s not just my Southern upbringing or basic morals. It’d be weird to explain how my ass landed at Notre Dame all of a sudden. My friends would stab me in the balls if they found out I’ve been living in this sick crib and kept it from them.

“Besides, you’re using it now,” he countered.

“Because I have no choice. Well, I do, if you consider homelessness a choice.”

We wrapped it up, and I went back to my room, waiting for Daria to initiate something. She didn’t. When it became clear that she extended the cold war with her family to me, I shot her the unreturned message.

Talk is code for meeting in the basement. We can’t risk it in case her parents decide to go through her texts.

Tired of sitting idly like some desperate loser, I kick my door open. It’s past one thirty, and she may be asleep, but I’ll take my chances.

I knock on her door. No answer.

I push it open. She is lying facedown on her bed with her blankets still tucked under the mattress. It’s something the cleaners in this house do every day like it’s a hotel. She reminds me of Via laying in the yellow grass the day Daria and I got rid of the letter.

Lights out. No one’s home. Hopeless.

I think of ways to make her laugh. Of saying that her ass looks great from this angle (it does). Or maybe to tell her that it gets better (it doesn’t).

Stopping over her bed, I splay my fingers on the small of her back and press. Hard. Sinking her into her plush mattress until she is drowning in satin fabric.

She groans. “Go away.”

“And miss out on all this delicious teenage angst?” I murmur, mesmerized by how beautifully she fits under my palm. As though she was born to have my hands on her. “It’s practically Netflix for free.”

“I don’t want to tell you anything.”

“You don’t have a lot of options.”

“I have friends,” she shoots.

“No. You don’t,” I say softly. “You have people you hang out with, and you’ll never give them a truth. Not even a half-truth. Not even a fucking quarter. Now look at me.”

She rolls to her back, and I suck in a breath. She’s crying. She’s been crying for hours probably. Her entire face is wet and swollen. I cup her head and pull her into me, sinking into her bed and cradling her. The door is open. The Followhills can wake up and walk in here at any moment. I hope they do. They need a wake-up call. A whole goddamn siren, more like.

“Talk.”

“No.” She laughs for the first time since I met her, wiping her tears quickly, only to make room for new ones. “I’m always the one who talks. You’re the one who listens. I don’t even know who I am talking to. Your walls are still up, but mine have been lowered enough for me to see that this relationship is one-sided.”

She’s right. I want to be her Trojan horse. To slip through her barriers undetected. But I never give her any part of me. I’m always the one to take.

“Pretend that I’m your friend.”

“I don’t have any friends, remember?”

“Sucks to be you.” There’s no menace in my voice. She shrugs.

“So why are you here?”

“Because it sucks to be me, too.”

Because it sucks less when we’re together even though I should hate you.

I pull her into my embrace, and she pushes back. That only makes me hold her tighter, and she stands no chance. A cheerleader against a wide receiver? You don’t need a PhD in physiology to guess who wins.

“Say it,” I growl into her ear. “Your family is bullshit right now. Your mom’s all up your sister’s ass, and your dad is torn. Make it real. Because the minute it gets real, you have to deal with it.”

I speak fluent Dr. Phil because the only thing the woman who gave birth to me did for the past six years was lie on the couch watching his show and judging other people while getting high.

Shying away from your problems only makes them multiply. Kinda like cancer. Left to its own devices, it will spread to other organs in your body.

Daria is thrashing in my arms, desperate to push me away, her soft crying turning into heart-wrenching sobs. She is shaking against my chest, but her lips stay pursed.

She doesn’t want to admit to the hood rat that life in the golden castle ain’t perfect.

I envelop her. Even when Daria is growling like an injured animal in my ear. Even when the sea glass necklace, her sea glass necklace, burns a hole in my back pocket, right next to her pompom string, demanding to go back to its rightful owner. Even when a scream rips from her throat, and I need to cover it with my palm. I hold her.

“Go to your girlfriend. She needs you more than I do.”

She does. Addy and Harper need me desperately. But they’re not who I want to be with.