Berries and Greed

“Mom, please.” I slid down fully onto the floor, the back of my head bumping over the radiator. “Please stop talking.”

“Fine,” she said snippily, lifting her coffee cup to her mouth. “Forgive me for wanting to make sure my baby is happy and fulfilled. I know that unpleasantness with Agma left you… out of sorts, and I’m just saying, Beryl seems like a lovely woman.”

“She does,” Kiti agreed, then smirked at me. “She’s pretty. Too pretty for you, buttface.”

I scowled at her before pulling my hood over my head. “Yeah, she’s… I know she is. But we’re not—It’s just—Look, next time you visit, can you maybe not show her all my embarrassing baby photos, please?”

“Why not?” Mom said defiantly, but her eyes grew teary. “They’re not embarrassing. You were a beautiful baby. My tiny little boy, all scrunched up with those big eyes and that shock of black hair.”

“At least she didn’t tell Beryl about that embarrassing phase you went through where you’d tug on your tail in public,” Kiti piped up, shooting me an evil grin. “Little weirdo.”

I straightened, glaring at her. “Oh, that’s real rich coming from you. You think we didn’t all hear the rumours after high school about you giving Gogi Jumin tailjobs behind the yoghurt place you worked at?”

Kiti’s ears fluttered. “Shut your face, dickbrain.”

“Kiti,” Mom gasped, then cocked her head. “I did like the frozen yoghurt from that place. What was it called?”

“Yogurgus,” Kiti and I said in unison, before she flung a pillow at my head.

I grunted, unsuccessfully trying to catch it before it smacked me in the face. “Look, I really have to get back to work.” Not that I’d been working before they got here. “This has been a fantastic unexpected visit and all, but…”

“Alright, darling, we’ll leave you to it.” Mom drained her coffee cup before setting it down. “Bring Beryl over for dinner soon. We’ll arrange a family dinner so she can meet the rest of your siblings.”

I grunted noncommittally, heaving myself to my feet to see them out. After giving Mom a kiss on the cheek and a long hug, I punched Kiti’s shoulder weakly in goodbye. She responded by yanking on both my space buns until they flopped down over my ears.

“Asshole.” I covered her face with my hand to push her back, but she just snickered and flicked my forehead before sweeping out of the house.

The moment they were gone and I was finally alone, I shifted into my true form and went to take a long, soothing bubble bath to try and recover from the entire ordeal.

Staring morosely at the ceiling, I took a deep drag of my joint and tapped the ash off into the tray balanced precariously on the lip of the tub. I knew that when I got out, I’d probably already have some snarky texts from my sister. Probably a couple of missed calls from my mother wanting to talk about Beryl some more.

As the shade made me sink deeper into the water until bubbles tickled my chin, my mind wandered back to what had happened just before they arrived. Or rather, what had almost happened. My gut clenched tight.

Had Beryl really been about to kiss me?

Maybe I’d just been seeing what I wanted to see. What I was desperate to see when she looked at me. Maybe she’d just been about to wipe food off my face or something. That certainly wasn’t outside the realms of possibility. In fact, that was a far more likely scenario than Beryl wanting to kiss me. Why would she want to kiss me? I was a loner introvert who was high fifty percent of the time and did nothing but watch TV and eat. She was beautiful and confident and becoming more outgoing now that she was socialising with people at work. I bet she had people flirting with her all the time, and flirting was a skill that had taken one look at me and gone, Heh. No. No point wasting it on that guy.

I’d seen the human she worked with. Gavin. Stupid human Gavin with his stupid brown hair, who was the perfect height to hug and kiss Beryl without having to hunch over awkwardly like some lanky goblin.

Beryl had made it clear that she wasn’t interested in me that way when we made our arrangement. Maybe she couldn’t be attracted to a demiurgus. Maybe her time with the cult, around all their weird, fervent sex stuff, had forced her to block off the part of her brain that would ever allow her to find a demiurgus attractive. It would make sense. Like a survival tactic so she didn’t inadvertently get sucked in.

Except… there’d been a few moments over the last couple of weeks, ever since the night we’d fallen asleep together in the living room nest, where she’d give me this look. And even though I didn’t fully understand what it meant, it would make my hearts start racing and my palms get all clammy.

Evidently, I still hadn’t gotten the sweating under control in my humanoid skin.