I focus on the road as best I can, but I do keep glancing sideways at her every few minutes to gauge how she’s feeling, and when we’re nearing home, I decide to give Mom a call. She’ll be wondering why Eden and I are taking so long to return.
“Tyler?” Mom’s voice echoes across the line. She answers pretty fast, on the third ring. “Are you coming back inside?”
“Hey, so, we left,” I bluntly state, my phone pressed to my ear, one hand on the wheel. Better to let her know. “I’m sorry but we couldn’t care less about eating together as afamily.We’ll be at the house.” And, before she can yell at me or beg me to come back, I quickly hang up and throw my phone into the center console.
Eden flashes me a look of disapproval, rolling her eyes and shaking her head, her jaw clenched. Then, she turns back to the window for the remainder of the drive, which isn’t long. We pull up to the house five minutes later and I quickly park.
“Go to my room,” I tell Eden as we’re walking across the lawn. I search my pockets for my set of house keys, swinging them around my index finger. “I’m gonna grab a drink, and then we’re gonna discuss that asshole you’re so fixated on.”
“I don’t want to discuss anything with you,” Eden says from behind me as I’m opening the front door. I look back at her, and she’s standing several feet away, her eyes narrowed sharply. If she’s trying to be threatening, it’s not working. She just looks cute.
“Go upstairs and go to my room,” I tell her again, turning toward the kitchen. A beer is all I want right now. “I’ll be up in two minutes.”
I hear the front door close behind me, and then footsteps on the stairs. “Just to clarify,” Eden calls after me, “I’m going upstairs to my room, not yours.”
“I’ll be in your room, then, in two minutes,” I yell back from the kitchen, rolling my eyes. I don’t think we’re ever going to be on the same page, but I can at least hope. I’ll start with Jake, because I’m still not happy that she was with him last night. She might think I keep bringing it up just to be an asshole, but I’m seriously not. She needs tobe warned, and as her stepbrother, I should be the one to look out for her. Shit, that sounds weird.
I grab a beer from the refrigerator and pop it open, then make my way upstairs to Eden’s room. She’s awkwardly lingering around by her bed when I walk in, giving me her usual attitude of crossed arms, pouted lips, and a glare to match.
“Okay, where to start,” I say. I take a drink of my beer, considering the best way to get the message across to Eden, and then I remember that the truth bluntly delivered is her favorite thing. “Let me simplify it for you: Jake Maxwell is the biggest player of the year.”
“Funny. I thought you were,” she mutters.
Woah. What? Where the hell did she get that idea? I’m a lot of things, but a player isn’t one of them. “No, there’s a big difference between Jake and me,” I state, shaking my head. “Girls want me; Jake wants girls. You know, I don’t purposely go out of my way to find other girls. I just kind of bump into them at parties or whatever, maybe flirt a little, sometimes kiss them if I’m drunk and Tiffani isn’t around. That’s it,” I admit. I take another drink, because now I need it. Eden is listening carefully, her eyes never leaving mine. “Jake, on the other hand, is a player. He leads chicks on for weeks and sometimes even months, sleeps with them, and then never talks to them again. Guy does this with like three girls at a time. I can guarantee you that the second you put out, he’ll disappear. He always does. Pulls out either the ‘Sorry, I’m not feeling it anymore’ or the ‘I can’t talk to you anymore, because my mom’s super strict and says I can’t date until college’ card.”
“Why are you telling me this?” she asks, dropping her hands to her hips.
“Because I am,” is the shitty middle school cop-out answer I give her. I’m telling her because I don’t want her to get hurt. I’m telling herbecause maybe I’m selfish, because maybe I don’t want her to spend time with Jake, because maybe I want her to focus on me instead. But I can’t tell her that.
“That’s not a valid reason.”
I smile at her. “Neither was my reason for leaving the restaurant.” Taking another swig of my beer, I turn around and walk out of the room.
•••
It’s later that night that I can’t get to sleep. I’m tossing and turning, but all I can hear is Eden’s voice. She’s been talking to someone for a while on either loudspeaker or video chat, because I can very faintly hear another female voice replying. They’ve been talking about school, and boys, and college. And it’s getting annoying.
I groan and get out of bed, then head out into the hall in the dark and crouch down to grab the internet router from beneath the hall table. I turn it off, throw the router back, and then walk back to my room. Instead of climbing back into bed though, I hover by the wall that separates mine and Eden’s rooms. I can’t hear her talking now, which leads me to believe itwasa video chat. Thank God I’ve cut it off. I listen for a minute to make sure, and then when I’m certain the call has ended, I softly knock on the wall three times. I don’t know why. I almost do it impulsively, like I’mtryingto get her attention.
Several seconds pass while I wait, and then finally a knock returns from the other side of the wall. My face lights up, my features relaxing. Eden’s no more than a few inches away from me, only a wall separating us. I knock back to her, four times, louder than the first.
“Can you stop?” Eden demands. Her voice is slightly muffled through the wall, but it doesn’t stop me from hearing that threatening edge to her tone. And I fucking love it.
“I turned off the internet,” I tell her. “Your conversation was giving me a headache. ‘God, Amelia, isn’t Chicago just so freakin’ awesome? School is my favorite thing in the entire world! It’s so great! I love psychology and homework and studying!’” I imitate, straining my voice to make it higher.
“I didn’t even say that,” Eden mutters, and then there’s a thud against the wall as though she’s punched it or something. She’s probably pretending it’s my face.
I stifle a laugh and press my back to the wall, sliding down to the floor. I stretch my legs out in front of me, tilting my head back to the wall and staring up at my ceiling through the darkness of my room. Just to tease her even more, I continuously drum my knuckles against the wall. “I could do this all night. I heard no one gets any sleep in college, so this is good practice for you. I’ll turn you into an insomniac in no time.”
“Has anyone ever told you how frustrating you are?” Eden asks as her tone begins to soften back into its perfectly deep huskiness.
“Hmm, I don’t think anyone ever has,” I joke. All Idois frustrate people, and Eden is no exception. In fact, I seem to frustrate her more than most. “How am I frustrating? Enlighten me, college girl.” I’m only teasing her, and I hope she knows that. I’m not being a jerk. A jerk wouldn’t be smiling right now.
“For starters, you disconnected the internet and now you won’t stop knocking on my wall,” she says.
“Technically, it’s our wall.” I knock against it again. I’m sort of wishing it wasn’t there, that I could be looking at her right now. I want to read her expression.
“Either way, it’s extremely annoying. Please stop,” she says, but it doesn’t hold much of a threat to it. Her words seem demanding, but her voice isn’t.
