I was back to the house within forty minutes, and I left the fresh coffee outside the studio doors for him.
It was just past ten a.m., and my work for the day was done. I’d barely been employed by my brother for forty-eight hours, and already I’d given up on trying to find things to do for him.
I couldn’t exactly go out, though. It was a workday and my brother was paying me, whether or not there was actually work to do. Which meant I should be here in case there ever was any.
I’d spent the bulk of the last two days avoiding the backyard. I hadn’t even touched the pool yet. It was another gorgeous day… and I was gonna die of sheer boredom if the rest of my summer rolled out like this.
I really wanted to hang by the pool, but no way was I doing it alone, in a bikini, while Xander was around. Not because he’d ogle me. Because if he saw me while I was wearing a bikini and he didn’t ogle me… it would make me feel like shit.
Invisible shit.
Sad, but true.
So I decided to invite my girls over. Then at least I wouldn’t have to be alone when he ignored me.
I told Cary what I was doing by text; that was the rule. I was allowed to have friends over, but only if he knew about it.
I changed into a bikini and pulled my T-shirt over it. Then I whipped together some snacks, in hopes that my girlfriends and I could claim the pool area before Xander did. Lucky for me, Rose did my brother’s grocery shopping once a week, and she knew what I liked; the cupboards had been stocked with my favorite salty snacks.
I kept checking out the windows, but I hadn’t glimpsed Xander yet today.
When my girlfriends, Shayla and Larissa, arrived, we headed out back together with the snacks. And booze. Drinking on the job seemed permissible under the circumstances, as long as I kept it to a minimum.
The poolhouse door was closed and Xander was nowhere in sight as we approached the pool. But I’d already checked, and his car was in the driveway.
There was a row of lounge chairs facing the pool and I chose one in the middle; I made sure my girls would be flanking me like protective shields whenever Xander emerged from the poolhouse with whatever skank he probably dragged home last night. I’d heard his car pull in at like two in the morning, while I was watchingSawon the couch in the living room—because that’s what I did at night when I couldn’t sleep: watched horror movies alone in the dark and scared the crap out of myself.
No idea why, but I’d always found it oddly soothing.
Shayla had, as usual, arrived with music already pumping from the Beats Pill she’d shoved in her giant tote purse. She set the speaker on a table by the pool, turned it up, and some dirty Megan Thee Stallion song filled the summer air.
In Shay’s world, if it wasn’t hella dirty, it wasn’t music.
She immediately peeled off her dress and said, “Where’sCary?” She tossed the dress aside with a little too much enthusiasm, smoothing her long, straight strawberry-blonde hair over one shoulder. As she stood there in her electric-turquoise string bikini, her pale, slim body struck an unnecessarily sexy pose.
Larissa rolled her eyes at me.
“In the house,” I muttered, setting the snacks on the tables between the lounge chairs. It grated me when Shayla purred my brother’s name like that. He was twelve years older than her and she’d only met him a few times, but she said his name like they had Unlawful Carnal Knowledge of each other or something.
“Hmm.” Shayla took a good look around, like she was making sure she hadn’t missed Cary sunbathing, naked, over in the garden.
Larissa gave me a sympathetic smile as she slipped off her sundress.
I’d met Shayla at Westmont Academy, where we’d both gone to high school, although she was two years ahead of me. Westmont was an exclusive private girls’ school over on Vancouver Island, tucked away in the woods by a lake. There was one incredibly long, boring road to get to it, though you could also fly in and land on the lake, and some students did. Before the road was built, back in the eighties, everyone had to fly in.
Thatexclusive.
There were mostly two kinds of girls at Westmont. The ones who were good at everything and got lavished with scholarships and awards. And the ones, like Shay, who didn’t actually have to be good at anything because their parents were insanely rich. A lot of people probably thought I fit into that category. But I actually fit into a third and shittier category.
The ones no one wanted.
I’d gone to Westmont because my parents wanted to retire, travel and generally enjoy life, and having a kid at home got in the way of that. That fourteen year gap between my brother and me had caught up with them when I was about thirteen. They spun it to me like they wanted me to have the best education, but I knew having me around was putting a dent in their social calendars. All their friends were semi-retired and traveling. My parentsweren’trich; at least, not without my brother’s money. But my brother stepped up to pay the insanely high tuition.
In their eyes, Cary was nothing but a raving success at life.
In most people’s eyes, really.
Within a week of my arrival at Westmont, it had spread through the entire school that my brother was a rock star. And teenage girls could be merciless with such information.
