Day bled into twilight. Even though the sun rose and fell in Awkward, time was different here. There were no days of the week, and nothing to determine what time of year it was. It’s why the seasons in Awkward were so odd. Awkward had a long fall and spring with a shorter summer and winter. It was fall now. I could feel it in the air, the mild temperature and blooming flowers an Awkward trademark. It was never chilly in fall. It was never cold in winter.
Night had fallen in Awkward while we convened in the dining room. It was a warm, fragrant night, a large full moon visible from the tower where I stood now. The vines crawling along the bedroom wall were made pale by the moonlight, the white roses luminescent. In Awkward, the moon was always full, the stars always bright. It was never truly dark.
“The Swamp of Sadness,” Foster mumbled.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed when I faced him, his elbows on his knees, his fingers in his hair. He’d removed his tunic and draped it on the headboard. The wolf on his arm yawned at me.
“Don’t start,” I muttered.
He glanced at me. “What prompted you to draw this place?”
There was no censor in his tone, no sarcasm in his words. There was only curiosity.
The bed creaked as I sat opposite him, my back facing his back. “Haven’t you ever felt … I don’t know, outside of things?” I asked.
Foster shifted, the bed dipping as he reclined against the pillows piled on the bed. “Everyone does at one time or another, but they don’t draw kingdoms where nothing is normal.”
I leaned back, my bare feet resting next to his on the comforter. I’d found a white linen gown in the armoire, the hem stopping just below the knees, and I sported it now. The tunic I’d worn was folded and waiting for the sun to rise.
“No,” I agreed, “most people work too hard to try and fit in. Most people change themselves. They’d rather strive too hard to fit into a perfect world than belong in one where no one is perfect.”
There were three pillows under Foster’s head, and he removed two of them, throwing them on to the floor next to him. I never slept with less than three pillows.
His hazel eyes found mine. “There’s nothing wrong with fitting in, Perri.”
My eyes narrowed. “Maybe … but Awkward is more than that for me. I didn’t create it just because I wanted a world where everyone wasn’t normal. It wasn’t just about belonging. These characters are the family I never had. They accept me for who I am.”
Foster’s eyes searched mine. The teasing boy he’d always been lay inside that gaze, but there was also something harder. Not cruel, but honest. Too honest. The kind of honesty that hurts. “They accept you because they’re different, too,” he pointed out. “It’s good to want a world where you fit in, but the real world is full of people who believe they are perfect. You can’t live here, Perri.”
I looked away, my gaze tracing the gauzy canopy over the bed. Through it, the climbing vines and moonlit roses stared at me. “And you can’t be perfect,” I told him.
Silence stretched. Foster was a heavy weight next to me. The only person I’d ever shared a bed with was Camilla, and she didn’t smell like her brother. She smelled like lilacs, and she snored. Loudly. I’d also owned a dog once that slept with me. He was a stray with springy brown hair I’d found outside of a dump. Even after a bath, he’d had fleas and smelled faintly of cabbage. That relationship had ended with scabbed over bites on my legs and ringing ears from my father’s yells. He’d sent the dog to the pound. I never saw him again.
“Did your father hit you?” Foster asked suddenly.
My gaze shot to his face. “What?”
He didn’t look at me. “You look for acceptance in an awkward world, and you shy away from people. It makes sense.”
I stared. “My father hitting me makes sense?”
Even as large as the bed was, Foster took up a lot of room. He propped one arm under his head, the other falling to the comforter beside my hip. “Did he?” he asked.
My lips parted. “No. He wasn’t that kind of drunk. But what he couldn’t do with his fists, he did with his words. There were times I’d rather have bruises than his stinging opinion.”
Foster’s fingers tapped my hip, and I glanced down at his tanned skin. The contrast between his flesh and my nightgown was startling. “I’m sorry,” he murmured.
His apology shocked me, his words washing over me like a fine wine, leaving me warm and confused.
“Sorry?”
He sighed. “I’m not your father. I was just a boy who lived to tease his sister and anyone who hung out with her. The rhyme was cruel. It was wrong.”
There’s nothing worse than having someone you’ve villainized admit he was wrong. There’s nothing worse than admitting someone’s words had done more than tear you down, they’d made you angry enough to fight back. There’s nothing worse than having to forgive someone whose words gave you strength.
I swallowed hard. “I don’t know what to say.”
I didn’t want to tell him it was okay. I didn’t want to tell him that I thought he was better than his words. I knew who Foster really was. Camilla had often talked about her brother, about the way he’d helped her pass math and about the time he’d cornered her ex, Roger Philips, outside school because Roger had cheated on her with Daisy Beaumont. Foster wasn’t evil, he was arrogant. Arrogance wasn’t a sin.
The corner of Foster’s lips twitched. “I didn’t think you would,” he said.
I couldn’t tell him it was okay, and he knew that.
He rolled onto his side. “Go to sleep, Perri. We have to find a Swamp of Sadness tomorrow.”
There was humor and a touch of sarcasm just beneath his words. It was funny. Trying to be serious inside a world of neon flowers and fairies with watermelon-flavored pixie dust felt like trying to laugh while watching a sad movie. The worst part: I kind of liked lying next to Foster. His arrogance didn’t keep me from wondering what it would be like to share more than a bed with him. And thinking about sex inside a world of candy loving trolls and bespectacled bookworms was just plain … awkward.
Foster grew still, his breathing deep before growing uneven. He didn’t snore like his sister. He thrashed. A lot.
Chapter 10
“That awkward moment when you discover the guy you never wanted to know becomes the guy you want to understand.”