“Yeah. Like a support group. Kid Sisters of Rock Stars Anonymous.”
“Hmm. KSRSA. That’s a mouthful.”
“We can work on the name.”
“Hey.” She elbowed me lightly. “Let’s do it.”
“Do what?”
“The support group. For real. I’ll introduce you to Larissa. Her brother, Trey, is totally hot. He owns a record label, so he’s practically a rock star. She’ll commis.”
“Huh?”
“Commiserate.” She got up and offered me a hand. “Come on. Let’s go do more Jell-O shots before Dylan devours them all.”
“Okay.” I got to my feet. “I’m, uh… sixteen, though. Kinda worried someone’s gonna cut me off soon. Like a friend of my brother’s? They’re everywhere… like Lord Varys’ spies.”
“Huh?”
“Game of Thronesjoke?”
She wrinkled her nose.
“No?”
She looped her arm through mine. “Just stick with me. I’m twenty-two, and no one cares what I drink. Brody will get you a cab home. He’s good like that. And if you don’t want to go home to your parents, you can come home with me. I still live with mine, but they’re cool. They won’t bother us.”
She took me into Brody’s bathroom, where we tried to make it look like I hadn’t been crying my eyes out. Then I followed her back down to the bar, where we spent the rest of the night doing Jell-O shots and dishing on the rock stars in the room.
Xander never returned from his romp in the woods, and sometime in the middle of the night, after Johnny had packed some chick into his car and taken off, Angie, Shay and me got into a cab and went back to Angie’s place.
And that was how the Lil Brat Society was formed. Though we didn’t call ourselves Lil Brats yet.
That summer, I spent a lot of time at my brother’s place, like I always did when I was home from school.
Unfortunately, so did Xander. Steel Trap was recording their second album in Vancouver, so he was in town.
Which meant I got a front row view of his manwhore ways.
All. Summer. Long.
He’d never actually spent somuchtime in my brother’s poolhouse before. At least, not while I was around. So I’d never really seen that side of him.
Andwow, was it something to see.
Maybe I was a glutton for punishment or something? I could’ve gone back to my parents’ place.
But for some reason… I stayed. As much as I could get away with it, I stayed at my brother’s place.
Maybe I just wanted to make sure my eyes captured the evidence, so my brain could log it all—and send my heart the fucking message.
That Xander Rush was a complete and total pig.
That he used women like tissues and tossed them away about as casually. They floated in and out of the poolhouse, and I rarely saw the same woman with him twice.
At the end of that summer, as I packed my bags to leave for school, he knocked on my bedroom door. I went out in the hallway with him and shut the door behind me. I didn’t really want him in my room. Felt weird. I’d barely talked to him all summer.
Every time he said hi, I tended to disappear.
