“Can you guys promise me something?” I say, reaching for the remote and turning off the TV. The room goes silent. I stand up and turn on the lights, and then I sit down on Jamie’s bed and look down at them on the floor. I’m not laughing anymore. My expression is serious.
“What?” they both say in unison, staring back up at me with curious, wide eyes.
“Don’t do anything stupid when you’re my age. Okay?” I say. Unlike me, they actually have a shot at a decent life. A shot at a college, a good job, healthy relationships…a shot at being happy. I really don’t want them to mess that up. They have the head start that I didn’t. “I don’t want to see either of you getting into trouble.”
They stare at me blankly, and then Jamie gives me a goofy grin and asks, “So what stupid stuff is it thatyoudo?”
I laugh and lean forward, ruffling his shaggy hair. “You think I’m gonna tell you?”
“I’m hoping you will, and then I can blackmail you into buying meMadden 12in August,” he says, and his grin widens.
“How about,” I say, reaching into my back pocket for my wallet, “I just give you some cash toward it right now? Don’t tell Mom.” I’m feeling generous because they’ve put me in a good mood, so I grab thirty bucks and hand it to Jamie as his eyes light up in disbelief.
“Hey!” Chase says. “What about me?”
Damn. I pass him twenty, and luckily, he doesn’t notice that I’ve fleeced him. Fifty bucks is a small price to pay to see the pair of them grinning as though they’ve won the damn lottery. I shove my wallet back into my jeans and stand up, tell them goodnight, and then leave the room.
I’m crossing back over to my own room when, as I’m passing the stairs, I notice Eden running up them at full throttle. Shejustgot home? She was only a few minutes behind Tiffani and me when we left the Sunset Ranch. She should have been home ages ago.
“Eden?” I stare down at her, wondering where she’s been, because she clearly didn’t come straight home. “Where the hell did you go?”
She freezes on the stairs for a split second and fires back, “Where the hell didyougo?” She walks up the last few stairs and stops in front of me. She’s much smaller than I am, but she holds a mean stare down. “You just ditched the rest of us. Nice teamwork.”
Shit, so sheismad at me. But for what? For the way I snapped at her in the car? For the way I squared up to Jake? I’ve done a lot of things that could have potentially pissed her off today, and I groan at the thought of them. “I don’t work well with cops, alright? I can’t get caught again.”
“Again,” Eden repeats, scoffing. Yetanothercon of mine to add to her list:gets arrested. “When did you get home?”
“Twenty minutes ago,” I say. “Mom finally stopped grilling me about the whole beach thing earlier.”
“Cool,” she says with absolutely zero emotion. As though I’ve disappeared into thin air, she strolls straight past me and walks into her room. I wasn’t done talking to her, so I aimlessly follow. She runs her eyes over me and deeply inhales. “What do you want?”
I don’t know. To figure out why she’s mad at me, I guess. “Nothing,” I say, and then look at the floor. God, what the hell is wrong with me? I should get out of her room. She obviously doesn’t want to talk to me. Feeling embarrassed, I quickly turn around and walk next door to my own room.
“What was your problem with Jake?” I hear Eden ask, and when I look over my shoulder, she has followed me this time. Her arms are folded across her chest and her stance is confident as she stares at me, an eyebrow raised as she awaits an answer. “I asked you a question,” she says.
“I’m not answering it,” I say. Is my room even tidy? I glance around. No, of course it’s fucking not. I didn’t make my bed this morning.There’s beer on my bedside table. There are pairs of my boxers by my bathroom door. I need to distract her from noticing, so I grit my teeth and turn around to face her. “Wait, I will. That guy is the second biggest asshole I’ve ever met. Don’t waste your time. He’ll screw you over.”
“Who’s the first? Yourself?” she quips, and I wish she wasn’t being sarcastic, because the first is Dad. My own blood.
“Close enough,” is all I say.
“Okay, well, Jake’s actually really nice. Unlike some people around here.” She steps back and I can see her gaze shifting around the room, checking everything out. “And you don’t really get a say in whether I want to hang out with him or not.”
“You’re kidding, right?” She is, isn’t she? She has to be. Jake is a stranger. She doesn’t know him like the rest of us do. She doesn’t know that he’s a player and he’s proud of it. She doesn’t know that he’s combative, argumentative. “Alright,” I say. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Why do you even care?” she asks.
“I don’t,” I say, my voice defensive. Or do I? If I don’t care, then why am I getting pissed off at the thought of Jake messing with her?
“You clearly do.”
I walk away from her, shoving my hands into my pockets as I think of how I’m going to change the subject. I have a pile of old DVDs by my TV, and I sound like a damn idiot when I blurt out, “What’s your, um, favorite movie?”
Eden stares at me. She’s probably thinking I’m an idiot too for changing the subject to movies, out of everything I could have possibly chosen. “Lady and the Tramp,” she eventually confesses.
“The Disney movie?” I almost laugh. There she is, surprising me again. If she were Tiffani or Rachael or Meghan, I would be teasing herto hell and back right now. But I think it’s sort of cute that she wasn’t too shy to give me an embarrassing answer. So I ask, “Why?”
“Because it’s the greatest love story of all time,” she explains. “Romeo and Juliet have got nothing on Lady and Tramp. They were so different, yet they made it work. Lady was totally normal and Tramp was totally reckless, yet they fell in love.” She smiles as she talks, not really looking at me, and I’ve never seen anyone look so happy over a damn Disney movie. “And plus, the spaghetti scene is totally iconic,” she adds.
