Keep Me If You Can (If You Can #3)

18. Goblin Mode

Chapter eighteen

Goblin Mode

“I s it something about my face?”

Sydney and I looked up in unison as Reid slid into the booth next to Syd and set his elbows on the table, collapsing forward into his hands with an existential crisis in his eyes.

“What?” I asked.

“That’s attracting these kinds of people to me,” he said, forlorn. “Like, is there something about me that screams ‘I’m peggable’?”

Sydney sprayed a mouthful of beer across the table. Thank God it was happy hour, since most of it ended up in my half-full pint and when she started hacking a moment later, she knocked the rest of her half-full pint over.

“Or ‘I want to be dressed up in fishnets and told I’m a bad boy while you spank me’?” Reid continued as if there wasn’t cheap beer pooling around his elbows.

“Let me see.” I mirrored the way his elbows were on the table, though I clasped my hands together before putting my extended forefingers to my chin. Reid stared back at me, distress pinching his eyebrows together as I studied him intently.

“Well,” I said as soon as Sydney stopped choking and started to mop up her spilled beer. “I’m not one-hundred-percent sure what it is, but there is something about you that’s very submissive and breedable.”

Reid responded exactly the way I thought he would, which was to glare at me instead of laughing. I responded to that exactly the way he probably thought I would, which was to burst out laughing.

“Thanks,” he said, his annoyance clear. “That’s just what I wanted to hear. That I look ‘submissive and breedable.’”

“Do you have some kind of problem with people who like that kind of thing?” Sydney asked, shoving her napkin at him.

“Of course not,” Reid said, taking it so he could clean up the beer around him. “But I’m not into it.”

“Well, have you ever tried it?” I asked. “Maybe you’d actually like being pegged.”

“Why do I even bother talking to you?” he muttered.

“Because of my great rack and hilarious antics,” I said, reaching for my beer before remembering Sydney had spit in it. Which wouldn’t be a problem, since spit was just spit, but she was drinking an ultra-hoppy IPA and I doubted that would taste very good mixed with my light summer lager. “So? How do you know you’re not into it if you’ve never tried it?”

“I don’t need to try it to know I’m not interested,” he said, his cheeks red as he helped himself to my napkin so he could finish drying the table. “You can’t tell me you’d need to try taking a dick in your ass to figure out if you’d like it.”

I curled my lips down thoughtfully. “You make a good point.”

“Thank y—”

“I knew I wanted to take a dick in my ass even before I tried it,” I finished.

Sydney started cackling, her giggles broken by the occasional cough that made it clear she was still working some of her beer out of her throat, while Reid shook his head and sighed.

“Why does that not surprise me?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Why are you being so judgmental about it?”

“I’m not,” he said. “But I guess you knowing you wanted to try it is very similar to me knowing I don’t want to try it.”

“I think the real question is why are you asking?” Sydney croaked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Was someone… Hope …ing for it?”

He gave me another dirty look and didn’t say anything, which meant I was right. Surprisingly, to be honest. Hope hadn’t been his girlfriend for a super long time, but it had been long enough that this sort of thing should have come up a lot sooner. But Reid didn’t have time to answer before the server came over to take our order for another round of beer.

“How’d it come up this time?” Sydney asked after the server walked away.

“The fact that you have to say this time,” Reid muttered, shaking his head. “Hope sent me a picture of her wearing a strap-on.”

“She bought it without even checking if you were into it first?” I asked.

“She already owned it. But don’t worry. She said she cleaned it real good after the last guy.”

I tried not to laugh. I did. But all I managed to do was twist my face awkwardly and Reid sighed.

“Just laugh,” he said, so I did.

It felt good. The laughter, I mean. It wasn’t the first time that day I’d laughed, but the world hadn’t seemed as funny as it usually did after Anne-Marie discovered me and JP together two days earlier.

I’d spent Saturday in goblin mode, which was the mode where I sat around in my pyjamas, getting frustrated when I couldn’t find a new true crime documentary to hold my attention, then putting on old seasons of The Simpsons that I’d seen a thousand times before. For dinner, I’d had a handful of crackers, two packets of fruit snacks, and after realizing I didn’t have any clean knives, a couple of bites of cheese directly from the block because fuck it, I lived alone.

Sunday had also started as a goblin mode day, even though I really had to study for my Forensic Science and Law midterm. I needed decent grades on both that and my midterm essay due the following week to make up for the case studies I’d missed handing in. But around three, a soft knock at my door had me scrambling to put my chewed-on cheese block back in the fridge before answering.

“We’re going to happy hour,” Sydney had said when I answered the door.

“I don’t—”

“Please.” She’d folded her arms across her chest, her eyebrows furrowing together in worry. “Let me buy you a beer to apologize.”

I’d sighed. “Syd, I told you it was fine. You didn’t know. And you tried to get Anne-Marie to go when you realized what happened.”

“I know, but—”

“I’m not mad. Not at you, anyway.”

She’d nodded, her lips pressed into a tense line. “Have you talked to Anne-Marie since yesterday?”

I hadn’t, which Sydney already knew because Anne-Marie had been texting her about how I hadn’t answered any of Anne-Marie’s text messages.

She was sorry. I knew she was sorry. And I probably should have accepted it. Yes, she was pushy and obnoxious and completely inconsiderate sometimes, but she was a good person under all that. She was my best friend. She’d gone out of her way to help me countless times and was always the first person to defend me when I needed someone on my side.

And yeah, maybe some of it was embarrassment. The guilt of breaking whatever implied girl code there was that you weren’t supposed to fuck your friend’s siblings, even if they were kinda hot and pretty good in bed.

But the memory of the way my stomach had plummeted, the fact that she hadn’t even considered not bursting into my bedroom, that she saw how upset I was and still felt entitled to that information about my life… it kept playing over and over in my head.

If she couldn’t see how big a deal it was to me at that moment, what was going to stop her from deciding it wasn’t a big deal at all? And if she decided it wasn’t a big deal, what was going to stop her from telling people about it?

What was going to stop that information from getting back to my dad?

So I’d told Syd that no, I hadn’t replied to Anne-Marie, and I wasn’t planning to. And when Anne-Marie had texted again after Syd and I had gotten to Lou’s Pub and ordered our beers, I asked Syd if she’d tell Anne-Marie to back off.

But Syd said this was Anne-Marie backing off, since even though the whole thing started because Anne-Marie was being disgustingly pushy, Syd had to convince her not to camp outside my apartment door waiting to talk to me.

“—I said I wasn’t interested in being pegged by her,” Reid was saying to Sydney after our beers were dropped off. “And she goes, ‘Oh, so if it wasn’t me, it’d be okay?’ And I said—”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I blurted.

“Uh… yeah, pretty much,” Reid said. “But I think she’d already decided we were breaking up, so—”

“Not that.” I lifted my phone up and showed the screen to Sydney. “Did she go back to Montreal?”

Sydney frowned. “What?”

“Anne-Marie.”

“I think so. Why—”

“That’s the front door number,” I said heatedly. “So if she’s still here and trying to make me talk to her—”

“It might not be her,” Reid said. “Are you expecting a package or anything?”

“On a Sunday?” I said.

“Why not?” Sydney said. “They deliver every day now.”

“Okay, but no.” I stared at the flashing screen on my phone. “I didn’t order anything.”

“You won’t know if you don’t answer,” Reid said. “Maybe someone dialled the wrong number or something.”

“Yeah, but if it isn’t—”

“Answer it for her,” Sydney said, nudging Reid. “If it’s Anne-Marie, you can hang up.”

It was as good an idea as any, so I passed my phone to Reid.

“Hello?” he said cautiously after tapping the screen.

Then he frowned.

“Uh… Reid,” he said. “Who’s thi—” He stopped, then grimaced. “Oh. Yeah, one sec. She’s… no, no she’s not home. I’m… No, you’re mistaken. I’m not—”

“What the fuck?” I asked.

“—definitely not. Definitely not. One sec, here she is.” He shoved the phone towards me. “It’s not Anne-Marie.”

“Who…” I lifted the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

“ Bonjour, ma fille ange ,” replied a flat voice.

I stared at Reid, barely able to blink.

“Dad?” I finally said.

Sydney’s mouth dropped open.

“Why is a young man answering the buzzer for your apartment?” he asked.

“It’s connected to my phone,” I said. “He’s not—”

“Let me in,” my dad said. “ Now , Eleanor.”

“Okay, but I’m literally not home,” I said. “I’m at the pub down the street.”

“On a date?”

“With Sydney,” I said. “And her roommate, Reid.”

I don’t know if he believed me, but I didn’t have enough space in my brain to try to convince him. My dad was at my apartment and I…

I’d been living in the building for nearly four years and my dad had never visited me there.

There was only one reason I could see him changing that fact literally overnight.

And as terrified as I’d been that Anne-Marie would tell people about me and JP, it wasn’t until that moment that I realized I hadn’t thought she actually would. That deep down, I’d trusted she would see how important it was to keep quiet.

And fuck, did it hurt to think that she hadn’t.

Part of me wanted to run. A big part. But ten minutes later, I was staring at my dad standing awkwardly in my kitchen, my palms sweating.

“I know it’s a mess,” I said before he could comment on the dishes in the sink or the clothes on the floor in the living room or the trash that definitely needed to be taken out. “I’ve been busy with school.”

“I see,” my dad said, his voice unreadable.

“If I’d known you were coming, I would’ve cleaned up a bit.” I couldn’t seem to control the speed of my voice, which was stuck on rapid. “I know I should keep it clean in general but it’s midterm week and it hasn’t been a priority.”

“Mmm,” my dad said. “Perhaps I should get a cleaner in for you, then.”

Fuck.

I tried to figure out how he was going to twist that into telling me he knew I’d been hooking up with the boy next door and that he was disowning me. Maybe something about helping me clean up my act? Clean up my messes? Or that no professional cleaner would be able to hide the dirty things I’d been doing?

Or maybe he was going to be more subtle in his accusations. He could casually say that getting a cleaner would leave me more time for other things, like hooking up with JP.

Usually I’d say he was offering it as an attempt at bribery. Or blackmail. But neither of those things made sense if he was here because Anne-Marie had told him I was sleeping with her brother. My dad wouldn’t bother trying to bribe me to not sleep around. He’d just cut me off. So—

“Nellie?” my dad said when I didn’t say anything.

“I don’t need a cleaner,” I said.

“I can have Pierre look into someone for you,” he said. “So you have a bit more time to focus on your schoolwork.”

I stayed silent, waiting for him to drop the rest of the proverbial shoe.

But he didn’t.

He nodded brusquely, glancing around. My apartment wasn’t especially big, but it wasn’t small, either. It was technically a two bedroom, though I only had a desk and some bookshelves in the smaller one. My kitchen was a good size and the living room had space for a comfortable couch, an armchair, and a square storage ottoman, with room left over to let me sprawl on the floor when I used the coffee table as a study space.

But with my dad standing there, it felt cramped. It wasn’t that he was an exceptionally large man; he wasn’t much taller than me, and I teetered on the line of short as far as women went.

He just made everything else feel small.

“Did you, um, want something to drink?” I asked when the silence had stretched on and my dad still hadn’t said anything. “I have some Coke. Or water.”

“No,” he said.

I swallowed nervously. “Okay. Did you just stop by for a visit or—”

“No.”

That wasn’t surprising.

“I am here to ask a favour.”

That also wasn’t surprising. I mean, it was, in that I thought he was there to tell me I was a disgusting disappointment for getting caught having sex with JP Marchand, but the idea of my dad needing a favour wasn’t all that new. In fact, I could almost guess what it was: he was having a party, or there was a gala event, or he needed me to convince Claire Martelle to make her mother give him more money.

But the way he shifted in place, then cleared his throat and laced his hands together in front of him like he was suddenly uncertain…

That was unusual.

“What favour?” I asked when he didn’t say anything else.

My dad squared his shoulders. “I have proposed to Kimberlee.”

“Proposed what?” I asked.

He flicked an annoyed glance towards me. “Marriage, Nellie.”

That didn’t answer the question of what he needed from me. It just led to more questions. But as much as I wanted to blurt out some of those questions—mainly “What the fuck?!” and “Are you crazy?” and “Is she crazy?”—I held all but one back.

“And she said yes?” I asked.

His mouth tightened into a line. “She did.”

“Oh,” I said. “Congratulations.”

He nodded brusquely. “Thank you.”

“And this has to do with the favour you need?” I asked.

“Correct.” He took a shallow breath. “We would like to have an engagement party.”

I fucking knew it. “Dad—”

“I understand you are busy,” he said. “We have not picked a date. Our proposition would be the Friday after Thanksgiving, but Kimberlee wanted to know when would work best for you. The party itself will be a small, intimate dinner, so there will be no need for you to have hair or makeup done prior to the event. That way, you could come to Montreal after your classes are done and be home late that night or early Saturday morning, if you would like to stay overnight and travel the next day. I can arrange for a town car to pick you up and bring you home if you would like. Then you do not have to drive and could instead study or relax while en route.”

I didn’t know what to say.

All of it was reasonable. Thoughtful. Considerate of the excuses I’d given him time and time again.

And completely unsettling, since “reasonable,” “thoughtful,” and “considerate” were not words I’d ever once thought about my father.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why?” he repeated, raising his eyebrows.

“Why is it so important for me to be there?”

It was a risky question. I half-expected it to backfire, to burn away the uncharacteristic nervousness in the undertones of my dad’s voice as he snapped that it was important because he said so , like I owed him anything he asked for because I was, above any other meaningful part of my identity, his daughter, and that he had no obligation to explain his reasoning to me.

But it didn’t.

“We would like to share this announcement with our close friends and family,” my dad said. “Kimberlee’s parents and her brother and sister-in-law, as well as their children, will all hopefully be there. She has a relatively large family.” He paused, not quite looking at me. “You are my family, Nellie.”

He didn’t stay much longer. Just long enough to ask some tense questions about my classes and pay little attention to the answers I gave him, then tell me he’d have Pierre get in touch to arrange a ride for me to Montreal.

“I don’t need a ride,” I said. “I’ll drive myself.”

“I do not want to impede on your study schedule,” he said.

“It won’t. I’d just rather have my car with me so if there’s anything else I want to do while I’m there…”

I trailed off, a pang of something regretful in my chest.

Because there was usually only one other thing I wanted to do in Montreal, and I wasn’t sure where things stood with him.