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THINGS WERE GOING WELL.
Well, as they were going as well as I could hope for me. Peter and I were getting somewhere with the whole creepy cult business and I was starting to get over feeling like my parents had gone through a rough divorce even though they hadn't. Even if things weren't all-star, they were getting better. They were on their way to good.
I should have known better than to hope that would last.
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"Kid? It's noon, I feel obligated to come wake you up now," said a voice, far away and hazy. There was a knock on my door, but it wasn't Pepper's familiar distinctive knock nor the light, jumpy ones of any of my friends. I exhaled shakily. Dad.
I grumbled something incoherent, throwing a blanket over my head in protest as he pushed open the door and let light filter in from the halls. He stood for a moment, a finger poised mid-air as if to make a point as he scanned my mess of a room. "Dom?" he asked, hesitantly, gently.
I stayed silent, digging further into my pile of blankets, leaving just a sliver over for my eyes to peek through. "Dom, are you," he paused and looked around the room again, searching for a word to really put together. He exhaled lightly and tried again. "Kid, are you okay?"
I poked my head out, squinting against the light and shivering against the cool air suddenly creeping down my spine. I scoffed lightly. "What? Oh I'm fine. I'm just apparently a budding alcoholic, a slut, and the rudest person on the planet!" I grinned sarcastically, running my fingers through my bleached hair, the strands straggly and rough under my touch. I threw up a lazy peace sign. "But, other than that, I'm dandy!"
Dad blinked and tentatively moved a few steps closer. "What?" he asked, taking a seat on a relatively mess-free corner of my bed. "Who said that?"
I chucked my phone roughly in his direction to a list of gossip magazine headlines, listening to him fumble to catch it. "There's three tabs by the way, one for each way I'm an offense to society!"
There was a lull of silence as Dad scrolled through the articles, through the countless brilliant titles thought up by journalists who probably hated their jobs.
('BOY GENIUS NO MORE????' and 'WHAT HAPPENED TO DOMINIC STARK?' and 'THE FUTURE OF STARK INDUSTRIES WITH HEIR GOING OFF THE ROCKS' being some of my favorites. I love the implication that I'm suddenly stupid and incapable now because of things that aren't even true.)
After a few moments he looked up. "Why do they think you're dating Bianca?" he asked, a gateway into what I could tell was a list of questions he had compiled in his head.
