Page 65 of The Addendum

I laughed. “Like a Snickers, am I?”

“Better.”

“Good to know.”

“We should get up.”

I tucked her closer. “Nah, I’m good here.”

“Don’t you have to go back to work?”

“Nope. Took the afternoon off. My minions are running the show.”

“Oh boy.”

I chuckled. “They know they can reach me if needed. We’re good. My team is top-notch.”

“Of course they are. You hired and trained them.”

“Yeah, but this group is spectacular. One of the new kids, Ashley—wow. He’s been with me for a month. He can run circles around everyone—including me. His brain goes a thousand light-years faster than anyone else’s. And he’s twenty-one. I swear he’ll take over the world one day in the not-too-distant future.” I chuckled. “His station is covered in Star Wars stuff. Video game memorabilia. He’s had the same girlfriend since he was fifteen. He has their prom picture in a frame on his desk. She brings him lunch some days. They’re so frigging young and cute.” I ran a hand over my face. “I don’t remember being that young.”

She sighed. “I don’t think I ever was.” She was quiet for a moment, tracing her hand over my chest. “Did you go to prom?”

“Nah. A bunch of us couldn’t afford it. We hung around, played games, watched movies. Reed didn’t go either. He hung with us.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, he was pretty homely back then. Come to think of it, we all were.”

She chuckled.

“Well, you’ve all improved with age,” she replied.

“Especially me, right?” I teased.

“Hmm,” she murmured, making me grin.

I tucked one arm under my head, playing with her silky hair.

“What was your prom like?” I asked, imagining her in a strapless satin dress with some teenage boy staring down her cleavage.

“I didn’t have one either.”

“You didn’t go with a group of friends? A lot of the girls at school did that.”

She was silent for a moment. “I didn’t have many friends, Luc. Certainly no one I was close enough to that we would go to prom or hang together that night. There were a couple of girls that were pleasant enough, but no one I was friends with.”

“Why?” I asked.

She tilted up her head. “I was an outcast. I wasn’t white, I wasn’t Asian—I was a mixed bag. The kids called me names I would never repeat. I had just enough of my mother’s heritage in me to be different. I was taller than every other girl in the school, not just my class. Awkward. Shy. Smart. They made fun of me all the time.”

“Teenagers can be cruel.”

“And they were. I remember when one new boy transferred in midyear. He was from Japan, and I was assigned as his school buddy. Your job was to show the new person around and help them settle in. He seemed really nice and I thought we’d be friends, and for a few days, we were. But he started hanging with the cool crowd and I wasn’t part of that, and he snubbed me. I never understood it. He didn’t look like them or what they judged others should look like. They accepted and embraced his difference because he was ‘so cool.’ I was just a castoff. He took the girl who liked to make me the most miserable to the prom.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shook her head. “It’s fine. I was sad then. I wanted to wear a pretty dress. Dance with a boy. Maybe kiss him. Drink the horrible punch and admire the stupid balloons and streamers they decorated the gym with. I wanted to belong—just for once. But it was only a dream. I pretended to not want to go as to not upset my mom, but I stayed in my room all night and cried. Then the next day, I went to the library and started researching universities.”