Ocean Blue ✓

chapter twenty-one

elliot

Dad is awake when I get home, and he quietly informs me that Mom is passed out with a migraine. How terrible is it that I'm sometimes grateful my mother gets migraines? I just, I can't handle her right now. I'm too happy. So yeah—I'm glad she's asleep. If she were awake with a migraine, she'd be all over the place, alternating between grumbling about her terrible predicament and finding an excuse to yell at me in a pitch higher than usual.

"How was Tony's?" Dad asks me as I untie my shoes. Back before they were officially The Plumber Kings, Tony was the boy next door, a total goofball and too hockey-obsessed for his own good, but a generally nice guy. Then came the money and middle school all at once, and our apparently temporary friendship expired.

I shrug, placing my sneakers neatly on the mat. "It was fine, I guess. Left early to go play video games with Neema and Duncan."

"Don't tell your mother," Dad warns. "She thinks you're going to be the socialite of the year."

"Why does she even care?" I mutter.

I feel like too many of my dad and my conversations start off with turning down the volume on the television. It provides the perfect backdrop to a loud Bader fart, which I force myself to ignore. "She cares because she's your mother."

"Yeah, but like, people aren't my thing. She knows that. They're not your thing."

Dad snorts. "Yes, but I'm set in my ways. You're still changeable."

"Ugh. Can't my lack of lust for anything remotely mistakable for a social life just be considered genetic?" I sit on the corner of the coffee table, perched like a giant awkward bird. I hate my long limbs. Those are similarly paternal.

"You're a new dog. I'm a Bader. She just thinks she's doing what's best for you."

"I hate people."

"As do I."

"Make her stop," I say, and it comes out a little more forcefully than I had meant it to.

Dad cocks his head. "Why?"

"I ... I don't like it?" I really should have just walked past him and got into bed. "Whatever. It's fine."

"I can talk to her if you'd like me to," Dad says softly. "We don't want to make you uncomfortable, Elliot. We just worry that you're not as sociable as someone your age should be."

I am literally more sociable than I want to be already. I shrug. "It's fine. I'm gonna go to bed. Night."

"Don't wake your—"

"I'll just shower in the morning."

He nods at this. "Night, then."

-

I don't go to sleep.

You would think that walking in on a girl crying after you almost kissed her would eradicate any feelings. For me, it was weirdly the opposite? Not the crying. Definitely not the crying—that shit hit different. And not good different. Just, talking to her, and seeing her, and being close to her, all served only to make those little inklings of feelings stronger.

I really like her.

I pull out my phone and text Duncan, because he's the one I feel like I should trust with this.

dude. i need advice.

I KNEW THIS DAY WOULD COME OMG HI

your caps lock scares me