Tightrope

So, Who Is Your Mystery Girl?

"Hey, do you have a printer?" Knight asked.

He had spent the better part of the day lounging on my couch and making faces at his phone. After the events of yesterday, I could hardly criticise him for his laziness. But whenever I asked him why he was giggling at his screen, he'd refused to answer.

I looked up from the magazine I'd been flipping through. "Uh, yeah? Why?"

Knight turned his phone around so that I could see the screen. On the display were a collection of photos of his parents; the Knights were standing tall and distinguished in each snapshot, wearing the same expression and posing the same way, with the background changing from one upper society event to another. Knight had clearly stolen them from his mother's Facebook page. "Eliza said I could decorate my room however I choose, and I want to print these out and cut holes in the eyes."

"Very cathartic," I said, raising an eyebrow as Knight turned the phone back to himself, sticking his tongue out maturely at the digital renditions of his parents. "Connect your phone to the printer in the study. You go ahead and cathart your... eyes out."

Knight gave me a small salute, and unfurled himself from the couch with a lazy grin. He made his way across the room, as I looked back down at my magazine, flipping idly through the pages.

But Knight turned back in the doorway. "Oh, I'm also just disappearing because I don't want you to hit me."

"Why would I want to hit you? I mean, like, more than I usually do."

Knight bit his lip to contain his smile, looking off in the distance as if he was waiting for something. I looked at him with confusion as one second, two seconds, five seconds passed. I opened my mouth to respond, but then the ring of the doorbell clanged through the house, and Knight gave up on hiding his smile.

"What did you do?"

Knight was bouncing on the balls of his feet. "You know what I did."

Yeah, I knew exactly what he did. I knew that if I opened the front door, Jace Hartley would be waiting patiently behind it. Because Knight just couldn't leave me to wallow alone in my sorrow, embarrassed and sad. No, I had to be embarrassed and sad in front of Jace, which would be deeply embarrassing. Hartley didn't need to witness his own victory. I wouldn't allow him that.

I glared at Knight. "Did you have to?"

"For my own entertainment, yes."

"Why?" I groaned, burying my face in the pillow. Downstairs, I could hear Liv opening the door, and her surprised, but pleased, greeting to Jace. My stomach lurched.

"Because you're an idiot," said Knight cheerfully. "And while that has sure been a whole lot of fun, I think it's time for you to remove your head from your asshole."

"Is this what you were giggling about on your phone all day?"

"I told him you were wallowing."

I looked at him, aghast. "Et tu, Brute? God, that's so embarrassing."

"Hartley's been wallowing for fifteen years," said Knight. "If you weren't such an idiot, this whole situation wouldn't be a problem."

I curled in on myself. I was confused and terrified and remarkably close to swinging out at Knight with a crowbar. Instead, I held up the finger, trying to ease the nerves that twisted in my gut as I heard Hartley climb the stairs.

Knight just grinned. "Now, I know that you didn't want to say anything because you're holding out hope that I'll fall in love with you one day, Elly Belly, but I just don't really see you that way. I feel like our relationship is better off as this dynamic friendship duo, and honestly, we'd be too hot together, we'd probably get a reality TV show," said Knight, in a display of complete and utter glee. "But Hartley is almost as good looking as me, maybe about half as funny and a quarter as entertaining, but that's not really that bad. And honestly, I don't know that you could do any better, because you're kind of high mainten—" I threw a pillow at him, which is dodged with cheeky smile, ducking out of the doorway and into the hall.