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I nearly drop the bottle of wine "Did you give it to her?"

"What do you think?" Tori’s voice isin the doorway to the kitchen

"You didn’t"

"Of course I didn’t" She grabs the wine, pours both of us so a word as I drain lass out for seconds "One of these days, you’re going to tell me ent down between you and your family"

I nod, even as I think the opposite That there’s no way in hell I will ever tell her, ever tell anyone, why my relationship with my family is so distant

"What did she want?" I’ve calh that I can sound almost unconcerned when I ask the question I take a s it down the saet more insistent, and after the day I’ve had, I’m just not up for it

"She asked me to have you call her She didn’t say it was important Only that she wanted to talk to you"

I relax a littlefrom me I can handle that--after all,my parents what they want "Did she mention Miles?"

"She just askedfine He’s working on some new project that he’s very excited about"

"That sounds about right" I so My older brother, Miles, is a tech genius who never quite learned how to function in the real world From the tiining things and figuring out how to s like eating orhis ideas

If it were up to him, he’d share his inventions with the whole world for free and we’d all survive on gumdrops and lollipops and live happily ever after But not everyone is as nice--or naive--as he is, and he’s had ideas stolen more than once It’s why I’ht not care about protecting hi hilass in hand, I wander back into the living room As far as I’m concerned, my mother can wait until hell freezes over fortonight?" I ask as we settle down on the sofa "So that won’t asm and now my mother, I feel so vulnerable that I’ht, I’ll never stop After all, I have a lot of tears saved up Five years’ worth, to be exact

"Actually, I’ to have to skip the ine Dragons tonight Her boyfriend had to cancel because of work, so she asked etic look "Do youYou love them"

"I really do! I didn’t even know their tour was stopping here, and then Lisa ca"

"That’s aweso up Lisa at eight-thirty"

"Cool So you have time for pizza"

"There’s always ti bite of one of her slices of pizza I say "her slices" because we have two very distinct sides to the pizzas we order froourmet Italian place down the street Her side is loaded with every kind of rilled vegetables on it

"Who’s opening for the I want is to be stuck in this apartht It’s selfish of ht Not when soaround s Tori and I don’t norht of the week are subject to change, but since we first started rooe, Tuesday night has been our catch-up night The night where we sit around, drink a little--or a lot, depending on how things are going--read gossip enerally tell each other everything that’s happened over the last week

And while I don’t know if I was really planning to tell Tori about what happened in Ethan’s office today--I can barely wrap my head around it myself, let alone expect her to--it still would have been nice to have had that option To maybe drop it into the conversation after we’d each had a couple of glasses of wine and had chilled out some Maybe even ask her advice about what to do Noon’t have the chance

"So the Then she looks at me, really looks at me I shift uncomfortably under her scrutiny, even before she asks, "Hey, are you okay? You look upset"

"I’ day"

"I bet How did Ethan take the return of his blender?"

"Better than I expected" In fact, now that I think about it, he never even mentioned it Of course, that could be because he was too busy giving asm to think about fruit smoothies, but no need to tell Tori that