Taming the Bad Boy Was a Mistake novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Bleach

The answering machine beeped and went quiet.

Nobody said anything.

Ruby put down her fork very carefully.

His mom turned the water back on and kept washing the same plate.

Jesse stood up, walked to the wall and pressed delete.

Then he unplugged the machine.

He put it in the cupboard over the fridge, behind the cereal.

"Who wants ice cream?" he said.

"Me," said Ruby, too fast.

That was all.

On the drive back, he didn't say a word.

I held on to his waist on the dark road and felt how stiff his back was under the jacket.

The purple bar had gone up to eighty-nine.

[Ask him,] said the System. [Ask what that was.]

"No," I said into his back.

[Host, we have twenty-nine days.]

"I know how many days we have."

Jesse turned his head a little. "What?"

"Nothing. Cold."

He slowed down so the wind wasn't as bad.

At my dorm he took the helmet from me and hung it on the handlebar.

He looked like he was waiting for the questions.

Who was that, what does he want, why did you unplug it.

I had a hundred of them lined up.

I didn't ask a single one.

"Thank you for taking me," I said. "I loved your mom. Ruby's terrifying."

His shoulders came down an inch.

"She liked you."

"She called you a Q-tip."

"She called you real," he said. "That's the nicest thing she's said in a year."

The bar slid back to eighty-six.

On Wednesday, Bea and I were eating cereal on my bed when somebody knocked on our door.

Bea opened it.

Jesse stood in the hall holding a plastic bag from the drugstore.

"Hey," he said.

Bea looked at the bag, then at me, then back at him.

"Is that a body?"

"Bleach," said Jesse.

He held the bag out to me, but he didn't let go of it.

"Callie. Would you help me take the black out?"

My heart did something stupid.

"You want it white again?"

"I always wanted it white."

"I know," I said. "I'm sorry I..."

"You've got four sorrys left," he said. "Don't spend one on hair."

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