The Journalist and Her Actor

Chapter 36

Carter was staring at me. I had grown used to that specific look, but it didn't normally rattle me so much. "How long are you going to give me that face?" I asked, my eyes on my laptop, trying to get up the courage to open a specific email with information I wasn't quite ready to face.

"How long are you going to avoid Luke?" Carter replied in answer.

I felt a second pair of eyes staring at me.

Glancing up, I took in Carter and Bowser's gazes with a raised brow.

"Really? Turning our pet turtle against me?"

Carter shrugged, holding Bowser closer to my face so I could better take in the creature's slow blinky eyed stare. "Whatever helps you get your life in check."

I scowled at him, irritated. "I am sorry about... well, everything."

It had been a week since I had blown everything up and Carter and I had moved in with Lavender for what I was determined to be a short term stay. And that week had mostly consisted of me hiding in a room that was decorated in a lot of purple, eating junk food, playing Legend of Zelda: Tears of a Kingdom, watching thriller movies, and crying... a lot.

Carter put Bowser back in his tank and sighed. "You shouldn't keep saying that. Not everything is your fault. Just... some things."

"...Thanks," I said, deadpan.

Considering how epically everything exploded in my face, pulling my little brother down with me as we were forced to flee another home, Carter was taking it all quite well.

He looked around the room, brow wrinkled in frustration. "She really likes purple, doesn't she?"

I laughed, something that sounded strange to my own ears after a week of nothing but tears, and took in Lavender's plush living room, filled with purple pillows of different shades, purple suede couches with silk silver trim, a midnight black coffee table with purple coasters, and royal purple curtains that sat open against a beautiful sunny day.

Lavender's obsession with purple fit her namesake— a purple flower, but it was still overwhelming. "It's her signature color," I said in defense of the person who had opened her home to us.

"It's... a lot," Carter said, looking like all the purple was going to leap out and dye him, forcing him into a purple color coded cult.

"Don't knock it," Lavender said, walking into her living room. "Better than your sister's penchant for bright pink."

Carter's nose wrinkled again at the image. "At least she doesn't wear it all the time," he said with a wide grin. "Pink isn't thrown up all over our house..." He trailed off, suddenly sad at the mention of home.

Lavender sighed, sitting down on the edge of her coffee table, crossing her legs at the ankles, showcasing her fluffy purple slippers in all their glory as she faced my brother. "Would it make you feel better to make fun of the other purple rooms in my house?" Lavender asked with an amused grin.

Carter and Lavender had become... frenemies. Or whatever amused tolerance could be defined as. Carter who was a very honest person respected Lavender's same tendency but wasn't used to someone else who didn't pull their punches.

Everyone always treated him with kid gloves, the sick child that needed to be handled delicately. And after that article came out, I could tell people at school treated him differently too, making it worse. But Lavender refused to treat him gently. It was good for him, even if it left him a little surprised.

Carter nodded, warming up to the idea of roasting the purple queen. Lavender smiled gesturing for him to follow. "Good. Because there is a lot to make fun of."