Oh, God. He couldn’t be serious, right? I searched his face, desperate for him to be messing with me, even while knowing he wasn’t. But before I could get more of a read on his expression, he waved his hands in my direction and barked, “Water. Watch the water, Liv.”
“Shit.” I’d missed the reservoir completely and poured water all over the counter. I grabbed a towel and tried wiping it up, but the bar towel wasn’t absorbent in the least and only served to push the water from the counter to the floor.
While that arrogant jerk watched with an amused grin on his face.
“You don’t have anything better to do than watch me mop up my mess?”
He shrugged and leaned into the counter like he didn’t have a care in the world. “Not really. I like what you’re doing with your hair these days, by the way.”
“Is that right? Do you?” I gave him a mocking smile that felt more like the feral baring of teeth. “I call this my moving-in-with-Colin hairstyle. Looks and feels like a dumpster fire.”
“Speaking of fires, I’m curious, Marshall. How the hell did you manage to burn down an entire apartment building?” He tilted his head and said, “I mean, you’ve always been a bit of a train wreck, but burning love letters on a wooden deck like some kind of pyro is next level, even for you.”
I tried to swallow but my throat was pinched.
Not because that jackass thought I was an idiot; he’d always thought that. My misadventures were a guilty pleasure for Colin, like a train wreck reality TV show that you didn’t want to admit you watched but always binged on when you came across it.
I was his Sister Wives.
But the fact that he knew the tiny details of something that’d just happened the day before yesterday, in a city eight hours away, meant that Jack had told him. And my brother had clearly told him more than just a vague my-sister’s-been-displaced-by-a-fire sort of disclaimer since he mentioned the love letters.
He’d shared with him the awful details.
The cheating boyfriend, the wine-and-letter-burning ceremony on the deck, the four-alarm fire . . . everything. I wanted to vomit at the thought of the two of them, laughing their asses off as Jack regaled him with the tale of my latest tragedy.
The words it wasn’t my fault hovered on the tip of my tongue, wanting to be shouted. I wanted to scream that statement to every person who was reading the story in the paper, clicking on the link, or watching the reporter grin and mockingly enunciate the words love letters.
Because it wasn’t my fault.
Yes, I’d been burning Eli’s poems. I’d been perilously close to wine drunk as I chain-smoked on the balcony and torched the letters from that cheating bastard, but I’d burned them in a metal pail. I had a huge cup of water beside the pail, just in case. I wasn’t an idiot. I’d been fully prepared for my Cheating Elijah exorcism.
But I hadn’t been prepared for the possum.
I’d been quietly gazing into my tiny bonfire, contemplating the fact that being alone might not be so terrible, when that ugly little guy had run across the gutter and jumped onto my deck. My gasp had alerted him to my presence, scaring him. Scaring him enough for him to scatter and bump the table that the pail was sitting on top of, knocking the pail onto the deck.
The deck that was covered in an adorable straw mat.
“Listen,” I said, trying to sound unfazed, “I’d love to stand around and discuss what a mess you think I am, but I have things to do. Can you please turn around?”
“Why?”
I sighed and wanted to disappear. “Because the more awake I become, the less happy I am to be talking to you sans pants.”
His eyes crinkled around the edges. “I didn’t think you ever got embarrassed.”
“I’m not embarrassed.” If it were anyone else in the world, I would laughingly admit that I got embarrassed super easily and all the time, which was what usually was to blame for my trips, spills, and general awkwardness. But because it was Colin, I said, “I’m just not sure you’re worthy of an eyeful of this ass.”
I walked past him and left the kitchen with my head held high, even as my face burned and I prayed my butt looked good in those ridiculous underpants. It wasn’t until I slammed the door of my makeshift room that I allowed myself to whisper-scream nearly every obscenity I knew.
2
Olivia
The day didn’t get much better.
I barricaded myself in the office and applied for ten jobs I was completely underqualified for. There were a few openings for technical writers, which I was qualified for but not excited about, and a slew of other copywriter jobs that I almost fit the profile for （but not quite）。