°
June had thought about calling a cab and going home, but that was too reasonable for how messily masochistic she was feeling. The way she’d handled Ernest’s confession made all of her other mistakes look adorably small by comparison.
She wasn’t always good at thinking on her feet. There were some situations that the crafty, reptilian strategist living in her brain didn’t know what to do with. When he’d finally come out and said what she’d been fearing for months, the clever part of her had checked out for lunch, leaving the rest of her stranded and floundering.
June had known. She’d used an intricate set of excuses to avoid the fact that she knew Ernest liked her. She’d ignored it, because she couldn’t figure it out.
Academically and romantically, Ernest had his choice of anyone, but he kept on picking her. And June couldn’t wrap her head around it. She couldn’t accept that he legitimately thought she was the best choice.
Instead of going home, June sat in the snowy courtyard behind Hart Hall and moped with everything she had in her. It felt like she was stuck, wheels spinning. She needed the mess to fix itself, but she didn’t know how to make that happen.
By the time she’d decided that she needed the advice of someone who not only understood feelings, but Ernest as well, June’s fingers were half-frozen. It made dialing on her cellphone difficult.
“Petrov speaking,” Maks answered, way too cheerfully for June’s taste. “How can I Maksimize your day?”
“Hi. You’re a dork. Also, I need to talk.”
“Can it be quick? I’m working out.”
“Maks, this is serious,” June said, too frustrated to care that her voice had tightened up into an angry squeak. “I seriously, seriously screwed up. Stop plie-ing or whatever! Your next five minutes are mine.”
“Okay, okay,” Maks said soothingly, and she heard him turn off the terrible bubblegum pop he’d been listening to. “My minutes are yours, oh beauteous master of the ring. Tell me everything.”
“If you had to describe Ernest’s level of interest in me in one word, what would it be?”
“Is gaga considered one word, or two?” He inhaled sharply, laughing. “Oh, man, did he finally break it to you?”
“Why didn’t you warn me? I thought we were friends.”
“Gee, I dunno, maybe because he’s also my friend, and he told me that in confidence?” He paused, somehow still not putting the pieces of the puzzle together. “Sooooo...?”
“So? So? So what do you want from my life?”
“So, what did you saaaaay?” Maks trilled, drawing the word out teasingly. He must not have realized that she wouldn’t have been calling if things had unfolded in a storybook fashion.
“Well, okay, so he said he might like me as more than a partner,” June explained, talking fast. On anyone else, her tone would have sounded like panicked babbling. She refused to use those words, as fitting as they might be. “So I said that was nice. And then I ran away. And now I’m hiding outside, because I’m roughly eighty percent sure that I broke him.”
“Oh, jeez,” Maks said, sounding pained. “Are there any pieces of his shattered heart big enough to salvage?”
She hadn’t let herself cry, but she’d been on the verge of it for at least an hour. Maks wasn’t helping.
“I knew this would happen! I knew it!”
“Two questions. One: what is ‘this’? Follow-up: why did you know that it’d happen?”
“This is— this is this! I knew that I’d hurt him, sooner or later.” Her ranting lowered in volume, choked by guilt. Her throat felt raw. “Because I’m still getting the hang of like. I need to like-like someone before I can move onto step three.”
“Do you like him?”
June thought about it. Really, seriously thought about it. She sighed, her breath puffy and cottony on the cold air.
“Yes,” she admitted, because she’d run out of ways to slap a layer of denial over her own feelings. “I do.”
“Then you’re already halfway there!” Maks said, so encouraging and bright, she could basically hear him sparkling.
June scrubbed at her eyes with her free hand. She had stopped obsessing over preserving the integrity of her eye makeup. Her eyeliner could smear all it wanted. She didn’t care. June was incredibly overwhelmed and fed up with herself.
“Did you miss the part where I said that it’s a three-step process?”
“Shh. Ssshhhh. Go to him,” Maks whispered, then hung up on her.
June stared at her cell phone, wondering when hanging up on her had become an acceptable thing to do. She’d have to have a talk with her boys.
Starting with Ernest.
She took a deep breath, rubbing her tingling-numb hands together. She could do this, she told herself. People apologized for screwing up every day. It took her a few more seconds of internal prodding, but she made herself go back inside.
Before she got indoors, though, she bumped into a familiar face from Oregon. Mal Underwood was looking sharp in a fitted navy blue suit. She would have complimented him on having shed his sweatshirt chrysalis and turning into a well-dressed butterfly, but he was kind of covered in blood.
“So. You look like you’ve finally come unhinged,” June said as she approached, keeping things light and conversational. “Do I want to know whether or not that’s shrimp cocktail sauce you’ve been bathing in, slick?”
“You wouldn’t have said anything if you didn’t want to know. But it’s nothing that concerns you,” Underwood said, primly.
“Uh-huh.” As much as she enjoyed interacting with a fellow mean girl, especially one that may or may not have added a festive touch to his ensemble by anointing himself with the blood of his enemies, June didn’t have time for banter. “Look, have you seen Ernest? I’ve been looking, but I can’t seem to find him. And I’m going to be real honest, here: these heels are not very forgiving.”
“Have you come to apologize for the way you left him earlier? Even if you don’t reciprocate his feelings, you should have been aware of how sensitive he would be to a curt dismissal.”
Where the hell had that come from? June hadn’t seen him express anything but begrudging tolerance when it came to his childhood friends. Underwood presented an air of general disinterest to the world at large. But judging from the growl of a threat in his voice, he wasn’t going to tolerate the abuse of their golden retriever of a mutual friend.
Ernest had always sworn that Mal was nicer than he let on, but it was something that had to be seen to be believed.
“Okay, number one? I find it hi-lar-i-ous that you, of all people, are lecturing me on respecting someone else’s feelings. Number two? It’s none of your damn beeswax,” June said, threading a warning into her tone. She really, really didn’t have time for this. “Just tell me where you last saw my partner and nobody has to get burnt.”
“Break him at your peril, Hovick,” Underwood said, smearing at the still-wet blood on his face. He left a lurid red handprint on his shirt. “Last I saw him, he said he was going to mingle.”
That was the opposite of helpful, but she wasn’t sure what else she had been expecting from Underwood.
“Thanks,” she muttered, and left him to bleed in the snow.
Half her problem, June decided once she got inside, was that she had an armpit-level view of the place. She was used to Ernest towering over just about everyone, so he was easy to pick out in a crowd of their peers. Here, though, his height was the median average. There was an outrageous concentration of tall, muscular blond men with chiseled jaws in the room, but she couldn’t find the peach-fuzzy one she was looking for.
June was starting to feel panicky, so retreating in order to look at the problem from another angle sounded like a winning game plan. She followed the richly carpeted stairs up to the balcony.
And that’s where she found Ernest. He was twitchier around crowds than she was, so it wasn’t all that surprising that he’d slipped off to be by his lonesome. H
e was watching the partygoers down below, his back to her. He couldn’t slouch properly in his tunic, but he was still visibly wilted.
“Hey.” June gave Ernest a few seconds to wipe his face and straighten himself up. She’d let him think that she couldn’t tell what a soggy mess he was.
He rubbed his nose against the back of his hand, sniffing hard. When he glanced at her over his shoulder, it was impossible for June to miss how red-rimmed his eyes were. He didn’t say anything.
June couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so horrible. Ernest should have been getting his mingle on. If he wanted to have a career as star-studded as his father’s, he had to shake a lot of hands. Instead of building his future, he was crying his great big blue eyes out. If anyone saw him, it’d be a gossip rag scandal.
And it was her fault. She was directly responsible for ruining his evening.
“We should talk.”
“That’d be nice,” Ernest said, tonelessly.
June winced.
“I’m sorry that I dashed like that. I didn’t mean to. You just— you surprised me, that’s all,” she said, keeping her distance.
“I know,” he said, quiet and leaden. Grinch that she was, she’d robbed him of his bouncing good cheer. “And I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that. I didn’t mean to make you feel obligated, or trapped, or anything bad like that. After the last coupla days, I just thought...” Ernest sighed. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m sorry. It’s okay, y’know? I’ll get over it. I’ll— I’ll be fine. I don’t want to lose you as a friend.”
June couldn’t talk about that. She couldn’t address it, because the resignation in his sigh made her eyes burn with unshed tears. So she moved to a safer subject instead.
“I heard an interesting rumor the other day.”
“Yeah?”
“I heard that you broke a rule,” she said. “Possibly several.”
Instantly, Ernest started floundering.
“Who— who told you— you know I— ”
“I’m not at liberty to divulge my source, but they’re super duper credible. Also, I know that you are practically allergic to breaking rules. But you did. Once. And it was a doozy.” June paused for a beat. He’d wound himself up tight and trembling. “I heard that you went around the board and picked your partner.”
The confusion on Ernest’s face screwed up, turning into sheer panic.
“I— I— ”
“Relax,” she said, holding up her hands. “Don’t try to make yourself lie. I don’t want you to strain anything trying to utter a falsehood.”
“I...I did bend the rules. I was s’posed to be with someone else, but then I met you, and...”
“And what?” She wanted to ask him why— why he’d thought they’d be a good team, why he’d taken the chance, how he’d known— but that was a can of worms she wasn’t ready for. “Cards on the table, Ernie. Before I found out I could make flaming animals? Before this last year? I would have chewed you up, then spit you out when you stopped being useful. I’m not a very nice person.”
“You’ve always been nice to me,” he said, giving her the wateriest excuse for a reassuring smile that she had ever seen.
June sighed hard. “No, I haven’t.”
Ernest bit his lower lip, then bobbed his head in a small nod.
“But you’re getting better at it, I promise.”
“I push you around,” June said. “A lot.”
Ernest set his jaw, giving her one of his rare, forcibly stubborn glares.
“If you’re trying to talk me out of my feelings, you might as well quit it. It won’t work. I know you too well now, Ms. Hovick. I know you’re not perfect. You can’t scare me away that easy.”
“I like you, okay?” June burst out with a hiccup that turned into a sob. “I like you a lot. And that’s like— that’s a big friggin’ problem that I’m not equipped to deal with. I’m not good at liking people. But you keep on picking me for your kickball team, and I just— I’m the angry white girl version of the Grinch, and I’m going to end up hurting you.”
Just like that, she lost it. June’s mascara tears spilled over. She squeezed her stinging eyes shut, pawing at them angrily.
The dam had finally burst, so now Ernest got to see exactly why she hated crying in front of anyone. She didn’t cry like a pretty girl. Her nose ran, and she made ugly faces, and she couldn’t breathe, and her face got hot and blotchy. It was loud, messy, and embarrassing.
“I was trying to avoid that,” June squeaked, gulping for air between shaky sobs. “I don’t want to hurt you, okay?”
Ernest wrapped her up in his arms, squeezing her to him. When Ernest Wright gave hugs, he didn’t fool around. She let herself go limp, smearing tears and makeup against his chest. Crying was so gross. What a way to round out a terrible night.
He let her go eventually, but only because he needed a free hand to get his handkerchief out of his back pocket.
“I know I’m not the greatest strategist,” Ernest said, offering her the neatly pressed linen square. “But I’ve got a plan. Wanna hear it?”
June took the handkerchief, mopping at the slurry of grayish makeup and tears rolling down her face.
“Thrill me,” she said, then blew her nose.
“So, I think that we’ve learned that we’re both pretty bad at this,” he said, very seriously. “But I’m tough— I can take a couple of hits. The truth is, I’m nuts about you. And if you like me, too, I just don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t try.”
He made it sound so reasonable.
“If we— if we do this, I’m probably going to mess up. A lot.”
“I’m sure I’ll mess up just as much,” he said, nodding.
“If this doesn’t work out, you’re not allowed to hate me, okay?” June said, holding out her hand. She was only used to making business deals. She felt so out of her depth, and so, so uncomfortable as a result, but Ernest was right. If he could man up and let his feelings hang out in the wind, she could, too. “I’m not willing to downgrade our relationship to awkward ex-anything.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Ernest said, in that shiny-bright hero voice that she couldn’t help but believe in. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
She’d always worry about that, but that was her problem, not his. He shook her hand enthusiastically. The warm, sandpaper roughness of his calluses made her fingers tingle even after he’d let go.
“So,” June said, clearing her throat. She could feel a new wave of tears itching at her. “Congrats. We’re dating now.”
He blinked, endearingly bewildered.
“Really? Just like that?”
“We shook on it,” June said, jabbing his chest with her index finger. “That means no takebacks.”
His smile made her knees feel a little wobbly. It was probably a good thing that he took that opportunity to slide his arms around her waist.
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Junebug.”
°
It was a full ten minutes before Mal could force himself upright, much less walk. It was always curious to him that people assumed that because he healed, he did not feel pain. On the contrary: a broken bone was a broken bone, and his accelerated healing didn’t change that. Over time, Mal had learned to not cry out.
The cold didn’t help matters, so as soon as he was capable of it, Mal made his way indoors. He had to keep his head low, basically infiltrating the building, because he had quite a bit of blood on him, but few wounds left unclosed. Instead of a victim, he could easily be mistaken as an axe-murderer.
The restroom door flung open so forcefully, it slammed against the wall. He glanced up, bracing himself for a speedy explanation, but words left him when he recognized the girl marching into the bathroom.
Her hair was pinned up, secured with little golden pins and sprigs of holly, dotted with red berries. She’d woven the glossy, sharp greenery into the nest of her hair. She’d never acc
epted the monetary help his parents had offered her, so she lacked the glitter of cut facets and precious metals.
“What the hell, Mal!” Ellie Lark yelled, her shrill voice bouncing madly through the empty bathroom. “What the hell!”
She looked lovely. So much so, Mal was briefly rendered speechless. He didn’t want to blink, lest it turn out that the winged green-band was a hallucination brought on by Marshal’s vicious attack.
“Elouise? What are— why are— ”
“Why are you bleeding? Good question. I was about to ask you that!”
“No, I was going to ask what you’re doing here,” Mal said, effortlessly dropping back into what had been their usual banter. “At a party which I know you were not invited to. And more specifically, what are you doing in the men’s restroom?”
“Your mom invited me as her plus one,” Ellie said, pulling paper towels out of the dispenser by the handful. “And I’m in the men’s bathroom because I had a hunch you might be involved with the blood trail leading to the door.” She sighed, wetting the towels under warm water. “Friggin’ Underwoods.”
“Mother invited you?”
Ellie smiled warmly.
“Apparently, a certain blue-band bird boy has had a rough year, so she thought that a visit from an old friend might cheer him up. I’ve spent half the night looking for you, y’know.”
Neither Mal nor his mother celebrated Christmas, for obvious reasons, but when he’d been a child, she’d made a point of not letting him feel left out of the festivities that Rosario and Ernest enjoyed with their parents. He hadn’t expected anything this year, but his mother had given him a gift, regardless.
Knowing that, Marshal’s presence made more sense. To say that his brother disapproved of Mal’s friendship with Elouise was a vast understatement. He’d wanted to get to him before she could. His jealousy and rage knew no bounds.
“Sit,” Ellie commanded, pointing to one of the open, empty stalls. “I’ll get you cleaned up.”
The Posterchildren: Origins Page 38