“The mayor it is. Let’s list it on Craigslist too.”
“Excellent idea.”
* * *
Carly dons the hockey mask. Then she separates the fake yellow mustache into two pieces and sticks them to the outside of the mask where her eyebrows would normally be. “How do I look?”
Utterly adorable. “Fierce. And creepy.”
“Good.”
She opens the truck door, pulling the For Rent sign out with her. They decided to list the mayor’s plantation house for the exorbitant price of $500/month including utilities. The house is a veritable palace, with a pristinely manicured lawn and a man-made pond in the middle with a fancy water spout and giant goldfish guarding the perimeter.
Well worth the $500, in Arden’s humble opinion.
He watches as Carly steals across the street to the curb of the yard. She steadies the metal rods of the sign into the ground and tries to push down, but when it doesn’t budge, she’s forced to put her whole weight into it. The sign sinks into place and Carly is back in the truck within thirty seconds, giggling like a lunatic. It’s a nasally sound with the mask on.
They move on to Hammock Harbor, where Arden handpicks his first victim. “He brought it on himself,” he explains. “We have a landscape company that takes care of the public areas in here and Mr. Honaker treats them like his personal butler.”
“You little Robin Hood, you.”
He grins. “Does that make you Maid Marian?”
“I think I qualify more as Will Scarlet, don’t you?”
It was worth a shot. “A cute, high-strung Will Scarlet?”
“You mean like your mom?”
“Really? You told a mom joke?”
She pulls her hair around to one side and purses her lips. “Get on with this, Robin.”
When he gets back in the truck, he’s scrounged up enough courage to ask the unthinkable. “Since we’re already in the neighborhood, you want to come to my house?”
She gives him a suspicious look. “Why?”
“For one, I have to piss. For two, why not? And for three? I make the best sweet tea in the South.”
Seventeen
Sitting on Arden’s bed is not as intimate as I thought it would be given his reputation. I’m not sure what I thought I’d find, but a crisply made bed sporting a simple blue comforter with tightly tucked corners wasn’t in the mental picture. I guess I imagined a tousled king-size bed, with sheets twisted after a passionate one-night stand, possibly lipstick stains on a pillow or two. I just knew there would be walls lined with posters of half-naked women; any real estate left would of course be devoted to shelves of football trophies and other boyish things like model sports cars or something. I even expected to feel dirty here, knowing how many girls had to have been seduced in this very room, on this very bed by those green eyes and sensual lips.
But Arden’s bedroom is … boring. It’s sparsely furnished—a (twin) bed, a single nightstand with a wrought-iron lamp, an outdated wood desk, a worn red recliner facing out of the one window next to a telescope on a tripod. And it’s way neater than I’d figured. For some reason, I had pegged Arden for a slob, I guess because he seems unmotivated in every other aspect of life. But his room is clean, almost unlived in, with fresh vacuum tracks on the carpet by the bed and netted hamper with just a few articles of clothing in it. There are no posters or trophies or shelves on the walls, only a flat-screen TV hung out of the way.
Aside from Arden himself, there is nothing in the neighborhood of sexy here. I try not to acknowledge the relief I feel about this fact. What Arden does or doesn’t do in the privacy of his room—or for that matter, anywhere—is not my concern.
So why do I feel concerned about it?
I’m enfolded in these thoughts when Arden gets back from the restroom. He gives me a quizzical look. “Does it stink in here or something?”
I hope my laugh is not as revealing as it sounds. I would die a slow death if he knew I’d been thinking about him … doing things … in here … Dios mio. “No. I was just … admiring how clean it is.”
He wrinkles his nose. “Why wouldn’t it be? I’m never here.”
“Good point. Does that mean your parents are never here either?” Because from what I’ve seen so far, the rest of the house is just as spotless.
“Mom stays in her room mostly. Dad’s always gone.”
I wait for him to talk about his mom some more, but he doesn’t, so I nod toward the telescope. “Astronomy or pervert?”
He shrugs. “I like the idea of feeling small. Sometimes life can seem bigger than you, you know? But knowing you’re less than a speck in the whole scheme of things takes the pressure off, sort of.” The words hang in the air between us. So much for small talk.
But in a way, I wanted to have this conversation. There are so many things I want to know about Arden. He’s already blown my first impressions out of the water. And at the same time, I don’t want to know what’s inside him. I don’t want to delve into the raw Arden Moss.
Because I don’t want to fall for him.
“Life?” I say, against my better judgment. “Or death?” I nod toward the black-and-white picture on his desk. It’s of a girl about our age smiling in classic school-picture style. I know it’s Amber. She has his dimples. His smirk.
He sits down on the bed beside me. He doesn’t bother to give me space. Our legs touch. Our arms. His scent devours me. “Not so much life or death,” he says quietly. “More like emptiness.”
I know emptiness. I felt it when my parents got deported and it was just me and Julio. We clung to each other in those first few months. Needed each other. I felt hollow, misplaced, at the time. But I know my misery then doesn’t come close to the gaping chasm Amber’s death left behind in Arden. I can see it still, in the fresh anguish in his eyes.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up,” I say, swallowing hard. “I just … It’s just that we’ve never talked about it. Not that we should have. I mean, if you want to, we can.”
“She was sick,” he blurts. “Toward the end she cried every day. Our bastard of a father wouldn’t acknowledge it. Wouldn’t get her the help she needed.”
I want him to stop talking about it now, to stop hurting himself with it. Regret is a tornado in my stomach. But there’s no way I’m cutting him off now. As hard as it is to hear, as bad as it burns, it must be like a thousand flames licking at his insides. He actually looks like an uninhabited version of himself. His eyes are pools of unspilt tears. And he doesn’t take his gaze off me.
“As cliché as it sounds, she was everything to me. We were two years apart, but she was like an extension of me. Well, I guess since she was older, I was an extension of her.” He interlaces his fingers in front of him, then leans his elbows on his knees. I can tell he’s sifting through memories in his mind. “She was my accomplice. My first accomplice,” he corrects, giving me a small smile. “I don’t think there was a single moment after I turned ten that we weren’t jointly grounded for something.”
“She overdosed on Mom’s pain pills,” he says. “I’m the one who found her. At first I thought she was sleeping. But something wasn’t right. She’d gotten fully dressed. Put on makeup—something that she hadn’t done in months. That was the first thing that threw me. Her eye makeup was a little smeared too. But more than anything I noticed how still she was. She looked like a doll lying there with her eyes closed. That’s when I saw the bottle on her nightstand. The lipstick mark on the empty glass sitting next to it.” He looks at me then. “After her funeral, I didn’t sleep. My mom even broke down and took me to the doctor for it behind Dad’s back. The doctor prescribed me pills, which I flushed for the sake of irony.” His corresponding laugh is humorless. “Night after freaking night I stared at my bedroom ceiling. Then one night I got up and went for a walk. And I’ve been up ever since.”
“Are you … you’re saying you still haven’t slept yet? How is that possible?”
Did he just lean
toward me? “That’s the funny thing,” he says, his eyes on my lips.
“What’s funny?” I whisper.
“All this time, I couldn’t sleep. Until about three weeks ago. After a certain incident involving a purse and a cow patty and a girl with the longest eyelashes in the county.”
My breath catches. I can’t help it.
“Carly, you’re my cure. The opposite of emptiness. When I come home after I’ve been with you all night I sleep like a rock.” He snaps his fingers. “Just like that. It’s amazing. I’m not saying you’ve replaced Amber or anything creepy like that. No one could ever replace her. And trust me, I don’t think of you like a sister.” He clears his throat. Awkwardly.
“What are you saying?”
He sighs, running a hand through his hair. A war wages in his eyes. “I’m not sure if I should. Say it, I mean. It might change things. And I don’t want to scare you off.”
Will it scare me off? Will it change things? Yes. No. Yes. I don’t know. It will change things on the outside, I realize. It will change how we act around each other.
But it’s going to change things on the inside. Things on the inside are too far gone already. I’ve fallen for him and I know it. And I want to hear it. I want validation, that this isn’t some sort of weird platonic relationship, that I’m not imagining it. Or worse, that the feelings are one-sided, and I have to keep them cooped up forever because he just doesn’t look at me that way. What does that mean, exactly? He also said I have the longest eyelashes in the county. He sees me, notices things about me.
And what don’t I notice about Arden Moss? Aside from his physical perfection, I know that he likes a little coffee with his cream and sugar. That he drives with his right hand and leans on his door with his left arm. That he only uses the rearview when backing up. That he doesn’t seem to have a favorite food, but will eat anything you put in front of him. That he orders water when he really wants sweet tea. That he’s a philosopher like Mr. Shackleford.
That he winks at me before every class we have together. That his face is what I think about at night before I go to sleep. That every time I see his truck pull into the parking lot of the Uppity Rooster to pick me up my stomach does an honest-to-goodness flip. And the nights he doesn’t visit me at the Breeze Mart feel ruined and useless.
Yes, I want to hear it. I want to hear it very much, whatever it is he’s trying to tell me. “Say it.”
He leans impossibly closer, so close I can feel the warmth of him emanating off his body. I’ve been this close to him before. I’ve been in his lap before, what with the whole firecracker incident. But it wasn’t like this. This is different. I suck in a breath when his fingers trace the line of my jaw and his thumb caresses my bottom lip.
“Do I have you, Carly?” he says softly. “Do I have you like you have me?”
Like you have me.
In the second it takes for me to nod, his lips are on mine. Gentle at first, as if tasting me, as if determining whether or not this is the right thing to do. It doesn’t take him long to decide. I feel the second our friendship ends and something else starts. His hand comes to rest at the nape of my neck, his fingers entwined in my hair, and he pulls me closer against him. His lips are soft, so soft and swollen, and the way he uses them against me is surreal.
He leans until his chest touches mine, his free hand sliding down my arm, leaving behind a molten trail in the wake of his caress. And that’s when my hands start working. They have a mind of their own, my hands. They’re on his shoulders, then his biceps, wrapping his arms around my waist in, pulling him to me until our clothes are just thin dividers between flesh.
He moans against my lips and my mouth opens up to him and—
The door to his bedroom opens. We break apart like ground separated by an earthquake. And I’m nearly rattled out of my mind.
My cheeks become pools of lava.
Arden’s jaw tightens. “Knocking is a common courtesy,” he says to the silhouette of a man filling up the doorway of the bedroom. But Sheriff Moss isn’t looking at Arden. He’s looking at me. And he doesn’t appear to like what he sees.
I cringe inwardly at what this looks like. At what he thinks I am. Just another of Arden’s conquests. What bothers me the most is that I’m wondering if that is what I am. I’m wondering if I’ve been had. How does he woo other girls? Have I been a project from the beginning? Was it all leading up to this?
“Common courtesy is following the open-door policy I have in this household,” Arden’s father says. “Both of you in the kitchen. Now.”
I jump up, but Arden reaches out and grabs my wrist. His intention is to walk in front of me. I don’t like the fact that he obviously feels he has to shield me from his father. A bit of terror steals through me.
What would Julio say if he knew I just got caught kissing the infamous sheriff’s son?
Arden holds my hand and leads me down the hall behind his father. We take the stairs down into one of the living rooms that leads to the kitchen. Sheriff Moss separates himself from us with the island in the center of the room. His badge seems to shine like a flashlight in my eyes.
Arden doesn’t let go of my hand. I can’t decide if this is good or bad. Good, if it’s meant to show that I mean something to him and that he’s going to bat for me. Bad, if it’s meant to prepare me for something disastrous that he thinks is about to happen.
“What is your name, young lady?” Sheriff Moss asks.
“Carly,” I croak. Yay for remembering my name.
“Carly what?”
“Carly Vega.”
“Carly Vega, what?” Is this happening for real? “Carly Vega, sir.”
“Jesus, Dad,” Arden says. “She’s our guest. We were just—”
“Oh, I saw what you were ‘just’ doing. And I don’t remember you ever making a mortgage payment on this house, boy, not once. That being the case, I decide who is and who is not my guest. And if you’re not my guest, then you’re an intruder.” With this, he rests his hand on the gun strapped to his side.
A little something stirs inside me, and it’s not healthy fear. It’s my temper.
Arden must sense me stiffen because he squeezes my hand again. “Carly is my girlfriend. You should get used to seeing her around.”
Well, that just happened. And I’m kind of excited about it. And scared.
“Really? Your girlfriend? The same girlfriend who put the For Rent sign in the mayor’s yard tonight? Oh, don’t look so surprised, Carly. Mayor Busch may be on vacation, but he still has a live-in housekeeper. And guess whose truck she recognized? Maybe you know her, Carly. Her name is Carmen. She’s one of your own.”
The housekeeper recognized Arden’s truck! Oh holy crap.
Wait, one of my own? What is that supposed to mean?
“Knock it off, Dad.” The tension radiating off Arden is almost palpable. His jaw clenches and unclenches. He squeezes my hand so tight it hurts.
“Watch your tone, boy. So you think you’ve got a girlfriend? She knocked up?”
“I swear to God if you don’t respect—”
“Careful, son.” Sheriff Moss is a tall man built like a pro wrestler with a receding hairline tinged with gray and a large vein leading from the beginning of said recession to the tip of his left eyebrow. That vein is threatening to bulge out of his face. “Answer the question.”
Arden slowly releases my hand and puts both of his palms on the marble countertop in front of us. I can tell he’s trying to maintain composure. I’ve never seen him this rigid before. This tense. I feel so waylaid by this conversation. Pregnant? Is Sheriff Moss related to Julio? Has Arden gotten someone pregnant before? “You’re not going to disrespect Carly like that. You’re not going to insult her heritage. And you’re going to watch your tone.”
Wait … Insult my heritage?
Mr. Moss crosses his arms. “Is that right?”
“That’s right.” Only, it’s not Arden who says that.
It’s me. br />
Eighteen
Arden usually admires Carly’s fearlessness. But right now is not the time.
He can see that his prayers for her to back down will not be answered today. Pride mixed with frustration race through him. The recipe for a fight is all over her face. Her nostrils are flaring like the wings of a moth. Her eyes practically glow with ferocity.
Oh geez.
His father seems impressed, for about a half a second. Then his face is all cruel amusement. “Your English is commendable,” he says. “I’ll bet your parents appreciate that when it comes time to ask for a price check on rice and beans at the grocery store.”
Arden nearly springs across the counter, but Carly throws her arm in front of him with the strength of an ox. “Arden, don’t!” But her focus never leaves the sheriff. Her brow arches in defiance, but she says nothing.
Arden slides back. He has no idea what to expect. Is Carly trying to handle this on her own? She’s way out of her league. His dad is ruthless. But then again, Carly is strong. How can you predict what will happen when a tsunami collides with a hurricane?
His gaze shifts from Carly to his father. His weight shifts from one leg to the other. His insides shift with indecision. Should I let them do this?
The sheriff narrows his eyes. “Let me guess.” He taps his chin with his index finger. “You were born here, right? Is that why you think it’s a good idea to mess around with my son? What about your parents? Do they know where you are? Should we give them a call? Tell them what you were doing? Or maybe they’d prefer you were given a ride home in the back of my work vehicle?”
Work vehicle? “Her parents are dead, Dad.” Arden folds his hands atop his head. It’s the only way he can keep from jumping across the counter and wrapping them around his father’s thick neck. That kind of reaction would make the situation ten times worse. It would clue his father in to just how much he cares about Carly—which Arden knows he would use to his advantage. And his father might actually pull his gun out of its holster this time—which would put Carly in danger, because it might misfire while Arden beats his father to the ground.