Page 120 of How To Not Need You
“You’re just looking at stuff.”
“I know.”
“You’ve been looking at it for ages.”
“I’m thinking.”
I frown. I don’t know what the fridge has to do with thinking. Hades jumps onto the chair beside me and then onto the table. I push him off because Dad says cats aren’t allowed on the table. Hades jumps straight back up. I push him off again. He makes an angry noise at me.
“You know the rules.” I tell him. Hades does not care about the rules. Dad finally stops staring at the fridge and gets the bread out.
“Toast?”
“Yes.”
“Jam?”
“Yes please.”
He puts two pieces in the toaster. I swing my legs under the chair and watch him. He looks tired. Really tired. His hair is sticking up at the back and there are dark bits under his eyes. He keeps checking his phone too.
He checked it when he woke me up. Then when I was brushing my teeth. Then while I was getting dressed. Now it’s sitting beside the toaster and he looks at it again when the screen lights up.
I look too. It’s not Liv. I know because Dad picks it up and puts it straight back down. I’m still mad at him.
Liv hasn’t been here for days.
She didn’t come for dinner last night. She didn’t sit on the couch. She didn’t read my book. She didn’t tell Hades he was a meanie when he tried to eat her hair.
Dad says Liv needs some space. I don’t know why she needs space when there is heaps of space here. There’s a whole spare room.
Dad puts my toast on the table. On the blue plate. I stare at it.
“What?”
“I wanted yellow.”
He looks at the plate. Then at me. “Sorry, Bug. I’ll swap it.”
“No.”
“You just said you wanted yellow.”
“I did.”
Dad looks at me weirdly. “So do you want me to swap it?”
“No.”
His forehead gets all wrinkly. Good. He should be confused. I’m confused too.
He made Liv sad and now she won’t come over and nobody will tell me properly what happened. He said it was a grown-up problem.
Grown-ups say that when they don’t want to tell you things. I eat my toast. Dad sits across from me with his coffee.
“Are you still mad at me?”
“Yes.” At least that one is easy.
