“Fine,” she huffs. “You can forgive Tyler.”
“Thank you for your approval,” Tiffani says sarcastically. “Now can we please get inside the mall already? I’m dying for a Johnny Rockets sundae!”
By this point I’m pretty impressed with myself for holding my tongue, for hanging back and acting like I’m drinking the best goddamn latte I’ve ever had. As we head back up Broadway and past Nordstrom and Nike, I slip my gnawed cup into a trash can.
“Hurry up, Eden,” Meghan calls over her shoulder when we turn into the mall, and she pauses for a moment to allow me to catch up, which I unwillingly do.
The thing about Santa Monica Place is that it was built solely for the rich. I’ve noticed this each time I’ve been here, because it’s hard not to look at the people who are happy to flaunt their wealth. From the man in the suit peering through the windows of Hugo Boss to the woman with the sophisticated dress and heels who’s eyeing up a watch in the Michael Kors window, it’s clear they have money they’re willing to spend. Tyler is the same.
Santa Monica Place is an outdoor mall, with four public walkways leading into an oval center, glamorous stores circling it. It’s so complex and unique and modern that it makes me feel out of place, but I follow the girls nonetheless. We head up the escalators to the third and final floor, which has an open-air dining deck, and make a beeline for Johnny Rockets. Johnny Rockets is another fast-food chain that Oregon seems to be missing, because Oregon sucks and seems to be deprived of just about everything, except rain. Oregon is never short on rain.
When we reach the food court, Tiffani gets herself something called a Super Sundae, Meghan and Rachael go for the Perfect Brownie Sundae, and I simply opt for water.
“The guys are on their way up,” Tiffani tells us without glancing up from her phone. She texts someone—presumably one of the guys—while scooping up a mouthful of ice cream at the same time, her eyes never leaving the device in her hands. “They’ve finally decided what’s happening on Saturday.”
“What’s happening on Saturday?” I blurt, my curiosity getting the better of me once again, and after I say it, I realize it’s the first thing I’ve said since I decided that French guys are better than British.
Tiffani’s eyes raise from her phone as she swallows the ice cream she’s just piled into her mouth. She stares at me for a long moment before she glances across the table to Rachael and Meghan. “Is she serious?”
“The annual beach party,” Rachael says slowly, her eyes fixed on me as her spoon hovers above her brownie. She twirls it around in a circle. “The biggest and hottest party of the summer.”
“Oh,” I say. Quickly, I unscrew the cap of my water and take a long drink.
“They get a permit and shut down one half of the beach,” she explains, although I’m not all that interested in the exact details and I don’t exactly know who “they” are. “It’s supposed to be over twenty-one only, but, well, you know…” Playfully, she adjusts her hair and pouts. “Everyone goes. There’s not exactly a door to the beach where the security guards can card you.”
“Security guards?”
“There’s a lot of fights,” Tiffani says. “And obviously you can’t drink while you’re there, because it’s a public place and all. Unless you want to get arrested, which a lot of people do.”
“So,” Rachael cuts in, without missing a beat, “you get drunk before you go. Just don’t get, like, wasted or anything, because you’ll draw attention to yourself and you’ll end up getting kicked out for being a minor.”
Tiffani places her phone down on the table and draws her sundae toward her, slowly scooping up some more ice cream. She smiles as she throws me a peculiar glance and says, “I don’t think we’ll have to worry about Eden getting wasted.”
I press my lips together and narrow my eyes at her, slightly offended, as she and Rachael stifle a laugh. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Tiffani’s smile grows into a small smirk as she exchanges glances with Rachael. She holds her spoon up to her lips. “You’re just not very…”
“I’m not very what, Tiffani?” I gnaw at the insides of my cheeks as five million words run through my head all at once. Not very cool? Popular? Sociable? Pretty? In other words, not very like them?
“Reckless,” she says, and then shovels the ice cream into her mouth.
Reckless? I’m not reckless? I almost mimic one of Meghan’s snorts but somehow manage to suppress the laughter in my throat. Oh, Tiffani, I think, I can assure you I am pretty damn reckless. If only they knew.
Tiffani swallows and stares at me, noticing my silence. “Where were you on Tuesday night?”
“Tuesday?” My voice is something between a whisper and a squeak. On Tuesday night, I was at the pier with Tyler. I certainly wasn’t with Meghan, and Tiffani knows this.
“Yeah, Tuesday.” She blinks at me as she awaits an answer. I don’t know why she’s asking me again. It’s like she wants to try and catch me, like she’s hoping I’ll casually blurt out the truth in front of them all.
Rachael’s watching me too, intensifying the pressure of Tiffani’s question. My palms sweat. Meghan snorts again, and I begin to wonder if perhaps Johnny Rockets has slipped a few grams of pot into her brownie. She won’t stop giggling.
Tiffani heaves a sigh. “Where did you really go?”
“Oh my God!” Rachael almost screams, her body shooting upright as she leans across the table. “You were totally hooking up with Jake!”
Tiffani turns to her. “That’s what I thought too.”
My shoulders drop in relief. Thank God that’s what she thought my secret was. I’ve been in constant worry over the thought of Tiffani figuring out it was me that was with Tyler on Tuesday, but she isn’t on to us at all. “Maybe,” I say with a small smile. I look away. I’d rather they thought I was sneaking around with Jake than Tyler.
At this, Rachael almost hurls her body across the table. Her mouth is hanging open as she shakes her head quickly, like she can’t believe what she’s hearing. I can’t blame her; I wouldn’t either. “Was it a home run? Eden, tell us!”
Meghan bursts into a fit of giggles, and all three of us turn to look at her, confused. She bites her lip to smother some of her laughter, but she ends up squeezing her eyes closed and murmuring an apology. Until this moment, I hadn’t realized she’d been texting the entire time.
“Meg, what are you even laughing at?” Tiffani questions, sounding peeved.
“I’m sorry,” Meghan splutters again as she tries her hardest to control herself. “I’m texting Jared. He’s hilarious.”
“Who the fuck is Jared?” Rachael asks.
“The guy from Pasadena! The one from the beach,” she says. She smiles at Tiffani and adds, “He and his friends are coming on Saturday.”
“Oh my God, you and Eden are ridiculous!” Rachael folds her arms across her chest and rolls her eyes. “You’re both talking to guys and neither of you thought to tell us?”
“You never told us about Trevor,” Tiffani says with a playful grin. “We only found out because Meg walked in on the two of you at Jason’s party last year.”
“Let it go,” she huffs, but she’s cracking a smile.
The guys show up five minutes later. I’m thankful because we’ve been sitting listening to Meghan tell us everything she finds hilarious about Jared, and she’s beginning to repeat herself.
There’s Tyler, Dean, and Jake, and I notice that Dean has positioned himself between the other two. I still don’t understand how Tyler and Jake are friends, yet they hate each other. Somehow they can force themselves into acting civil. The three of them wander over to us and pull over chairs from another table. I notice how Tyler settles himself next to Tiffani, but not too close. His eyes never meet mine.
“So we’ve decided,” Jake starts, once we’ve gotten past the greetings, “that we’ll go to Dean’s before the party on Saturday.”
“A party before a party,” Dean says. He g
rins as he quickly glances around the six of us, as though he’s trying to gauge if we’re game or not. “We’ll take care of the booze.”
“You guys just take care of looking good,” Jake finishes. He pulls a face and shrugs, leaning back in his seat and folding his arms across his chest.
Rachael flings her spoon across the table at him, and he dodges it by a centimeter. “Prick,” she mutters, and he offers her a crooked smile.
“You know I’m kidding, Rachy baby,” he says innocently. He cocks his head as though he’s challenging her to a rap battle or something.
“Don’t call me that!”
While they bicker, I don’t say anything. I’m mostly too embarrassed at the thought of the girls thinking I had sex with Jake two days ago, but I’m also trying my hardest to act as nonchalant around Tyler as possible. Too much eye contact could be suspicious, but none at all could also raise questions. After all, he’s my stepbrother. It would be weird if we didn’t acknowledge each other. So occasionally I glance over at him, hoping each time that he’ll look up at the same moment, but somehow I never seem to be able to catch his eye. He’s too busy staring at the table while Tiffani runs her fingers up and down his arm, and he looks like he’s frozen stiff. She doesn’t seem to notice. Her hands reach up to grasp his jaw as she draws his lips toward hers, but he jerks his head to the side and she ends up planting a kiss on his cheek. After that, he stares at the ground, never looking back up.
I angle my body slightly away from them and turn to Meghan for support, but she’s back on her phone again, snorting and giggling at texts from Jared. I glare around the group. All of them are annoying me in one way or another, except Dean. My eyes land on him, sitting at the opposite side of the table and looking as left out as I feel.
“Freaks,” he mouths. He smiles, and I think about the five-dollar bill that he wrote on and I grin back, but then Rachael’s voice distracts me.
“Eden, you and Jake should go for a walk or something,” she says with an edge to her voice, her eyes wide and encouraging as she stares at me. She gives me a curt nod and turns back to Jake. “Off you go, lovebirds.”
Jake raises his eyebrows, looking perplexed, like he wants to ask, “What the hell?” but manages to refrain. He stands and lets his eyes fall to me before he nods to the escalator. “Eden?”
Rachael’s beaming at me, Dean has averted his eyes to the sky, and Tyler has finally glanced up, his attention caught. Tiffani is tracing circles on his neck with her index finger now, but he doesn’t seem to pay attention, only glares at me instead.
Jake’s still waiting, so I quickly get to my feet, murmur, “We won’t be long,” to everyone, and walk around the table until I reach him. I don’t linger to wait for a reply from anyone, so Jake and I head off on our own. We weave our way through the food court and across the dining deck.
Jake stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jeans as we take the escalator down to the second level of the mall. He leans against the handrail. “So what’s up?”
“Not much,” I say. I don’t particularly want to talk to him, especially after I’ve been ignoring his texts for a few weeks now. I was hoping he’d give up. That way, we wouldn’t be in the awkward situation that we are now. “We haven’t talked in a while.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“I figured,” he says.
There’s tension in the air as we step off the escalator and saunter over to the glass barrier that wraps its way around the entire level. We’re peering down at all the people on the floor below as they zip across from one store to another. Jake’s leaning forward, his arms crossed and resting against the barrier, and I slowly run my fingers over the metal.
“You know that I have to go home next month, right?” I glance sideways but don’t angle my head to look at him. He doesn’t look back at me. I know this isn’t exactly what Rachael had in mind when she sent us off alone, but she’s given me the perfect opportunity to set things straight with him.
“Yeah, I know,” he says.
“Right,” I say, although my voice is laced with trepidation, worried that he’ll take my words the wrong way. “So maybe we should just stick to being friends.”
Jake still doesn’t glance over at me, but he shrugs and stares at a group of girls on the floor below. They look like seniors, and I wonder if he recognizes them. “Whatever, Eden,” he mutters. “It was never going to be anything serious. Just a little fun, if you know what I mean.”
I blink and take a step back from the barrier. “Wow.”
“What?” Now he looks at me. He straightens up and narrows his blue eyes, acting like he didn’t just say what he just said. “I thought you knew that.”
“I did,” I say sharply, suddenly realizing that Tyler was completely right when he told me that Jake was a player. Just a little fun, that’s what Jake plays for. Nothing serious, because serious isn’t cool. “I just didn’t believe it until now.”
I don’t even know why I’m getting angry over this. In fact, I should be thrilled to get Jake off my back, overjoyed that he didn’t get offended. I don’t think I ever saw myself being with him, anyway. He was a good kisser, and that night was fun, but that’s as far as Jake and I are going. We’re simply friends. Minus the benefits that he likes to think he’s entitled to.
I sigh and rub my temples. “Okay, whatever, it’s cool. You bought me Chick-fil-A, so thanks.”
“Cool,” he says with a laugh, but he sounds a little agitated. The thing about Jake is that he seems like a nice guy, but there’s a look in his eyes right now that makes me wonder if he’s a completely different person when things don’t go his way.
I don’t know what to say back to him and it looks like he’s done talking anyway, so I turn around and stalk my way back over to the escalator. He follows me. We head back up to the dining deck, where our friends are still sitting. Tiffani has somehow managed to sprawl herself across Tyler’s lap. She sure does take the phrase “forgive and forget” seriously. But I notice that Tyler doesn’t return her enthusiasm. She’s all over him, but his hands are stuffed into his pockets and his expression is blank.
Rachael wiggles her eyebrows at me when we approach, but I pretend not to notice and fetch my bottle of water from the table instead. Tiffani finally unwraps herself from Tyler, and the seven of us actually have a conversation for once, discussing the party on Saturday and what alcohol to get and who they think will turn up at beach. I just sort of nod my way through the entire thing, agreeing with everything Rachael says and hoping it’s enough to get me through.
* * *
That night, after Rachael and I finally made our way home to Deidre Avenue, I picked at the mac and cheese that Ella made for dinner, set off on a run, and then collapsed into bed shortly after. An entire day of trailing around stores was simply too much for me to handle, so the exhaustion from the extensive socializing and the run combined was enough to put me to sleep long before midnight.
I don’t know what I was thinking about before I dozed off, but I’m pretty convinced I was thinking about Tyler. I know that he was all I thought about when I was running. I couldn’t get the day out of my head. It was the way he pulled up to the mall with Tiffani and her new purse that he splashed a wad of cash on, kissing her like he hadn’t been kissing me the night before. It was the way he’d smiled at me afterward, the way his eyes had crinkled, the way he was keeping everything a secret, keeping us a secret. That’s what I couldn’t stop thinking about.
Suddenly I’m stirring awake again, my room dark, the house silent. I stare at my wall through half-closed eyes, and behind me I hear my door squeak open again, and I realize this is what has woken me. I moan into my comforter.
“Are you awake?” a voice whispers across the room. It’s Tyler, and my eyes promptly fly open, my door groaning as it clicks shut again.
Now I most definitely am, I think. I don’t move an inch. My eyes just rest on my dull wall as I listen to
the muffled sound of Tyler’s footsteps shuffling across my carpet. “Yeah,” I murmur. “What time is it?”
“Three,” Tyler says, his voice still hushed, like we shouldn’t dare make a sound. I hear him exhale from behind me just as the mattress shifts beneath my body, my comforter lifted up as he slips into my bed. “Can I sleep with you?”
I’m still pretty much half asleep as my eyelids flutter closed again, but the corners of my lips pull up into a small, tired smile. When I don’t reply straight away, Tyler starts to babble.
“I mean, not like hook up with you, just fall asleep, you know, like, rest,” he blurts quickly, his breath tickling the back of my neck, his body never touching mine.
“I know what you meant,” I say.
There’s a long silence. The only thing I can hear is our breathing, completely out of sync. Whenever I inhale, he exhales, and it almost begins to sound like a rhythm until his breathing slows. That’s when I feel his warm, bare skin press against my back, his chest hard yet somehow comfortable, his long fingers moving to touch my arm. The sensation makes my body shiver.
“I’m sorry about Tiffani,” he whispers against my ear as he runs his other hand through my hair.
“You should be.”
“Just let me figure it out,” he almost pleads, his voice laced with something that I can’t quite understand, and, quieter, he adds, “I’m trying to figure everything out.”
I’m still staring at the wall. “Like what?”
“Eden,” he says, “in case you haven’t noticed, I’m pretty fucked up.” He draws his body away from mine and rolls over to face the other way, so I finally tear my eyes away from the wall and switch onto my other side.
I stare at his back now, my gaze resting on his tattoo on the back of his shoulder blade. I lift my hand and press a finger to the ink. “I wouldn’t say that. More like lost.”
“Lost?”
“Yeah,” I say. My voice is barely audible. “I think you’re lost.”
“What makes you think that?”