“Okay. Do you want me to applaud you or something?” Eden deadpans, staring back at me with her arms folded across her chest. I guess it makes sense. She’s from Portland, where I’m pretty sure everyone is a hippy that rides a bike, so I’m not even surprised that she doesn’t know a nice car when she sees one.
“Girls are clueless,” I say with a laugh. “You’d probably pass out if you saw the figures on this thing.”
Mom almost passed out too when I first told her I wanted it a year ago. At first, she said there was absolutely no chance that she was letting me blow half my trust fund on a damn sports car, but she caved within a few days. She thought a nice car would make me happier, and it did for a while, especially because our trust funds are mostly made up of the money from Dad’s shitty company, and it felt nice spending all his hard-earned cash on something so meaningless. Now I couldn’t care too much about the car, and what most people don’t know is that it’s, like, four years old with a whack gear shift lever and brake pads that need replacing almost constantly. But at least it makes me look like I’ve got my life figured out.
“Get over yourself,” Eden tells me, and then climbs into my passenger seat. I blink a few times. Who actually is this girl, honestly? I need to step up my game, because so far I really haven’t done a good job of intimidating her.
I sigh and join her inside the car, and as I get the engine growling to life, I toss her my phone. “Call Tiffani,” I order.
“You mean your girlfriend who you like to either be all over or completely ignore?”
Damn, so she really has been watching me. I haven’t just been imagining it. For someone who apparently doesn’t like me, she suredoes seem interested in what I’m into, which is sort of amusing to me, but also slightly terrifying. I don’t like it when people focus on my life too much. They’ll see the cracks if they look too hard.
“You’re an ass,” she mutters under her breath, turning away. I didn’t realize I’ve smiled in reply to her question. She tries way too hard to stare out the window, as though she’s letting me know that she doesn’t want to speak to me anymore. She’s still holding my phone.
“Call her,” I say again as I step on the gas a little too hard, sending us flying down the street a little too rapidly. “I have no idea where we’re going.”
Eden dramatically sighs, as though I’m asking her to give me a kidney, and she sits up and looks at my screen. “Pass code?”
“4355,” I tell her without hesitation. Besides some raunchy pictures from Tiffani and some pretty incriminating evidence in my messages with Declan Portwood, my phone is pretty clean. I do watch my screen out of the corner of my eye as Eden unlocks it just to make sure she doesn’t do any snooping.
“Is that your favorite number or does it stand for a word or—”
“It spells out hell,” I cut in sharply. Hell, because my life is hell, because I feel like hell, because I’m going to hell. Ididcreate that pass code on one of my low nights. I hope she doesn’t ask why, because I don’t have the energy to explain. “Call her.”
Eden frowns and scrolls through my list of contacts, past Declan and Kaleb, past Mom and Dave, past all of the hundreds of names in between, and all the way down to Tiffani. She calls her and presses my phone to her ear.
“It’s Eden. Tyler’s driving,” Eden explains once Tiffani picks up. “Where are we all going tonight? Has it been decided yet?”
I watch her again as she listens, biting down on her lower lip. Shenods as Tiffani speaks, and I don’t know if she realizes just how focused she looks. “Yeah,” she says, and then listens some more. I’m so distracted by watching her that I almost drive straight into the curb, and Eden fires me a sideways look when I swerve back. She lowers my phone, puts it on speaker, and then holds it up by my shoulder.
“Yeah?” I ask.Of courseTiffani was going to ask to talk to me. I steal a glance down at the screen, and then I have to slam hard on the brakes at a stop sign. I’m usually not such a distracted driver, but I also usually don’t have strangers riding with me, so I guess I could say it’s actually Eden’s fault.
“I haven’t spoken to you all day!” Tiffani says through my phone, and her voice is high-pitched and overly sweet, a total act. It’s only because she knows Eden can hear us, and I really do have to roll my eyes at how pathetic webothare. Why do we try so hard to convince everyone that we are this perfect, happy, dream couple when we are the exact opposite? We are toxic, trapped by each other, hating one another but also being unable to let go because of how dependent we’ve both become. “Did your mom let you out of the house?” she asks. Stuck at the stop sign, I pull up my parking brake and look at Eden. I’m pretty sure she was eavesdropping on the conversation with Mom and Dave in the kitchen, which means she knows exactly where I was this afternoon. And with Tiffani on speaker, I can’t afford for Eden to be blurting out the truth. I sharpen my gaze at her and shake my head slowly, letting her know not to dare say a word.
“No, I was stuck inside all day,” I finally tell Tiffani. Again. For like the fifth time today. I swear she never pays attention to a word I say, but that’s a good thing, because everything I tell her is usually a lie anyway.
“That sucks,” she says. And then her voice hits that high octave againas she adds, “I can’t wait to see you! We won’t be too long. Just wait for us by the Sunset Ranch.”
Okay, so we’re heading to the Hollywood sign then. That’s okay with me. I like it up there. It gets you away from everything for a while. “Sure.”
“Love you,” Tiffani says to finish the call, but again, it’s all just so fucking fake. She doesn’t love me. She just wants everyone to think she does.
That’s why I only say “Yeah” and hang up. I refuse to say it back.
As I toss my phone down into the center console, I run a hand through my hair and lean back in my seat, getting comfortable. It’s not exactly a short drive over to the Hollywood sign.
“You’re unbelievable,” Eden says in disbelief. “Stuck inside all day?”
I don’t even look at her. I try to just stay focused on the road as I cross the intersection. “That’s what I’m going with.”
“You’re really going to lie to her like that?” she questions, and I think,Here we go again. What is with Eden interrogating me as though she’s my mom? I glance at her to see if she’s actually mad at me or not, and shedoeslook disgusted. “You were at the beach gambling and fighting and you’re going to act like you were inside all day? I feel so bad for her.”
I laugh out loud, hard. She feels bad for Tiffani? Incredible. It’s funny the way things can appear to the people on the outside looking in. Behind closed doors, everything is so different. “Yeah, you’re definitely Dave’s daughter,” I say. It must be a Munro thing to hate me as soon as they meet me, to question everything I do, to be repulsed by me. “You gotta learn to mind your own business, kid.”
“Stop calling me kid,” Eden orders, and she’s serious. It’s settled: Idefinitelydon’t intimidate her. “You’re only a year older than me, and you’ve got fewer brain cells.”
“Alright, kid,” I say again, smiling to let her know I’m not doing it out of malice. I’m only messing with her. “Your dad’s an asshole.”
