And so it’s only one week into my summer and I’m already waking up next to my stepbrother’s arch-nemesis. Way to go, Eden.
As my eyelids are flickering open to the sight of the sunlight streaming in through a gap in the blinds, I roll over to face the guy by my side. Jake’s stirring, his muscles bulging as he stretches, contracting in such a way that I suddenly become wide awake.
“Morning,” he mumbles. His voice is quiet as he sits up, rubbing his eyes and squinting at the window. He’s still fully dressed, and so am I.
“I slept here?” I blurt, which is a stupid question considering I quite blatantly did. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not only did I sneak out, I didn’t come home either. Dad is going to murder me. “I need to go home,” I say, adjusting my updo and getting to my feet. “Like, A.S.A.P.”
“But babe—” he starts, but is interrupted by a knock on the door. I don’t know what time it is, but I do know that it’s not the middle of the night, so I’m not surprised when a woman enters the room.
She studies us, folds her arms across her chest, looks me up and down, and then fixes Jake with a glare. “I knew you were sneaking a girl in here last night,” she says scornfully. “Does this one have a name?”
“Mom,” Jake hisses as he gets to his feet.
“No, Jake.” She shakes her head in disapproval, pointing behind her to the door. “She has five minutes to get out of here.”
I hear him groan as she leaves. Until this exact moment, I thought Jake was a nice guy. A guy so nice that I kissed him back last night. But now, all of a sudden, his mom’s attitude has left me with a few questions. My stomach churns.
“Do you take girls home often or something?” I murmur. Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, I reach for my Converse and pull them on.
“No,” says Jake, almost immediately. “She’s just kidding.”
I glance over my shoulder, furrowing my eyebrows to let him know I’m disheartened, to let him know that I’m not going to just brush off his mom’s words easily. He might not watch The Lion King with any girl, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t watch Aladdin with them. “I need to go,” I say.
“Okay,” he finally says, figuring out that I’m serious. If I waste any more time here, Dad will file a missing person report. “Let me grab my keys.”
For a long while, I stare at him as I contemplate which decision to make. I can’t conclude what’s worse: a guy taking me home or arriving at Dad’s house in a cab. Either way, I’ll look like I’ve had a scandalous night.
Jake pulls on a shirt and snatches his keys from the windowsill. I can’t help but wonder if it’s a daily routine. “Okay,” he says again. “Let’s make a move.”
We slip out into the hall, silently but quickly walking down the stairway in hope of avoiding another run-in with his mom. Quite frankly, I don’t think she’s impressed. And I don’t think my dad will be either.
“What day is it?” I ask for the sake of conversation once we’re safely inside Jake’s car.
“Sunday,” he says. But by now his tone has softened, grown glum in a way that makes me wonder if he’s mad, his eyes half shut. It could be his mom’s interruption or my unwillingness to hang around with him all day that’s leaving him bummed out. But I need to get home and I need to get there as soon as possible.
“Okay,” I say. I divert my eyes to the road. Today, I’m far too tired to make the effort.
By the time we pull up outside my dad’s place, Jake has loosened up a little. He slowly turns off the ignition before turning to face me, a small grin playing at the corners of his lips. “We should do this again,” he says. “Stay at my place again next weekend. It’s my parents’ anniversary, so they won’t be there.”
“I mean, sure, we can hang out,” I say, albeit rather hesitantly. My opinion on him is too mixed right now.
“You can stay for the entire weekend.”
“I don’t think my dad will—”
He cuts me off, firmly telling me, “Just think about it,” while he stares at me. Eventually, he smiles again. “Good job I was at that party last night, huh? Talk about being in the right place at the right time.”
“Thanks for getting me out of there,” I murmur. I’d forgotten about that terrible party until now. I wonder if Tyler managed to get himself home.
Jake shrugs and his smile grows wider. “Thanks for letting me. I had a good night.”
“Yeah,” I say. Throwing a glance toward the house, I figure it’s time to head inside and face Dad. “I should go.”
“I’ll see you later,” he tells me as I open the door and step out. As I’m closing it, I wonder if he’s being sincere.
Yanking my hood over my head, I send a quick prayer to the skies above and then stuff my hands into my pockets. I’m hoping the hood hides my disgraceful hair and smudged makeup. I look like I’ve been partying on the Las Vegas Strip all night. Although I doubt many people in Vegas go out to party dressed in a hoodie and jeans.
I don’t hear Jake drive off, but I do know that he’s gone by the time I reach the front door—a front door that I am oh-so-greatly dreading walking through. Conveniently, I don’t have to.
It swings open before me, making me jolt in surprise, and as I’m recovering, a firm hand hauls me over the threshold. Too manly to be Ella, too built-up to be Dad. And so my earlier question has now been answered: Tyler did get home.
“Um.” I shake his grip off me, stepping to the side as he quietly shuts the door behind me. I haven’t even said anything and already he’s glaring down at me as though I’ve just set his room on fire. It’s like no one can ever please him.
“You’re kidding,” he says. “Right? You’ve got to be kidding.”
I stare. I sigh. I play with the drawstrings of my hoodie. I stare some more. “I could say the same to you,” I finally mutter. I’m past the point of caring anymore. I try to be nice, I get it thrown back in my face, repeat. Not anymore. “You took me to a party with all your pothead friends and crackhead losers. Are you insane?”
“Shhh,” he hisses sharply. He holds up a finger, narrowing his eyes down the hall to ensure no one has heard me. “Keep your voice down.”
“Sorry,” I say, seething with sarcasm. “I forgot your mom has no idea about how pathetic her son is.”
A wave of fleeting emotions captures his eyes in a peculiar way that I’ve never seen before. Something flashes within them, but I can’t quite pinpoint what. He almost looks hurt, but I can’t be sure, because already his eyes are narrowing again. “Dave!” he yells, his voice coarse. He smiles. “Eden’s home.”
“Seriously?” Now all I want to do is punch him in the face.
The smile on his lips alters to a smirk as he claims his victory. “Face the consequences.”
“Your consequences,” I correct. “You forced me to go to that party.”
“Yet I remember you agreeing to it.”
“I’m surprised that you even remember anything. Was it a sober night for you? I doubt it.” I push down my hood and sigh, gritting my teeth as I hear footsteps coming from the kitchen. If Dad doesn’t kill me, I’m pretty sure Tyler will.
“Good luck,” he says, laughing under his breath while he leans back against the wall. He folds his arms across his chest and watches in amusement as Dad approaches.
“Where the hell have you been?” is the first question Dad fires my way. All I can say is that his expression isn’t too impressed. “Do you even know the time? It’s almost noon. Where have you been all night? The least you could have done was answer your phone. I’ve been worried sick, Eden.”
“I’m sorry, I—” It’s at this point that I face the ultimate crisis—come clean or lie my way out of it. But I don’t have the courage to own up and I don’t have the experience to think of a slick cover-up, so neither option really seems to be an option at all.
As Dad’s eyes bore into mine and his eyebrows arch as he awaits an answer, I frantically glance everywhere else, and my gaze lands on Tyler. He’s still smirking, still watching, still enjoying me struggling to save myself from Dad’s wrath. But I’m too panicked to even glare, and the longer I helplessly stare at him, the more his devious expression begins to fade.
“She was at Meghan’s place,” he says suddenly, his eyes locked on mine, his face tight. He looks to my dad. “I already told you that.”
Dad looks baffled for a moment while he thinks, but his eyebrows only end up furrowing. “No you didn’t.”
“I’m, like, pretty sure I told you last night when I got back, because she asked me to let you know.” Tyler cocks his head, pulling a perplexed expression as though Dad has suffered amnesia. “Remember?”
“No.”
Tyler shrugs. “Man, I must have forgotten,” he says, and then diverts his eyes back to me. They’re soft now. Gentle. “Sorry, Eden. My bad.”
There’s a long silence. Dad looks completely puzzled, Tyler appears nonchalant, and I’m still trying to figure out what just happened. If I witnessed it properly, Tyler just helped me out. Helped me. Remarkable.
I find it hard to believe that one day he might make sense to me. I think that right now, he’s almost impossible to understand. One minute he seemed delighted at the idea of me getting caught, the next he jumped in and covered for me. Why? It’s giving me a headache, the way he switches between hating me and getting along with me. Honestly, I wish he’d just decide already. It’d save me the hassle of trying to figure it out.
“Next time, don’t leave in the first place without telling me,” Dad says. He seems irritated, but just when I think he’s about to walk away, he says, “By the way, we’re going out for a late lunch. All of us. That means you too, Tyler. Dress nicely.”
The thought of a “family” meal doesn’t particularly bother me anymore. However, Tyler’s intense stare does. And so when Dad heads off to the kitchen, presumably to find Ella, I seize the opportunity to make sense of the past five minutes.
“You get off the hook so easily,” Tyler murmurs, but I ignore him.
Instead, I ask, “Why did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Lie for me.” He seemed quite content with watching me get busted; then his attitude miraculously changed and he decided to step in and save the day. And I have no idea why. “I don’t get it.”
He shrugs, his eyes still calm again. His mood swings confuse me. “I owed you one,” he tells me. “For taking you to that party last night. I didn’t think it through. Sorry.” His apology is sincere, which I find surprising, and he’s not yelling at me for once, which is even more surprising.
“Why did you even invite me along in the first place?” I ask, my voice riddled with contempt. “Did you honestly think I’d want to be around that stuff?”
“I’m sorry,” he says again, this time even quieter, and for a second I consider accepting his apology, but then he ruins the entire thing when he decides to mutter, “So you were with Jake, huh?”
I guess he saw the car. “What does it matter to you if I was? You have your opinion of him and I have mine. I don’t want to talk about it again, because it’s got nothing to do with you.”
“I need to take a shower,” he says, bypassing the matter even though he was the one to bring it up. He narrows his eyes again, but with delicacy. “We’ll talk about this later. After this bullshit meal that we’ve gotta sit through.”
“We’ll talk about it later?” I repeat. Until now, I never took Tyler as a conversationalist. Especially when it’s a conversation about the guy I was locking lips with last night.
“Yeah,” he says. He turns around, and as he makes his way up the stairs, he throws a glance over his shoulder. He’s smiling. “And remember what your dad said. Wear something nice.”
