Just Good Friends (Cheap Thrills 5)

They didn’t know what breed it was because it appeared to be a mix of quite a few, but it was probably twice the size of a Yorkshire Terrier, with wiry salt and pepper colored hair. On the top of its head was a big chunk of black hair like a mohawk with a streak of white at the front. Add that onto its weird eyes and teeth, and it was the stuff nightmares were made of. I was also fairly certain that it hated me and was planning my death while my parents weren’t looking.

When we’d finished, and the lock release mechanism was fitted onto Fonzie’s collar so that the door would open when he wanted in and out, Mom had sat us down for some lunch, which was what we were doing at this precise moment. She’d been quiet to begin with, but once my parents started telling Tamsin embarrassing stories about me as a kid, she came out of her shell.

Mom was holding onto Dad’s arm, laughing. “I-I came home, his sister, Cat, was on the couch watching a Transformers cartoon, and there’s no sign of Garrett and Raoul. I thought maybe they’d snuck out because they were shitheads like that, but when I went to our bedroom to make sure, there they were, makeup all over their faces and my grandmother’s clip earrings on their ears,” she wheezed, mascara trailing down her face with the tears. “Garrett smiles at me—” she broke off, howling as I tried to sink under the table.

Dad, who was also laughing, held up a finger. “Wait there, it might be better if I got something.”

Laying my face on the table, I muttered, “No, it wouldn’t.”

Did my family give me a break? Did they hell.

Within minutes Dad was back, but I didn’t look up when he started talking. I really should’ve, then I could have hidden or burned what he was about to show her.

“Let’s see… Ah, this is it.”

I heard something move across the top of the table and assumed he’d brought through the earrings, but when Tamsin gasped, I lifted my head and blinked rapidly at what she was looking at.

A photo album.

A photo album I’d never seen before in my life.

An album that held all of the horrors of my childhood, apparently.

Why? Because on the page the woman I was falling in love with was looking at was a photo of Raoul and me smiling, dressed in Mom’s clothes—bras on the outside, for fuck’s sake—with makeup all over our faces, including our freaking teeth.

We’d also found her bright red lipstick and colored in our cheeks and lips, not realizing that if you pushed too hard as you did it, the shit went between them and onto your teeth.

Groaning, I rubbed my face with both hands. “It looks like we’ve been shot in the mouth!”

“Well, you were eating it, honey.”

Lifting my head quickly, I glared at my mom, who up until five minutes ago I’d loved hugely. “You’re lying.”

Shaking her head, she said earnestly, “I am not.”

Thinking back to that night and what little I could remember of it, I fast-forwarded through the clothes, the jewelry, makeup, and… Oh, for the love of shitting hell. Dropping my head forward again, I groaned against the surface of the table.

“Raoul told us Garrett had said it tasted like cherries, so both of them bit into it to check,” Mom snickered. “It took about an hour of brushing their teeth to get rid of it.”

The sound of plastic being peeled apart followed it, and I lifted my head again and snatched the album out of Tamsin’s hands when I saw what she was looking at now.

Rubbing her lips together, she couldn’t hide the laughter building inside her. “You proposed?”

Why me?

“I was only little,” I snapped, wincing at the semi-lie.

“He was ten,” Dad interrupted, winking at her.

“Why are you still here?” I hissed.

Staring at me innocently, he shrugged. “Because it’s my house.”

Standing up, I held the album close to my chest. “Good point. So why are we still here?”

“Oh, sit down, Garrett,” Mom chuckled, waving her hand around. “He was always so serious, Zuri. You’ll have to grade him on a curve and ignore that from him.” Then, turning to me, she nodded at the book in my hands. “You can keep that.” Just as I relaxed and went to sit down, she added, “We’ve got duplicates hidden around the place.”

Throwing her head back, Tamsin burst out laughing.

“I’m glad my humiliation is amusing,” I huffed, placing the album on my chair and then sitting on it.

“Listen, you fell in love when you were ten. There’s no shame in that,” Dad said, reaching for another biscuit and the butter. “When you said you needed to buy a ring, we weren’t sure if it was for your sister or just because you wanted one, so we said okay and let you. Boy, you were absolutely determined to give it to her as well because we stood in that line for over an hour.”