Page 67 of Dream House
Lark’s grin is lupine. “Yeah, the easygoing, rebellious, sociable—”
“I’m easygoing,” I say defensively.
His mouth quirks but he says nothing.
I cross my arms over my chest. “I don’t have time for this. I need to get dinner on the table.”
“Is what a first-born would say.”
My sudden wish that I had something to throw at him just underscores his point that I’m not easygoing. So I growl and turn to the fridge.
With more force than produce requires, I slam two onions and a carton of mushrooms on the counter by the sink.
“When I was a kid, Mom would send me and my older brother Bear out to her garden to pull weeds and pick hornworms off her tomatoes. I used to sneak off to the bayou and leave Bear with the chores.”
His voice comes over my shoulder, but I don’t look at him as I scrub the first onion under the faucet.
“You have a brother named Bear?”
“All of us are animals. That’s my Dad’s touch,” he says offhandedly. “Anyway, Bear used to get so pissed.”
I think about when Tyler and I were kids. Mom and Dad didn’t speak to each other after the divorce if they could help it. We’d spend every other weekend at Dad’s, and Tyler would always,alwaysforget some of his stuff. His book bag. His good shoes. His ADD meds. Things he really needed.
This would inevitably lead to a fight. Part of me thinks he did it on purpose as some kind of revenge against them both.
But I couldn’t take it. By the time I was seven and he was nine, I started picking up after him and making sure we were both packed.
We stopped sleeping at Dad’s when I was in eighth grade, but I don’t think I really stopped picking up after Tyler.
“Was it Bear’s couch you were crashing on before you moved in?” I’ll admit there’s a hefty dose of acid in my question.
Lark chuckles. “Yeah.”
“Hmph.Figures,” I mutter, scrubbing the second onion with something close to violence.
And then all of a sudden, the onion is gone.
Well, not gone. It’s still under the stream of cold water, but it’s between Lark’s big, rough hands.
“What are you doing?” I ask with a scowl.
He doesn’t look up from the task when he answers, so I’m just staring at his profile. “I’m helping.”
I ignore the fact that it’s a spectacular profile.
“Why?” I demand.
Lark shrugs and sets the clean onion on the paper towel next to its brother. Then he looks at me, blue eyes all glinty. “Consider it a balancing of the scales. I’ll do the chores, and you skip out tonight.”
My mouth falls open. “You can’t be serious.”
His smile is a mix of mischief and magnetism like I’ve never seen. “Go be a rebel.”
“What?”
He peels the plastic off the package of mushrooms and washes them with the sprayer. “I’ll make dinner for your crew, and you go do whatever it is you’d want to do if you ever let yourself play hooky.”
Play hooky?I’ve never played hooky in my life.
