If he could somehow get my sister and mother out of the house with minimal damage to my pride, I’d double it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Greid
Once Beryl had left for work and Tim had finished for the day, I started the painful process of trying to get my mother and sister out of the house. I’d never been very good at it.
“So,” Mom said briskly, as soon as it was just the three of us. “Beryl.”
Kiti turned to me with an overexaggerated look of interest. “Yeah. Beryl.”
I glared at her and shifted in my slouched position on the floor under the window, my back against the radiator. We’d moved into the living room after Mom had complained that she was too old to stand up for so long—she wasn’t—and the two of them were lounging back on the couch.
“She seems very nice,” Mom commented when I said nothing.
“She is,” I muttered.
“Are you… involved, kushka?” Mom coughed delicately into her fist. “Because not to be crass, but I birthed you, Greid. I know you are a… fully formed biological male. I can’t imagine that’s particularly pleasant for a human.”
My ears fluttered wildly. “It’s not like that. We’re not involved. We’re friends.”
“Friends who live together,” Kiti said slyly.
I scowled at her. “Lots of friends live together. There’s literally a human show about it.”
“Don’t most of them end up fucking at some point though?”
“Kiti,” Mom admonished, but fixed me with an intent look. “So you’re not… romantically involved? Because you know I get a sense for these things, kushka, and it seemed like—”
“No,” I cut her off, my voice rough as my stomach squeezed into a little knot. “We’re not romantically involved.”
“He wishes they were though,” Kiti said to Mom. “Look at him. Like a sad little puppy.”
I glared at her. “Shut your face, asswipe.”
“Sex isn’t everything, kushka,” Mom said kindly, but I still cringed at hearing that word come out of my mother’s mouth. “I should know. I’ve gone long enough without it.”
“Ew,” Kiti and I said at the same time.
“I’m just saying.” Mom huffed. “If you and Beryl want to be together, you shouldn’t let that stop you. Or if you do want to be together in that… sense, there are ways around it. There’s a wonderful shop online I can show you that has all kinds of—”
“Mom, please.” I slid down fully onto the floor, the back of my head bumping over the radiator. “Please stop talking.”
“Fine,” she said snippily, lifting her coffee cup to her mouth. “Forgive me for wanting to make sure my baby is happy and fulfilled. I know that unpleasantness with Agma left you… out of sorts, and I’m just saying, Beryl seems like a lovely woman.”
“She does,” Kiti agreed, then smirked at me. “She’s pretty. Too pretty for you, buttface.”
I scowled at her before pulling my hood over my head. “Yeah, she’s… I know she is. But we’re not—It’s just—Look, next time you visit, can you maybe not show her all my embarrassing baby photos, please?”
“Why not?” Mom said defiantly, but her eyes grew teary. “They’re not embarrassing. You were a beautiful baby. My tiny little boy, all scrunched up with those big eyes and that shock of black hair.”
“At least she didn’t tell Beryl about that embarrassing phase you went through where you’d tug on your tail in public,” Kiti piped up, shooting me an evil grin. “Little weirdo.”
I straightened, glaring at her. “Oh, that’s real rich coming from you. You think we didn’t all hear the rumours after high school about you giving Gogi Jumin tailjobs behind the yoghurt place you worked at?”
Kiti’s ears fluttered. “Shut your face, dickbrain.”
“Kiti,” Mom gasped, then cocked her head. “I did like the frozen yoghurt from that place. What was it called?”
“Yogurgus,” Kiti and I said in unison, before she flung a pillow at my head.
I grunted, unsuccessfully trying to catch it before it smacked me in the face. “Look, I really have to get back to work.” Not that I’d been working before they got here. “This has been a fantastic unexpected visit and all, but…”
“Alright, darling, we’ll leave you to it.” Mom drained her coffee cup before setting it down. “Bring Beryl over for dinner soon. We’ll arrange a family dinner so she can meet the rest of your siblings.”
I grunted noncommittally, heaving myself to my feet to see them out. After giving Mom a kiss on the cheek and a long hug, I punched Kiti’s shoulder weakly in goodbye. She responded by yanking on both my space buns until they flopped down over my ears.
“Asshole.” I covered her face with my hand to push her back, but she just snickered and flicked my forehead before sweeping out of the house.
The moment they were gone and I was finally alone, I shifted into my true form and went to take a long, soothing bubble bath to try and recover from the entire ordeal.
Staring morosely at the ceiling, I took a deep drag of my joint and tapped the ash off into the tray balanced precariously on the lip of the tub. I knew that when I got out, I’d probably already have some snarky texts from my sister. Probably a couple of missed calls from my mother wanting to talk about Beryl some more.
As the shade made me sink deeper into the water until bubbles tickled my chin, my mind wandered back to what had happened just before they arrived. Or rather, what had almost happened. My gut clenched tight.
Had Beryl really been about to kiss me?
Maybe I’d just been seeing what I wanted to see. What I was desperate to see when she looked at me. Maybe she’d just been about to wipe food off my face or something. That certainly wasn’t outside the realms of possibility. In fact, that was a far more likely scenario than Beryl wanting to kiss me. Why would she want to kiss me? I was a loner introvert who was high fifty percent of the time and did nothing but watch TV and eat. She was beautiful and confident and becoming more outgoing now that she was socialising with people at work. I bet she had people flirting with her all the time, and flirting was a skill that had taken one look at me and gone, Heh. No. No point wasting it on that guy.
I’d seen the human she worked with. Gavin. Stupid human Gavin with his stupid brown hair, who was the perfect height to hug and kiss Beryl without having to hunch over awkwardly like some lanky goblin.
Beryl had made it clear that she wasn’t interested in me that way when we made our arrangement. Maybe she couldn’t be attracted to a demiurgus. Maybe her time with the cult, around all their weird, fervent sex stuff, had forced her to block off the part of her brain that would ever allow her to find a demiurgus attractive. It would make sense. Like a survival tactic so she didn’t inadvertently get sucked in.
Except… there’d been a few moments over the last couple of weeks, ever since the night we’d fallen asleep together in the living room nest, where she’d give me this look. And even though I didn’t fully understand what it meant, it would make my hearts start racing and my palms get all clammy.