Free Drip Drop Teardrop, a Novella by Samantha Young

it, my mom,
who spoiled me rotten, said maybe for Christmas. So I got inside
the doll house and wouldn’t come out. The manager came over, other
customers were looking. Ugh. My mom was so embarrassed she bought
the house. I think I played in it twice.” She shook her head, that
deep buried guilt starting to burrow its way out. “When I was
eight, I watched Something to Talk
About with my mom and decided I needed a
pony. I gave my parents the silent treatment for an entire month.”
She raised her eyebrows ignoring his smirk. “Do you have any idea
how difficult that is for a little girl? A month of no talking. My
parents were going out of their minds, arguing with one another, my
dad telling my mom to give in, my mom telling him they had to have
some boundaries. God, I remember it like it was yesterday. Anyway…
they eventually signed me up for riding lessons and the first time
they put me on the horse I screamed and cried, terrified of the
damn thing. My mom was pretty smug about that to my
dad.”
    Brennus was shaking with
laughter. “You sound horrifying.”
    She wanted to laugh at
herself. But she couldn’t. “And then when I was ten, our class did
a project on capital cities and I was given London. I did all this
stuff on Buckingham Palace and the Royal Family, on the Royal
Ballet, on the West End… you know, the stuff little girl’s dreams
are made of,” she whispered now. “So after another endless semester
of tantrums my parents cancelled our annual trip to the Cape and
booked us a trip to Europe.”
    A chill fell over the
room and this time Brennus had nothing to do with it.
    She couldn’t meet his
eyes.
    “ Avery-”
    “ You know
what!” Avery stood up abruptly, a false smile pasted on her face.
“I could go pizza for lunch. I know this great place… in
Westchester, believe it or not.”
    When he
smiled softly and stood up to take her hand without saying a word,
without forcing her to admit what was buried deep down inside,
without forcing her to wonder if she became a person at all or was
merely moulded into someone who already existed because she was the
kind of girl who hadn’t gotten her parent’s killed, Avery’s heart
seemed to miss a couple of beats. Willpower , she whispered
inwardly, willpower .
    ***
     
    “ You know I
was a real dick when I was a mortal.”
    Avery nearly choked on
her pizza at Brennus’ random comment. She snorted and coughed,
trying not to laugh harder as he grinned wickedly at
her.
    They were
sitting in Papa’s Pizza eating the most delicious pepperoni pizza she had
ever tasted, munching in comfortable silence as she tried to shrug
off her moment of naked vulnerability with him. He had gotten
things out of her that no one had. And he hadn’t even done anything
but ask a couple of ‘innocent’ questions. So when he called himself
a dick in a family restaurant, it made her feel better. Just as he
intended.
    She wiped her mouth with
a napkin and smiled. “What were you like?”
    He shrugged, smirking.
“Not very nice.”
    “ Oh, come on,
you have to give me more than that.”
    Brennus nodded, his eyes
twinkling. He lay down his slice and wiped his fingers with his
napkin. “I was very arrogant.”
    Avery snorted. “Tell me
something I don’t know.”
    He laughed and she could
see people looking at them from the corner of her eye. She would be
searching too for the source of that gorgeous, chocolate laughter.
But she knew that wasn’t why they were looking. It startled her to
realise that they had been sitting there all this time and until
now she hadn’t felt the stares of the public who were intrigued and
repulsed by Brennus’ shockingly scarred face. The more time she
spent around him, the more the scar just became a part of him. It
had stopped bothering her. And when she was with him, she didn’t
panic when people stared.
    “ OK.” He
chuckled. “I deserved that. But I mean I was a snob. Arrogant.
Superior. Often unkind because of it. Saying it was