Homewrecker

69 - 𝓫𝓮𝓼𝓽

As I soon learned, shattering one of the bones in your wrist and breaking two of your ribs in the process of confronting your mother's killer towards the end of July effectively terminates your position at your summer job with an affectionate note written and handed over to your half-sister for you, wishing you to get well soon and a promise for next summer.

But the Tuesday night after I was released from the hospital, I stole one of the paper bag shorts from Andi's side of the closet—hoping she wouldn't notice, then spending fifteen minutes arguing with her when she did—and a black t-shirt with a sewn on daisy over the chest. Not exactly a gerbera daisy, like the three in a pink tinted vase near my window, the ribbon still attached around the stems, but it was close enough.

I asked Natalie to do my hair into a braid, like the one Ethan did for my mom's funeral, although I had to admit hers looked neater and tighter, and then when I was changing out my earrings, I glanced over my shoulder at her.

"You want to come?"

She spent most of the drive to Starbright grinning, mentioning more than once that she hadn't been there in years and asking what movies were going to be playing, then following up with what movies were going to be on the first screen visible through the restaurant's windows. Andi gave me a look at one of the red lights, but she was smiling a little bit too.

When we got there, I was somewhat disappointed to see that Ethan wasn't in the concession stand with everyone else but a little part of me was relieved too because the conversations I wanted to have with him were ones I didn't really want to have in front of everyone else, particularly two teasing sisters.

Taylor-Elise was inside, though, rotating the theater boxes of candy behind the counter when I walked in, noticing that she tried to stop her eyes from widening at the sight of me before tossing the cardboard box of Dots on the counter.

"Hey!" she yelled, skirting around the counter and maneuvering around the tables as she jogged over to the front doors still propped open, enveloping me in a hug before I had time to react. "Wow, hey, oh. Oh, man, you look like you got beat up."

I scrunched my nose. "I broke his arm. In three places!"

"She learned it off the internet," Natalie chimed in. "She said she's going to teach me when her arm heals."

"I'd smack you if you didn't already look so rough," she mumbled, pulling me and squinting her eyes in a glare she maintained for about all of two seconds. "What were you thinking?! I would've come! And I have pepper spray too, like on a little key chain."

"No, that's okay, because actually, I used weed killer," I told her. "I've been told his vision has now been severely impaired on his right eye because of it."

She grinned then tried to suppress it. "That's terrible. Am I a terrible person for kind of being proud of you for that?"

Before I had a chance to respond aside from the smile I felt taking over my lips—because I was also kind of proud of myself for that, knowing that whenever he looked at anything or anyone, he would be reminded of the fact that he stolen from the wrong family in more ways than one—I heard a squeal coming from the stairwell as Cass clumsily descended down them.

"Bronwyn!" she called out, coming over to me and then awkwardly holding her arms out, like she wasn't sure if we should hug or not, so I rolled my eyes and walked in, the scent of her coconut perfume starting to cling to my clothes. "Your arm! Look at your arm. Wait, you have bruises on your back right? Is this hurting you? Am I hurting you?"

"Only her ears," Izzie commented from one of the booths, chewing on a rope of licorice and offering me a wave. "Hi, glad to see that you haven't died because of your reckless stupidity."