Page 36 of The Write Stuff

My night was quickly going off the rails. I really should have seen it coming.

10

TEN

Ihated Huxley Ambrose.

I’d never hated anybody in my life — not even the woman who gave me the bad pixie cut when I was 18 after I told her I wanted to look like one of the contestants on America’s Next Top Model — but I hated Huxley.

He was just such a jerk.

I could barely look at him over the course of dinner. I felt his eyes on me several times, though. Thankfully, I liked everybody else at the table. They managed to keep the conversation light despite the pall that had settled over it when the Klingon situation popped up yet again. Personally, I was glad to be able to talk to Brody in my second language. Bree kept laughing about it. Huxley, though? He merely glowered whenever I accidentally caught his eye, which was rare.

Dinner conversation turned into a pop culture melee.

They asked my feelings on the finale of Stranger Things. Personally, I believed it was over-hated. Sure, there were fans who were always going to be unhappy because their favorite ships never came to fruition. That wasn’t me, though. Eleven’s outcome would always make me salty — how was it that the girl had to sacrifice herself for all the boys and not get a happy ending, for crying out loud? — but I didn’t hate it.

They asked me about Paradise, which I was a big fan of so far. I loved a good post-apocalyptic story.

That got Bella going about The Walking Dead, which I had watched until the bitter end, but only because I’d spent so many years invested. The ending was not good, although the Rick and Michonne spinoff did a lot to fix that. I was never getting over the death of Carl, though, which was the biggest mistake in the entire franchise.

Then, unfortunately, the talk turned to Game of Thrones.

“I liked the ending,” Huxley interjected out of nowhere. “I thought it was good.”

This time, I couldn’t stop myself from focusing on him with the most withering look in my repertoire. “You can’t be serious.”

“It was good,” he insisted. “There was nothing wrong with it.”

I lifted my hand to start ticking items off on my fingers before I even realized what I was doing. “Bran was king because he had the best stories? Cersei and Jamie were buried under a pile of rubble instead of getting stabbed by Arya?” I took a deep breath. “What was Jon’s purpose in the final season? He had three lines he kept repeating and then ended up back over the wall.”

Nathan nodded. “I’m with Wylie here. The final season was rushed. Some of the stuff — like the dragon queen being evil — was expected. They didn’t put it together very well, though.”

“For Jon not to be involved in the final Night King fight really was stupid,” Brody agreed. “I love Arya — and she absolutely should have been involved — but so should Jon.”

“I always thought that it should look like Jon was down and out, and then Arya should have swooped in, wearing the face of one of the dead guys, and they should have taken him out together,” I offered. “Her getting that dagger from Bran had to play into the story. I also think that Jamie should have died at Winterfell — there were so few important deaths after the biggest fight ever — and then Arya should have taken Jamie’s face to go after Cersei.”

“Ooh.” Nathan leaned forward, intrigued. “That is a good one.”

“Anything would have been better than Bran being king, though,” I added. “That essentially makes the guy who said he didn’t ‘want’ any longer abject evil.”

“Interesting.” Brody pursed his lips.

All eyes turned to Huxley expectantly.

“You guys are all geeks,” he replied on a defeated sigh. “Like, complete and total geeks.”

For some reason, that made me smile. “You’re surprised?” I challenged. “You always told your mother that you hated hanging out with me because I was a geek when we were kids.”

All the color drained from his face. “I didn’t … I … who told you that?” he asked finally. There was a hint of panic in his voice.

“I overheard you telling her.” My stomach clenched at the memory. “You have one of those voices that carries.”

He rested his hands on the table and clenched them into fists, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “Wylie …” That was all he got out. Then words failed him.

“It’s fine,” I assured him, all the fight going out of me. Why had I ever cared what this guy thought? My teenage crush had me looking at him through rose-colored glasses. He wasn’t so great. He wasn’t anything as far as I was concerned.

“I stopped caring what other people thought about me a long time ago,” I explained. “My mom always told me that it was exhausting trying to be something for somebody else, and I never understood her. Eventually, I grew to agree with her, though.”