Pretend To Be Nice (3)

Science! Girl & Chained Lightning #3: honesty, advice with ulterior motives, and all the family drama.

Science! Girl & Chained Lightning is a spinoff of Radiance; both stories take place around 2013 in a world where atypical abilities have become increasingly common, with the storyline following a group of minor-league superheroes based in Washington, DC. This one is all about belligerent not-quite-a-couple Dr. Marissa Cotlin and her favorite test subject Baz Grimes, who clearly adore each other but keep finding new and interesting ways to avoid getting the point across.

Previously, Marissa and Sebastian struck a deal to go to her sister’s wedding together as friends. This time, that’s…oooooh. That’s not working out at all.

<#2 || Directory || #4>

If the rehearsal dinner was any indication, the rest of this weekend was somehow going to go even worse than Marissa had feared.  

Things had started out so optimistically. It was Friday, so she’d taken the day off and met Sebastian at DCA. They made their connection without a problem. The conversation was pleasant. He didn’t mind driving. Really, he’d been perfectly decent about the whole thing…suspiciously decent, in retrospect. Well—he had threatened to carry her through the airport if she didn’t stop dragging her feet, but Marissa still didn’t believe he would have followed through with that. Not with him carrying both bags already, and everybody watching. Surely not. He had to have some limits.  

From across the room, Sebastian turned his head to catch her gaze, flashing her one side of a smug grin without breaking his thread of conversation with one of her uncles. Marissa tensed slightly, one hand sliding across the edge of the table she was standing at. Did he have limits? …no. She was definitely leaning towards no.  

A pair of slim, heavily tanned arms descended around her shoulders from behind. “Marissa,” Morgan said, hugging her tightly. “This is probably the only time I’ll get to see you, so thanks for coming, hi, bye.” 

“Hey! Let me see you, anyway.” Marissa half turned around, still holding onto her little sister’s arms so she couldn’t run off. When had they hung out last? Four years ago, maybe? Morgan looked as cute as ever, but not at all the younger woman she wanted to remember. “All right, go on,” she said, smiling despite a sudden guilty feeling. “And if you need somebody to say no to the wedding planner for you, call me.” 

“Ohmigosh, where were you six months ago? You cannot imagine…” Morgan refocused her attention over Marissa’s shoulder, waved cheerfully to somebody else behind her, and then was gone.  

All right. Maybe she could have tried to come home a little more often than twice in the last decade. Every time she tried it, though, it reminded her why she didn’t—all the unmet expectations, all these people who thought they still knew who she was. And just think, Mallory wasn’t even here yet. They’d had to move their flight back for some surgery Luke was called in for, and had ended up missing the entire dinner. Such as it was, Mom would have added if she’d heard her say that. Marissa didn’t have a problem with keeping things casual; there was catering, anyway. The part that was messing with her head was that this event space was just a few miles away from where they’d grown up in Pasadena, and she’d actually been in here for parties before. High school was the last thing she wanted to be thinking about while trying to keep Sebastian from completely wrecking what few family relationships she did bother to maintain, but here she was having flashbacks to freshman year anyway.

Ugh. She could just imagine him like that, too. He would have been, what, class of ’98? That tracked. If some heartthrob senior had taken any notice of her existence, even if it was to trip her into a puddle, he’d probably still be living rent-free in her head.

No, come on, she was trying to think about other things…what did I come over here for, anyway?

Sebastian suddenly appeared next to her and nudged her arm. “You’re standin’ in front of the ice.” 

Right. A drink. Marissa gave up on the idea of sweet tea and stepped over to the beer cooler. “I’m not talking to you,” she said, plunging in her arm to fish around for whatever might be left.  

“I’m your date. You’ll have to talk to me sometime.” 

“I don’t know, you seem to be doing just fine on your own.” 

“Hey,” Sebastian said, raising a finger like he didn’t know exactly what the problem was. “I have been exemplary. I have not hovered. Unlike some people, I don’t think I’ve said anything that wasn’t true—” 

She popped the bottle cap off forcefully. “Who says I don’t want to settle down?” 

“Five years, I’ve never known you to go on a date,” he said. “You’re married to your work, come on. Everybody knows it.” 

Marissa gritted her teeth for a moment and then took a drink to help with the fake smile. She was going to swipe the book he’d been reading and glue the last five pages together. Or, hell, she just might stay mad long enough to start lifting weights until she could put his head through drywall. Show him. Self-satisfied son of a bitch. He was her work, and she was starting to suspect that he knew it. “That doesn’t mean I couldn’t change my priorities if I wanted to.” 

“Well, if you did, it would be a surprise to me. And your mother.” 

“Yeah, and what was it you told her when you were correcting her assumptions about our relationship?” she said, dropping her voice as she leaned in. “‘God ain’t made the man who could get her to settle down.’ That’s not really the same thing, is it?” 

Leaning in had been a mistake. She didn’t usually get close enough to watch the way Sebastian’s lips moved as they twitched past ‘amused’ into ‘guess who has the upper hand here’, skimming his teeth and she. Oh. She needed to stop thinking right now. “If it’s not,” he said, “you’re welcome to prove me wrong.” 

Oh, no. She wasn’t falling for that trick again. 

Marissa stepped back to the wall and leaned sideways against it. “What—anyway, what am I supposed to have stretched the truth about, exactly?” 

“So.” Sebastian followed her, bracing himself on the wall with an arm that rested so close to her head, he could have touched her hair. “You don’t remember any of that conversation where your stepdad said you couldn’t keep me, because this is an Air Force family?” 

“Of course I do,” she said, flicking her eyes up to meet his. “You laughed, even though I told you his jokes are dumb and you shouldn’t encourage them.” 

“It was funny,” he said. “I meant the part where you said I’m not tall enough for you anyway.” 

Ah. That. Blatant lies, obviously, but he should be able to take it if he was going to dish it out. Marissa didn’t see why it should have annoyed him so much. “Well, you’re not,” she said, tossing her head like she didn’t care. “Six foot and up. I have standards.”

Sebastian moved in closer, and she held her ground to prove—what exactly? But it was too late to shift away now. He’d still see every detail of her reaction as she did. “Sweetheart,” he said quietly—wickedly—“you already can’t handle this much of me, and you want more?”

Marissa felt her mouth fall open without her willing it, and saw the curve of his mustache shift as he seemed to think about smiling, but didn’t. It was all in his eyes. They were daring her to even try to respond, when she’d walked right into that and she knew it. She could say so—back down and let him win. Most people would. She just couldn’t bring herself to do it. But if she tried to escalate, oh, she would lose that too. He had her pinned down. Worse, she liked it. The heat spilling onto her face said as much, and loudly.

She glanced away, desperate for any way out that wasn’t just saying yes, all of you, everything, yes, and landed on a savior. Mallory. Mal had finally made it here, for some conversation with whoever was still standing around if for nothing else. Marissa ducked around him and called her older sister over, hugging her immediately less because she wanted to and more to hide that she didn’t have her breath back yet. Based on Mal’s grin when she pulled back, it hadn’t worked.

“Well, introduce me,” she said before Marissa could get any other words in.

“Oh,” Marissa said, turning to confirm that it was Sebastian now standing behind her. He was managing to be perfectly calm about all of this. “Sebastian, this is my sister Mallory and that’s her husband Luke over there. They’re the ones who live in Atlanta. Mal, this is, uh—this is Sebastian.”

She had already given him the basics, but she suddenly realized that she didn’t know if she could trust him to not repeat the snarky bits. ‘A few years older than me, taller, wears glasses’; ‘oncologist married to a neurosurgeon’: fine. ‘When I say she’s put together, I mean her life is a thousand-piece puzzle in a picture frame’; ‘dude was dressed like Sephiroth, how was I supposed to know he was a med student?’: please don’t.

Well, they had already started chatting while Marissa zoned out, and thankfully it didn’t seem that Sebastian felt like sabotaging her any further right now. Mallory looked completely taken with him, and he was just offering to get her something to drink.

“Is there ginger ale?” Mal asked, looking around to the ice chest.

“Yeah, I think so…you want ice?”

“Yes, thanks,” she said sweetly.

He handed her the plastic cup and turned back to Marissa with an innocent smile. “Remind me, Rissa, which cousins was it I’m not supposed to be hangin’ out with? They sounded like my kind of people.”

She would have tried to stop him, but they were clearly the lesser of two evils at the moment. “Aunt Rhonda’s boys. Rod’s over by the door in the blue shirt.”

“Thanks. I’ll let you two catch up, just come find me when you want to go.”

Marissa sighed. “Please don’t punch anybody.”

“When have I ever…Mallory, don’t you let her punch anyone, all right?” he said.

“Don’t worry! I’m used to babysitting this little hothead,” Mal said, waving him off. Marissa watched him go without thinking about it—how the hell could he look so good—only to look back to Mallory and see her grinning widely again.

“Shut up,” Marissa said preemptively, looking her over suspiciously. “Wait, no. Don’t shut up. Would you care to explain why you’re drinking ginger ale on vacation when the alcohol’s right behind you?”

Mallory shifted uncomfortably on the spot. “Maybe I wanted to.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Have you gotten any better at keeping secrets?” she said, returning the suspicious glance.

“Much better,” Marissa promised. Still, Mallory gave her another hard look before taking her by the arm and dragging her off to the hallway that led to the emergency exit.

“All right, yes,” Mal said. “I’m pregnant. But I’m not going to bring it up at somebody else’s wedding, that’s basic manners. So keep it quiet.”

She nodded slowly, more surprised than she’d expected to be. “Of course. Um—congratulations, right?”

“Yes, you dork, that is the usual thing to say. Thank you.” Mallory looked out at the room and shook her head. “I figured I should let Mom’s blood pressure come down a little first, anyway…but that’s beside the point. You need to explain what’s going on with the bedroom eyes.”

Marissa had to lower her beer very quickly. “The what?”

“I saw that whole conversation, so do not play dumb with me,” she said. “You made this sound complicated.”

“It is.”

Mal sipped at her ginger ale. “Is he married?”

“Wha—no.”

“Mean drunk? Baptist? Moving to South Africa next week? Has a stalker ex?”

“Mal! Nothing like that.”

“So what’s keeping you from letting him rip your clothes off and put you both out of your misery?” she said pointedly.

Marissa blushed so quickly that she actually felt dizzy for a moment. “First of all, thanks a lot for that mental image,” she mumbled. It wasn’t going to help her answer if all she could think about was the kind of fantasy scenario that she now quickly scrolled past when dealing with hero fandom, because it all made her so irrationally angry. Maybe that was the real problem. True, Sebastian could be infuriating, but she was quickly coming to realize that it just made her want him more. There had been ethics issues, but they were neatly out of the way now. Does he want me was starting to feel like a silly question; he liked her enough to have come along, and he certainly wanted something. Mal seemed pretty sure it was sex. Which—if true, fine. Totally fine. More than fine. But she wanted his respect as much as his attention, and—thinking honestly, for once, about her worst fears—she’d rather have never seen him again after that fight than ever have to share Sebastian with anyone else. Maybe if he was typical she could have made herself trust that wouldn’t happen, but she had a front-row seat to how other women looked at his alter ego. And if some super-girl did decide to take up with him? There was no chance.

Of course, if she said it like that, she’d only sound insecure. Maybe she was. But, damn it, didn’t she have good reason to be? “Um,” she said again. “Would you believe me if I said I can’t really explain it without an NDA?”

“No.” Mallory frowned. “Well, maybe. That’s the other thing I wanted to ask about. Marissa, what do you do? ’Cause, you know, nobody actually knows.”

“Oh, really?” she said bitterly. “What I heard when I went for my PhD was that they’re not ‘real doctors’ and it doesn’t count, so I didn’t think anyone wanted to know.”

“I didn’t say that,” Mal said.

Marissa tucked one arm tightly across her stomach, defensive. “You weren’t not saying it, either.”

“I know,” she sighed, nodding out towards the others. “And I’m sorry about that. But that’s our whole problem, isn’t it? Nobody ever says anything, so it can all stay fine and pretty right up until it blows up.”

“That sounds about right.” She took a drink and weighed the question she hadn’t dared ask yet against the risks of allowing Mal to keep pressing her. “Speaking of. Do you know if Dad’s coming tomorrow?”

Mallory laughed once in surprise. “Why would he? He’s never come to anything else.”

True enough. Even when their parents were still married, you could count on Dad to be mysteriously missing in action more often than “catching up on work” could really justify. Sure, he worked for NASA. As a chemist, in a lab. Marissa had come to decide that he simply didn’t like them very much—well, most of them. “Yeah, but Morgan’s his favorite.”

“How do you figure that? I always thought you were his favorite. Morgan’s Mom’s favorite.”

“Me? I don’t even have his phone number.” Marissa shook her head. “And you were obviously Mom’s favorite. Why can’t you be more like Mallory? At least once a week, seriously.”

“Believe me, there were plenty of things I wasn’t good enough at, either,” Mal said darkly. “But of course you’re Dad’s favorite. You’re just like him.”

“You take that back!”

“When’s the last time you came to anything, Dr. Cotlin, Jr.?” she said.

Marissa opened her mouth a little and then shut it again, guilty, before trying again. “I do want to see everyone more often. It’s just a nightmare trying to get away from…uh. Well. From work.”

“Uh-huh,” Mallory said.

“I still failed chemistry my first time through,” she muttered. “He would have disowned me if he was paying attention.”

“What, did you want him to?”

“I don’t know.” Maybe. It would have been something.

They were both quiet for a minute, but Mallory managed to come up with a transition back to her own point first. “You know it would be better if we did talk, right?” she said. “At least, maybe you and I could be honest with each other for once. We’re not kids anymore. It might be nice.”

Marissa looked at her skeptically. On the one hand, she would ordinarily never have given Mal the satisfaction of confessing how much she coveted her beautiful, perfect life. Everything was a competition, and the only way to be sure you were the sister on top had always been for someone else to admit she was jealous. On the other hand, she had been trying to let her family get to her less. If her cool rebel image crumbled a little, it could only do so much damage. “You could have just Googled me if you wanted to know what I’m up to,” she said. “I’m listed as staff on my lab’s website, and the NLM has my coauthored papers up on Pubmed.”

Mallory smacked her across the arm. “I’m your sister! I shouldn’t have to Google you!”

“Fine.” Marissa thought for a moment about what the most accessible starting point was. “All right. You know the blood test for superpowers everybody’s mad about?”

“That and everything else OctoCorp does, yeah.”

“OctoCorp just commercialized it,” she said. “We had a major funding gap coming up, so we sold them the patent to cover it. It’s based on my research.”

Mallory’s eyebrows jumped up under her bangs. “You mean, your research into…wait. Wait. No, you’re not serious.”

Oh, had she—had she already put two and two together? That was fast, but she was the smart one. This was exactly why Marissa didn’t tend to be honest with her. “Maybe two NDAs,” she said, to underscore the point. “I’d have to double-check which provisions of HIPAA we’re covered by.”

“Holy shit. You really don’t make things easy for yourself.” Mal looked down thoughtfully. “Okay, well…I know how to ask appropriately vague questions. Like, are we talking about serious reasons you can’t sleep with him, or just you having hangups?”

“I don’t have hangups,” Marissa said, returning that smack with a scowl. “But…I don’t know, I started that the wrong way. It’s more…” Ugh. Honesty. “I’m nowhere near good enough for him, Mal, and I cannot figure out why he hasn’t started dating some other girl yet. I don’t see how Sebastian could be serious about me. Even if he is, I don't see how it could work.”

“No, I do understand that,” she said. “Not, like, anything against you. But you’re not crazy, I get it. I know that feeling.”

“Thanks. That helps, I guess.”

“Good.” Mallory seemed to be considering something. “You said ‘yet’. So this’s been going on, what, a few months now?”

Marissa took a drink to stall. Months? How fast exactly was she supposed to have been moving? “Define ‘this’.”

“Like…okay, I’ll simplify it. When did you last notice him paying attention to other women?”

Marissa blinked into the middle distance.

…maybe…never?

Her sister poked her. “You missed something, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” she said reluctantly. Sure, Sebastian clearly knew he was attractive—but she only knew that because he flaunted it at her. To get a rise out of her. To laugh at how touchy and possessive she could be for, very possibly, no reason at all. “It, uh…I’ve known him a while, and it’s been a few…years. Ow, come on.”

“Sometimes I can’t believe I’m related to a blockhead like you. Years!” Mallory shoved her again, but more gently. “Don’t you two have any friends who could have locked you in a storage closet? I think he likes you, Marissa.”

“Maybe,” she said, blushing again.

Mal shook her head. “All right, look. The wedding’s not until tomorrow afternoon, it’s 8 o’clock on a Friday, and we’re half an hour from downtown. You’re going to borrow my flashy earrings of plus-two confidence and take that man on a date, okay? Get some drinks. Don’t let him take you back to the hotel until you’re sure you’re getting him into bed. You can do this.”

“I don’t know. I mean—” Just the thought of suggesting…no. That was terrifying. She could barely get Sebastian to seriously hold a conversation with her these days, and she was supposed to jump straight to sex? Mal had obviously been married too long to remember what a nightmare this was. “No way. I can’t.”

“I promise, you can. This is your best shot,” Mallory said firmly. “If it doesn’t work out, it’s fine. It was just a fling you had in another city, in a weird mood. But if it does work out, that’s super romantic, right?”

The reflex to dig in her heels under pressure was good for one thing, anyway: Marissa could always tell when somebody was trying to push. “You seem awfully invested in this,” she said warily.

Mallory shrugged—too casually. “Like you said, you did introduce me to Luke. I owe you.”

She crossed her arms. “Are you sure that’s all? You know, while we’re being honest with each other.”

Mal shuffled her feet back and forth for a second and then broke down. “Look, I'm only a few weeks along. If you got pregnant right now—”

“Mallory!” Marissa only barely remembered to keep the volume down, her hands clenching by her sides so she wouldn’t flail. “Oh my f…no, what the hell! Is that all this was about?”

“You cannot imagine how much pressure I am about to be under,” Mal pleaded shamelessly. “Mom’s been bugging me about this for years and at least if she has two impending grandchildren, it'll divide her attention. Please.”

“No. No way.”

Mal took her by the shoulder and leaned in. “Marissa. Look me in the face and tell me he wouldn’t give you the most beautiful baby.”

Damn it. Mal had her there. The very thought of those pretty eyes in a chubby little pink face made it hard to focus on an argument. “I—I don’t know. With me contributing, I think it’s fifty-fifty at best,” she said reluctantly.

“Fine, then,” Mal said, rolling her eyes. “Get married and have two.”

“Mal. This is basic math. Two’s still only a 75% probability. To get over 90%, you need to flip a coin at least four ti…what?”

“Oh, nothing. I just can’t tell whether you’re being a nerd, or conspiring to take over the world.” Mallory squeezed and then let her go. “You know what? Don’t do it for me. Do it for yourself, because you will literally never hear the end of it if you let him get away.”

She could see that. From the looks of it, Sebastian had put all the charm on and actually managed to make himself pretty popular. Marissa had hoped he would be open to hanging around on the margins and snickering at her immature, bitchy commentary, but either he was trying to make a good impression, or he really was doing his best to ruin her weekend. Honestly? The two options seemed about equally likely. Leave it to that jerk to find a way to taunt her from the moral high ground.

“I’ll think about it,” Marissa said, finishing her beer. “No promises.”

And she did think about it, for roughly fifteen seconds while walking between tables and dodging a few of the groom’s relatives as they picked up chairs. The answer, clearly, was no. First, if Mallory wasn’t too biased to be believed, she was awfully close to it. Second, she didn’t even want to instigate a tipsy vacation hookup. Mal had obviously calculated that she could be counted on to do the impulsive and irresponsible thing, which—all right, yes, usually she could. Fair enough. There was a reason she’d cut her teeth on boys who let her push them around. Sebastian, however, would not be steamrolled, and he never would have held her interest for this long otherwise. She enjoyed his pushback. She wanted him to fight her. Whether she won had stopped really mattering months ago.

The thing was, she didn’t want him to push back on this. They had been through all that before, her accidentally exposing a nerve, him unknowingly hitting it. She’d only just gotten over the last one, and she didn’t know how she could trust him. Marissa did not dare risk showing enough of her heart to let him hurt it any more. Sebastian could take some damn risks, himself; if he really was interested, one of these days he was bound to get tired of letting her push him away.

That was fine, right? The way things were was enough. At least, it was better than breaking.

Pretty ideas. As usual, they didn’t survive pushing through the door and actually seeing Sebastian standing a few feet away at the edge of the portico, staring vacantly into the cold rain as it splashed from the pavement back onto his shoes. The glow of a smoldering cigarette hung loosely from one hand, presumably thanks to a cousin. She hadn’t seen him smoke in a couple of years now. It was just the last inch or so left between his fingers, probably about to burn them if he forgot about it for much longer. The door closed heavily behind her, but he didn’t react.

“I’m not kissing you like that,” she said, reaching for the first outrageous thing that came to mind. Anything that might shake him out of it.

Sebastian started, drawing back one corner of his mouth reflexively before letting it relax into something less than a smile. “I figured. ’S why I quit.”

That line of conversation felt dangerous to pursue. Instead, she moved in beside him and looked up to watch his face from the corner of one eye. “You okay?”

“Yeah, it’s cool,” he said. “Just your folks get loud.”

Marissa knew him too well to believe it was cool. His eyes were still lowered, still not quite focused on the puddles in front of them. “Sorry,” she said. “I guess I forgot to warn you about that.”

“’S fine. Y’all actually like each other, for the most part. It’s nice.”

That felt like it should mean something, and Marissa stood there silently, searching her memory until she found it. She had taken his family history, after all. Only she’d blocked it out because he hadn’t been out of the Army long enough yet to know how much gruesome detail was appropriate.

—It looks like you just crossed out next of kin?

—Yes, ma’am.

—Do you, uh—so, deceased, or—

—Yes, ma’am.

—Right. Sorry. Uh…I still need to get medical history out to one degree of separation, if you can.

—Yes, ma’am. Not much medical involved, except after the fact.

What idiot had put her in charge of something as delicate as mapping out what was definitely a violent and/or self-inflicted death and who might just have gone missing twenty years ago, Marissa didn’t know…no, she’d volunteered, hadn’t she? Of course she had.

Stupid, all around. Sebastian had rebuilt himself so completely in the meantime that she’d forgotten what a disaster he’d come from, but she shouldn’t have. And here she went dragging him home and throwing him in at the deep end with the chaos monsters.

She let herself sag sideways until she was leaning against him. He shifted that arm behind her, and she curled into the invitation with a silent apology for being too tall to fold neatly into his side. Her face hit his shoulder instead, pressing further into his shirt as she reached but found she still couldn’t wrap her arms all the way around him. He was warm, solid, immovable. His hand settled heavily on her shoulder. She could feel the pressure through her thin sweater as each finger moved slowly, finding a rhythm around the time she found she was able to breathe again, relieved to have been accepted.

Sebastian swore suddenly, and she jerked back against the arm still wrapped around her. He was shaking his other hand out, the cigarette butt sizzling somewhere in the darkness. “Sorry,” he muttered, letting go. Marissa stepped away awkwardly and wrapped her arms around herself at the sudden chill. “You stay there. I’ll get the car.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

He walked out into the rain, and rather than give herself any room to process, she reached into her purse for her phone. She was still looking for it when he pulled up and leaned over to open the car door. “I must have set my phone down somewhere,” she said. “I’m just gonna run inside and look for it.”

“All right. You want me to call it?”

“Oh—” No, he was already dialing. Crap. Normally that would have been a nice thought, except that he’d messed with her contact-specific sound files a few months back. And she’d kind of liked some of them.

Marissa turned to go in, but of course, the door opened before she got there. Mallory, grinning practically ear to ear, must have already had it in hand when the call went through.

“—on fiiiire, it's chain lightnin’, too hot to fight, hot on the heels of a Saturday night—”¹

“I guess this has to be yours then, huh?” Mal said gleefully, pulling the phone away as Marissa reached to take it.

“Give it here,” she growled. “I will end you.”

“Ooh, so touchy.” Mal handed it back, and she hung up before the ringtone could loop back to the bridge. “Y’all have fun tonight, mmkay?”

“Just for that, no. See you tomorrow, babe.” Marissa hugged her and slunk into the car, turning to the door as she shut it because she knew the look that was going to be on Sebastian’s face. There he was in the reflection, face crinkled up like he was genuinely tickled.

“You didn’t change it back,” he said.

She slumped down past the window into the rental’s absurdly low-slung passenger seat. “That would have required effort. And it was mildly funny.”

He chuckled. “You know that song ain’t actually about—”

“Yeah, asshole, I know. Just drive.”

Sebastian didn’t stop smiling. Down in the bucket seat, despite the streetlights leaving her no place to hide, Marissa allowed herself to smile slightly too.

<#2 || Directory || #4>

Thanks for reading! Science! Girl is posting weeklyish through the beginning of October. Next week…I’m sure it’ll be fine. Everybody cries at weddings. Dad never even comes to these things. Totally fine.

If you enjoyed this episode, you can show it by leaving a like or comment, sharing this post, or just continuing to read. :) Everyone’s welcome in the fan club!

1. What else was Baz going to change his own ringtone to but 38 Special’s Southern rock classic “Chain Lightnin’”? (As previously referenced on his character sheet.)