The beach party is apparently a huge deal. Half of the beach, the one on the right of the pier, is sectioned off for the event, with roads closed and security guards patrolling the area. When we all tumble out of the minivan in the pier parking lot, I’m consumed by the noise of music and voices, and the atmosphere feels electric. I squint at the beach in front of us and I notice a stage set up right bang in the middle of the sand, with huge black speakers attached, and on it, there’s a DJ entertaining the crowd.
“If any of you morons get us kicked out, I’ll personally kick your ass,” Jake threatens. He glances around us all, fixing us all with a warning glare. “Unless you’re a girl. If you’re a girl, you’ll get the silent treatment.”
And with that, we all head for the sand, our heads hanging down slightly as we pass some security guards. It makes me wonder if I look as drunk as I feel. I really hope not. I’ll be kicked out within five minutes if I do, but thankfully we stagger onto the sand and blend in with the crowd of people around us. I expect the nine of us to stick together as a group, but we don’t. The guys nod us goodbye for now and head off in one direction, and I’m surprised Tyler heads off without Tiffani.
“We should totally skinny dip!” Rachael suggests, her voice loud over the music. She catches the attention of some men around us and they give her a quick nod of encouragement.
“We should totally not skinny dip,” Tiffani remarks. She shoots the guys a death glare and pushes us further into the crowd, and I’m so drunk that I almost twist my ankle just trying to walk.
Sand finds its way into my Converse and it is the most uncomfortable feeling in the entire world, so I simply kick off my shoes and bend down to pick them up, dangling them from my hands by the laces. I nod my head in sync with the beats of the music and am shoved from side to side by the people surrounding us. They’re all clearly adults and of age, but I don’t care.
“Jared and his friends are here!” Meghan screams at us over the noise, spinning around with a panicked expression. She touches her hair. “How do I look?”
“Like you’re looking for trouble!” Rachael yells, which is true.
“I’ll take it,” Meg says, and then she blows us a kiss and worms her way through the crowd. I doubt she’ll be coming back to join us anytime soon.
I’m now waving my shoes in the air and receiving glares from the people by my side, mostly because I keep almost whacking them in the face, but I feel too free and too on top of the world to apologize. Miraculously, I find myself dancing: wild and crazed dancing, but still dancing, which is rare for me. The DJ on the stage is playing house music and everyone has a hand bobbing in the air and my head feels fuzzy and even the ocean is starting to roll to one side.
I’m enjoying myself, jumping on the sand and waving my shoes in the air, when Tiffani grabs my and Rachael’s arms and draws us toward her. She doesn’t look to be having as much fun as we are, and I can’t tell if it’s because she didn’t drink as much or if it’s because she thinks the event sucks.
“I’m gonna go find Tyler,” she says loudly, and when she takes a step back I can just about make out that she looks pissed off.
“Nooooo!” Rachael protests. “Stay with us!”
“I need to keep an eye on him after what happened last year,” she says with a shake of her head.
I narrow my eyes at her, my laces still tangled around my fingers, and I blow some hair out of my face. The evening sun is scorching. “What happened last year?”
Tiffani only glances sideways at me with an annoyed and disapproving look in her eyes. “Eden, please stop waving those things around.” She reaches for my shoes and pulls them away from me, pulling a face at the lyrics written along the side, before sighing and handing them back to me. “You look stupid, so try and act a little normal. Now have fun, you two.”
Rachael gives me a drunken shrug as Tiffani elbows her way out of the crowd. She’s out of breath and so am I.
“What happened last year?” I ask again once my breathing is restored. Rachael’s outline is slightly blurred, so I squint at her in order to see her better, but it doesn’t help. My body feels like it’s rolling from one side to the other, like the ocean.
“Tyler took some sketchy stuff,” she says quietly into my ear as she leans in, careful that no one hears us, even though everyone is too busy partying, “and then he passed out and we all thought he died, but then he had a seizure and we were like, ‘Oh, shit, he’s not dead,’ and yeah. We all dragged him back to Tiffani’s place and she cried all night about how he made her look stupid in front of everyone. She locked herself in her bathroom and wouldn’t come out, so the rest of us stayed over to make sure he was okay and he ended up being totally fine. It was super scary at the time, and now Tiffani’s paranoid that he’ll do something like that again.” She’s out of breath again by the time she stops talking and so she takes a dramatic gulp of air and then exhales.
I know for a fact that if I were sober I’d be concerned and I’d probably go and look for Tyler myself, but I’m too drunk to do any of that right now. I might also be mad at Tiffani for caring more about her reputation than Tyler’s life, but I just pull a face and return to swaying, and eventually Rachael does too.
The thing about being drunk is that you seem to lose not only your senses but also track of time. It feels like it only takes ten minutes for me and Rachael to force our way to the front of the stage, but when I look up and see the darkening sky I realise much more time must have gone by. I’m sweating by now and when I look to my right, I realize I’m suddenly alone. Rachael has disappeared.
“Oh,” I say. A laugh escapes my lips and I turn around and begin to dance my way out of the crowd, feeling slightly claustrophobic now. People are looking down on me with odd expressions. It’s so obvious that I’m half a decade away from being old enough to be here.
Away from the stage, people are milling around on the sand, some socializing and others trying their hardest to pick up girls. The crowd of people is thinner back here, so I stop and take a moment to breathe. I don’t feel as energetic anymore, and the booze high that I seemed to be on is wearing off as the night goes on, but I’m still past tipsy and I’m still enjoying every second of it. A fight breaks out near me and the security guards come bounding over, barking demands and breaking up the scuffle, dragging the two troublemakers away from the event.
I think that’s when it hits me that I’m alone. Alone, and still slightly drunk. In that split second, a flood of panic drowns my body and I instantly reach into the pocket of my sweater to fetch my phone. There’s only one problem. It’s not there.
I check my other pocket, and then I check my bra, and then I check my shoes. No phone, and no cash either. Everything is gone. I don’t know if everything has fallen out of my pockets and is now buried six feet under the sand, or if I’ve been robbed. Either way, I have no means of calling anyone. Now, just like everything else, if I were sober I would be smart enough to realize that it’s not the end of the world, that the house is only a forty-minute walk away. But I’m not sober and so it is the end of the world.
Tears well in my eyes and I try to blink them away, but my lips begin to quiver and soon they’re rolling down my cheeks. I pull my sweater around me and stare at the sand. I’m scared people notice me crying here like the dumbass sixteen-year-old that I am. I’m too young to be out here drunk and alone and mugged.
“Dammit, Eden,” a voice mutters, and the warmness and familiarity makes me stop weeping. I glance up through tear-blurred eyes to find Tyler approaching me.
“Tiffani is looking for you,” I sniff. I pull the sleeves of my sweater over my hands and dab at my eyes, careful not to smudge my mascara anymore than I already have. “Your girlfriend.”
“What the hell are you crying for?” He ignores my words, steps directly in front of me and lowers his head, looking up at me from beneath his long eyelashes. The emerald in his eyes reminds me of seaweed.
“Everyone left,” I tell him. My eyes are starting to sting and swell up. I sway to the right. “Tiffani, Meghan, Rachael . . . My phone’s gone.”
Tyler grasps my arm and steadies me, but he also looks me up and down. “How drunk are you?”
“Are you drunk?”
“Not anymore.” He presses his lips together as he thinks for a moment. Leaning forward, he untangles the laces of my shoes from around my fingers and then drops my Chucks to the sand. “Put them back on. There’s trash everywhere.”
When I tear my eyes away from him and glance down, I notice that he’s right. The beach is littered with food packaging and crushed soda cans and lighters. I’ve been dancing on top of all this crap, I think. Quickly, I slip on my shoes, and the sand inside them feels uncomfortable again. But I feel safe now that Tyler is here, so I grin at him despite my blotchy makeup.
“Your dad is going to kill you,” he mutters, but not exactly to me. He heaves a sigh as he scratches the top of his head, trying to figure out what to do.
I don’t intentionally set out to make it difficult for him, but I’m feeling recharged and ready to have fun again, so I twirl away from him. I come to a stop ten feet away and turn back to face him with a playful smirk on my lips. His eyes narrow with concern as he watches, waits. People keep walking through the gap between us, but the moment it’s clear I throw myself onto the ground and forward roll my way back to him. It doesn’t work too well. I end up on my side, my legs tangled around each other, my shoulder possibly dislocated. I hear people around me laughing.
“Get off the ground,” Tyler orders. I feel him grab my body and yank me upright. “What did I just tell you about the trash?”
“I loooove this beach,” I drawl slowly. My head feels heavy and I topple to the left, but Tyler quickly catches me and holds me upright by my shoulders. “I’m going to come back next summer just for this party!”
“Are you coming back next summer?” He looks down at me with a solemn expression and urgency in his voice, and in that split second it’s like all the alcohol in my bloodstream suddenly evaporates.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It depends if my dad wants me back or not.”
“I hope he does,” Tyler murmurs, his hands still on my body, still holding me. “I know I do.”
My brief sober moment doesn’t last long and I’m back to swaying against his embrace, not quite doing anything purposely. His words barely register in my mind. My swaying develops into an attempt at dancing, but I’m vaguely aware that I just look like a complete fool.
“You’re drawing attention to yourself,” Tyler hisses against my ear as his hands tighten on me, so tight that they restrict my movement, which is exactly what he’s trying to do. “You’re gonna get us kicked out.”
“But I’m twenty-one!” I yell at him, laughing through my words. I wiggle under his grasp and it only makes me giggle at myself even more.
“Oh my God,” Tyler groans under his breath. He turns his face to the side and stares at the sand, his jaw clenched, eyes shut. He takes a deep breath, lets go of my body, walks around me, and, in one swift movement, bends and pulls me onto his back. “You need to sober the fuck up,” he mutters as he starts to walk.
My arms are slung around his neck and it’s possible I’m choking him to death as I cling onto him. His firm hands are under my thighs, my legs are wrapped around his waist, and he’s walking so effortlessly that the thought of me not weighing much gives me a moment of satisfaction. I rest my head on his shoulder and blow air against his neck as he continues to carry me across the beach.
“Troy-James,” Tyler calls out, and the unfamiliar name makes me lift my head in curiosity as Tyler comes to halt.
There’s a small group of people, three of them, standing in front of us, and they all spin around to Tyler’s voice. There’s two girls and . . . TJ. The guy from Dean’s, the guy that’s the cornerback. Troy-James. I mentally piece the obvious together and I feel exceptionally clever when I do.
“What’s up?” Troy-James, or TJ, says. The hard expression he wore earlier is long gone and he looks like he’s having fun. This is understandable given the fact that there are two clearly older girls hovering by his side. They both offer me sympathetic smiles.
“I need your apartment,” Tyler says straightaway. “You’re still on Ocean Avenue, right?”
“Bro.” TJ blinks for a while and then exchanges a quick glance with the girls he seems to have charmed. He settles his eyes back on Tyler. “What are your plans, man?”
Tyler shrugs as he flicks his eyes over his shoulder at me, the movement causing me to jolt against his body, and then he says, “Sobering her up. Her dad’ll kill her if she goes home like this.”
“Dude, you’re kind of messing up my plans,” TJ mutters in a strained voice. He pulls a face and squints at us.
“My place is free,” one of the girls comments, and with that, TJ reaches into the pocket of his shorts and tosses Tyler the keys to his apartment. Just. Like. That.
“Leave ’em under the doormat,” he says.
Tyler manages to squeeze in a thank you before TJ and the girls head off. I feel him sigh again as he tightens his grip on my legs and starts to walk again, walking and walking until I realize that we’re heading away from the party.
“Why are we going to his apartment?” I mumble into his shirt, because it’s almost impossible to keep my head up now. “Why does he even have an apartment?”
“Because you’re just embarrassing yourself out here,” he says with a chuckle, and it makes me wish that I could see his face right now, so I could look at his eyes and wonder what’s going through his mind. But I’m still too tipsy for that. “And his parents are, like, millionaires. They bought him an apartment down here for his sixteenth birthday. Who the hell does that?”
“Millionaires,” I reply. He laughs again.
I don’t mind leaving the party. I’ve already lost my phone and my money and my friends back there, and now that the alcohol is wearing off and the sun is beginning to set, I just want to go home. Of course, going home isn’t an option right now. Dad thinks I’m at the movies, watching some mediocre love story, but really I’m being carried away from a party because I took too many shots earlier. I’m just thankful that it’s Tyler who ended up coming to my rescue. If Jake or Dean or even Meghan had tried to escort me away, I would have put up a fight.
“You can put me down, you know,” I murmur after ten minutes of nonstop walking on Tyler’s part. I’m worried I’m hurting him.
“What, so you can get hit by a car? No way,” he says curtly as he pauses on the edge of the sidewalk. He throws a quick glance in both directions and then drifts across the avenue. I can still hear the music from the stage.
“You’re missing the rest of the party,” I say, but he doesn’t reply.
He carries me over to the row of apartments and condos and hotels on Ocean Avenue, the buildings that I’ve jogged past on so many of my runs, the ones overlooking the beach. We slow down by a four-storey building, and Tyler carefully carries me up the steps and pauses outside the entrance. Carefully, he slides me off his back. My legs feel like jelly when I try to stand.
“How are you feeling?” he asks without glancing up, too busy fumbling around with the key and the lock.
“Embarrassed,” I admit. I’m gradually sobering up after my last drink, almost three hours ago, and I’m starting to become more aware of how ridiculous I’ve been acting. I vaguely remember spitting all over Dean’s parents’ car.
Tyler finally gets the door open and he reaches back for my arm to pull me over the threshold and into the lobby of the condo building, which is bright with polished flooring. “We’ve all been there,” he muses, trying to comfort me.
“Like you last year?” My tone sounds almost contemptuous, but I don’t mean it to. I’m just curious. Always curious.
Tyler stops walking, abruptly halting in the middle of the lobby. He cranes his neck to stare back at me, his expression immediately hardening as he narrows his eyes. I bite down on my lower lip and wait for his outburst, for his aggression to take over, but it never does. He just shakes his head and yanks me into the elevator.
“206,” he says quietly as he presses the button for the second floor, and he barely looks at me in the seconds that it takes for us to get there. His fingers are still wrapped around my wrist.
Unit 206 is at the front of the building. I stare down at the doormat beneath my feet, finding it more interesting than it actually is, studying the pattern. Normally I wouldn’t care, but it appears tequila is creative and enjoys the art of doormats. I only stop when I’m pulled into the condo.
And God, it’s really pretty.
The living room is basking in the glow from the sunset that’s shining in through the floor-to-ceiling windows around the room. Everything has a deep orange cast to it and it looks really beautiful. It’s the type of sunset that you only ever see in photos, and most of the time they’re Photoshopped. But up here in this condo with the huge windows overlooking the beach, it captures the essence of real beauty. I stare at it for a while.
“Here,” Tyler says softly from behind me, catching my attention. I finally tear my eyes away from the windows and look at him. He’s holding a glass of water, which he forces into my hand. “Drink it. Now.”
A smile toys at my lips as I lift the glass and take a long swig, only now realizing how dehydrated I am. It feels refreshing and cool against my throat, so I end up drinking the entire thing in a matter of seconds.
“Sit down,” Tyler orders. He takes the empty glass from my hand and nods in the direction of the couch behind me. When I don’t move immediately, he presses his hand to my shoulder and directs me over.
“It looks so pretty,” I say once I’m safely perched on the couch. I stretch out and get comfy, my body slumped back against the cushions, my eyes focused on the windows. If I listen closely, I can just about hear the faint pumping of music. “Doesn’t it?”
“Sure it does,” Tyler says from a few feet away. I rotate my body to face him, crossing my legs and watching him in silence as he fills up the glass again by the faucet. He brings it over to me, his hands wet, and then he dries them off on his jeans once he’s passed the glass to me.
The quietness of the room contrasts with the noise of the party across the street, but there’s something relaxing about it all, about the faintness of the music and the brightness of the sun as it dips below the horizon. Tyler sits down on the edge of the couch, several inches away from me, and just stares while I drink my second round of water.
“You need to sleep this off,” he tells me. He’s still looking at me in disapproval, and it feels odd having our roles reversed. Normally I’m the one dealing with him. “Come on.” Reaching for the glass in my hand, he takes it away from me again and places it on the coffee table. He moves his hand back to mine. I flinch, but he doesn’t seem to notice. Delicately, he pulls me up onto my feet as he stands, his other hand grasping my waist to prevent me from losing my balance. “You good?”
“Good,” I confirm.
He turns around then, but he doesn’t unlock our hands, only squeezes his fingers around mine while he leads me through the kitchen and into a hall. We stop outside the door at the very end, and Tyler shoves it open to reveal a small bedroom. He pulls me inside.
I slide off my shoes and kick them to the side, almost subconsciously, and make a move toward the huge bed that’s occupying most of the floor space, but Tyler slides his hand under my knees and scoops me straight off the ground and into his arms instead.
His face is only inches from mine, so the only thing I can do is stare at him. There’s nothing else I can do. His eyes are so beautiful, so intriguing, that it’s impossible not to find yourself drawn to them. He’s not even looking back at me, but I can feel his heart beating through his chest and the way it’s speeding up. And then, almost as quickly as he picked me up, he’s gently laying me down on the bed and pulling back the sheets.
“I’ll go get your water,” he murmurs, almost shyly, and bites his lip as he turns and leaves the room.
I glance around me while he’s gone. There’s a mirror on the wall to my right, and the second I lay eyes on my blurred reflection, I gasp. I look horrific. My hair, which I spent over an hour straightening, has returned to its natural wave and feels knotted and gross. The same goes for my makeup, which Rachael slaved over. One of the fake eyelashes she applied is missing. I quickly reach for the other and pull it off, sticking it to the bedside drawer.
“Here,” Tyler says, and I jump, a little startled. He’s filled the glass back up to the brim again and he lays it down on the drawer, right next to the eyelash I’ve just torn off. “Water and sleep: the only way to sober up and minimize your hangover as much as possible.” He laughs a little as he moves around the bed, heading over to the window and pulling the curtains shut.
“You should take your own advice sometimes,” I comment, but I’m only teasing him. I’m still feeling a little buzzed. “Next time you’re drunk, I’m just gonna chant, ‘Water and sleep, water and sleep.’”
When he turns back around from the window, he’s biting back a smile that’s fighting its way onto his lips. He just shakes his head and then nods at me. “Get some sleep, Eden.”
I let out a laugh and then finally give in. He’s right, after all. I really do need to get some sleep. Grabbing the sheets, I slide down onto my back and get comfy, burying my head into the pillow as I fluff it up a little. I’m just about to close my eyes when I notice that Tyler’s lingering by the door, a little unsure of himself, like he doesn’t know whether he should leave the room or stay.
I lift my head up a few inches so that I can look at him properly. I’m not laughing anymore. “Are you going back to the party?”
“I don’t know,” he says quietly. His eyes fall to the carpet as he shrugs, but he doesn’t glance back up again. “I mean, Tiffani’s probably looking everywhere for me.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll let you sleep,” he says, his eyes gradually meeting mine. And then he smiles again, and it’s another one of those smiles of his that I adore. A genuine smile. Sincere. Gentle and reassuring.
I lay my head back down on the pillow and roll over onto my side, squeezing my eyes shut as he leaves the room. As I’m left in the silence, all of me craves for him to come back and stay. I want him to be lying next to me, just like the other night when he crawled into my bed in the middle of the night. I just want to know that he’s here with me. I want to feel his warmth and his touch. That’s all I need. It’s all I’m missing.
I think that’s the moment I realize I’m in love with him.
* * *
A few hours later, I’m stirring awake. The heat in the room is suddenly unbearable and I wake up almost sweating, my face flushed. Immediately I reach for my water on the bedside drawer through the darkness as I sit up. It’s warm by now, but I gulp it down nonetheless.
“How are you feeling?”
I immediately stop drinking, almost spluttering the water all over myself, and fire my eyes over to the corner of the room, right next to the window. It’s dark, but I can still make out Tyler’s outline, not to mention the vividness of his eyes. The more I focus on him, the clearer he becomes. Soon I can almost see his entire face.
“Better,” I say. This is true. The room is no longer spinning and my thoughts are logical again. Now my only problem is that I’m just too hot and extremely thirsty. “What time is it?”
“Three,” Tyler says. He darts his eyes to the window and laughs so quietly that it’s almost inaudible. I notice that the curtains are open again, and from my position on the bed all I can see is the dark sky and the moon. There’s still the faint lull of music echoing from the beach. “The party’s still going strong.”
I look back over to him and my eyebrows furrow in confusion. “Didn’t you go back?”
“No,” he murmurs. His voice falls even quieter than it already is, almost on the verge of becoming a whisper. “I was worried that you’d throw up or something. Plus it was probably best that I just stayed away from it all.”
He chews on his lower lip and suddenly he appears sad, uncomfortable. It wasn’t that he looked super happy before or anything, but there’s this sort of shift in his expression that makes him look vulnerable in that moment. He appears worn out, deflated even.
“What’s wrong?” I ask, the glass of water clutched tightly in my hands. It’s warm against my skin.
“Nothing,” he says. Leaning forward, he rests his elbows on his knees and interlocks his hands, staring at nothing in particular.
“I know there’s something wrong.” I take another sip of my water, but my gaze never leaves his face. I’m scared I’ll miss something, like a flash of emotion in his eyes or a sense of aggravation, but so far he’s doing a good job at remaining pretty aloof. “What’s wrong, Tyler?” I ask again.
He lifts his head up and glances sideways at me. With a mighty sigh, his shoulders sink. “It’s just . . .”
“Just what?”
“This time last year,” he says slowly, but then his words taper off and he looks away again.
“You passed out,” I finish. His eyes flash back up to mine, and he looks confused. “Rachael told me. You passed out because of the drugs.”
“Just drink your water,” he mumbles under his breath, and he gets to his feet. His face is dark, a shadow cast over it.
I do as he commands, finishing up the remainder of the water in my hand, and then I set the glass down on the bedside drawer. I push the sheets off me and shift my body off the bed, getting to my feet and edging my way toward him. My legs feel stiff. “Why do you do it?”
Out of nowhere, he throws his hands up in despair and I quickly take a step back, wary that I’ll end up angering him. “Why are you asking me about this again?”
“Because I want the truth.”
“I already gave you the goddamn truth,” he snaps. His cheeks are tinted with a red hue as fury builds up inside of him. Tyler hates the truth; Tyler hides the truth. “I do what I do to distract myself.”
“From what?” I almost scream the words at him, because I just want to uncover the truth about him already, because I’m fed up knowing absolutely nothing about him. “That’s what I want to know, Tyler. I want to know why you need all these bullshit distractions.”
People like Tyler have a reason. No one ever acts the way he does simply to distract themselves. No one. I need to know what it is that makes him act the way he does and what makes him say the things he says.
“Distractions make everything easier,” he eventually hisses. His eyes are sharp, eyebrows so furrowed that lines appear across his forehead.
“Makes what easier?”
He grits his teeth together and balls his hands into fists by his sides, the veins under his skin straining from the pressure. I can almost see the gears in his mind shifting as he falls silent for the longest of moments. His voice is quiet yet threatening when he speaks again. “Stop, Eden.”
“Stop what?” I take a step closer to him and I try to stare back evenly, willing myself not to back down like I have before. This time I’m determined to get the truth, and no amount of glaring on his part will throw me off.
“Stop trying to figure me out.” He says each word so slowly, so firmly, that I can hear each syllable as they roll off his tongue. Because he’s taller than me, he’s glowering down into my face with a sort of heavy look in his eyes, and it suddenly reminds me of the photograph in Dean’s garage. The photograph of him before the 49ers game. The one with his dad at the opposite end.
“Tyler,” I say. I think of him like a puzzle with a million pieces that gradually need to be pieced together to get the full image. One piece of the truth at a time, that’s all it takes. “49ers or Chargers?”
“What kind of a dumb question is that?” he retorts, clearly agitated. He scrunches his face up as though he can’t believe I’ve changed the subject so easily. It’s almost like he’s thinking, Did she really just go from a pain in the butt to a football fanatic? “49ers,” he says.
My lips part as I stare at him, my face blank. Inside, my mind is swirling as I try to comprehend his answer. It’s inconsistent with the photograph in the garage.
“I saw a photo in Dean’s house,” I tell him as I cautiously approach the subject, “of you and him and your dad before a 49ers game. If you’re a fan, how come you looked like you didn’t want to be there?”
He just stares at me and blinks a few times. “Dean was supposed to take that down.”
“Answer the question,” I demand. I’m growing impatient, and everything feels so peculiar all of a sudden. I’m overwhelmed with nerves as I find myself gradually figuring everything thing out. “What was wrong that day?”
Tyler walks away from me then. Reaching out, he scoops up my glass from the bedside drawer and his hand tightens around it, his knuckles paling from the pressure he’s applying. I think the glass might shatter beneath his touch, but it doesn’t. He moves over to the window and just stands there, the only sound the faint lull of the music and his heavy breathing.
The pier lights are on now and they glow from behind the palm trees that line the avenue, the Pacific Wheel going around and around and around. I don’t know why. It’s the middle of the night. Tyler’s head lowers.
“What is it with you, Eden?” he asks quietly, but his back is turned and he’s staring out the window at the ground below. “You’re not supposed to figure me out. No one is.”
The atmosphere has shifted and I can sense his mood in the stillness of the moment. His shoulders are dropped low as he traces the rim of the glass with his middle finger. I don’t want to speak again. I want silence so that I can just study him and all his features and all his flaws. I want to look at his face again and I want to catch his gaze and I want to smile and for him to mirror it. I want to see him clench his jaw as he thinks; I want him to trust me enough to tell me what his thoughts are. I want to see through him, to understand him, to accept him.
I want him.
“Tyler,” I whisper. I try to draw his eyes back to mine through the quiet force of his name, but he doesn’t quite turn around. He only gives me a quick glance over his shoulder. “Trust me. Please.”
He’s still staring down at the carpet, but now he’s shaking his head, slowly, like it hurts to give in. With his eyes squeezed shut, he exhales. “Don’t make me tell you.”
I edge my body in front of him very carefully, stepping between him and the window. Not that it matters; he’s no longer looking out into the night as it carries on without us. I swallow the lump in my throat and press a delicate hand to his chest. “Please,” I whisper.
His eyes open agonizingly slowly and I’m waiting for the emerald within them to hit me, and when they finally meet mine my breath catches in my throat. They’re so dilated and so soft and so pained, and I have never once witnessed such emotion pool over him before. I’ve seen furious and I’ve seen sadistic and I’ve seen vulnerable, but this goes beyond vulnerability. I see helplessness.
“My dad’s an asshole,” he whispers, his lips barely moving. “I told everyone he’s in jail for GTA. That’s not true.” His jaw tightens and he turns his face to the side. I watch him physically build up the courage to keep going, his nostrils flaring, and he never turns back. And then he dares to utter words that have never once crossed my mind. “He’s in jail for child abuse.”
Those two words cause my blood to run cold, and a shiver surges down my spine. The words are painful to hear. They’re two words that should never be said together, because child abuse shouldn’t exist, shouldn’t be a thing, shouldn’t be real. Bile accumulates in my throat and my lips part, my mouth gaping in disbelief as Tyler closes his eyes again. I’m only now realizing how hard it was for him to say what he just said.
“You?” I whisper.
He nods.
Every single detail I have collected up until now suddenly clicks together all at once, and it’s so overwhelming that I feel paralyzed, unable to move. I can only think. Now I understand why he looked unhappy in that picture in Dean’s garage. Of course he was unhappy. Now I understand why he has suffered broken wrists before. Of course he got mad when I brought it up. Now I understand why so many photos were missing from his photo album. Of course he got rid of them. Now I understand why he needs distractions. Of course.
Of course, of course, of course.
It’s so obvious now.
I let out a breath and force myself to ask, “Jamie and Chase?”
“Just me,” he says.
“Tyler, I . . .” Something inside of me is shattering at the thought of Tyler going through something so horrific and so cruel. My voice cracks and I have to stop for a second to compose myself. My hand is still on his chest and I can feel his heart beating, slow and loud. “I’m so sorry.”
“I do a pretty good job of keeping it a secret,” he mutters as he steps back from me, and the devastation in his eyes is gone now. It has been replaced with a bubbling anger that is fueled by the pain within him. “No one knows. Not Tiffani, not Dean, not anyone.”
“Why haven’t you told them?”
“Because I don’t want pity,” he shoots back sharply, but I can hear the strain in his voice. With a shrug, he turns away from me and walks across the room to the other side of the bed, gripping the edge of the drawer. “Pity is for pussies. I don’t wanna look weak. I’m done with being weak.” There’s a thunderous slam as he hurls his fist into the top of the drawer and spins back around, livid. “That’s all I ever fucking was. Weak.”
Everything is starting to make sense to me. I glance away from him, out the window to the deep dark blue of the sky outside. The Pacific Wheel is still turning, people still partying on the sand. I look back at him. “You weren’t weak. You were a kid.”
He vigorously shakes his head as he marches back across the small room, his hands curled into fists again as he presses his back against the wall and slides down to the floor. He looks completely defeated. Again, he has shifted from anger to vulnerability. He fixes his eyes on a spot on the wall opposite him and his voice softens up again. “You know, I didn’t really get it for a while,” he says quietly. “I never understood what I did wrong.”
I know he wants me to listen, to just shut up and hear him out, so I hold back my questions and sit down in front of him. I cross my legs on the carpet and just listen to his words, all while watching his lips as he speaks.
“My mom and my dad . . .” he starts, but he talks very slowly, like he’s thinking of how to word everything as he goes along. “They were just teenagers when they had me, so I get that they probably had no clue what they were doing. They both got a little obsessed with building careers. Dad had his dumb company, the one I told you about.”
“Grayson’s.”
“Grayson’s,” he echoes. Clearing his throat, he leans forward and folds his arms across his knees. “It was great to start with. The business really took off for a few years, but when I was, like, eight, some deal fell through. Dad had a shit temper. He came home one night and Mom was at the office working late and he was super pissed off and he took it out on me. I kind of let that one slide. I thought it was a one-off. But then his employees were all quitting and it stressed him out and he took it out on me again. It kept happening more often. It went from once a week to every single night. He’d tell me I couldn’t do anything I wanted to do, because I needed to focus on school instead. Said he wanted me to get into Ivy League so that I didn’t end up fucking up my career the same way he was. But the truth was, I didn’t want to have a big-shot career or get into an Ivy League school, yet I spent every single night locked in my room trying to study so that he wouldn’t get mad at me. I thought, I’m trying, right? That’s enough, isn’t it? But it wasn’t. Every night, he still came upstairs and threw me around.” He pauses for a long moment, and when he speaks again, his voice has been reduced to nothing more than a whisper. “Every single night. Four years.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmur once more. I really am. No one deserves to be treated like that, especially by a parent, the person you’re supposed to be loved and protected by. I feel sick to my stomach.
Tyler just shrugs. “Mom was so busy, she seriously had no idea. She blames herself for it now. She tries to ground me, but it just doesn’t work, because she never reinforces it. I think she’s terrified of trying to be strict, you know? It’s not her fault though. She did notice sometimes. She’d be like, ‘Tyler, what have you done to your face this time?’ And I just made up some lame excuse each time. I would tell her my face was busted because I was playing football during gym class or that my wrist was broken because I fell down the stairs. When really I broke my wrist three times one year, because Dad just loved to see how far he could bend it back.”
“Why didn’t you tell someone?” I’m whispering now. The silence is so fragile that I’m terrified of breaking it. “Does my dad know?”
“Because I was fucking scared of him,” Tyler admits, his tone harsh, voice cold. When he lifts his hands and runs them back through his hair, I notice how his eyes darken as his temper heats up. “There was no way I could tell. The only person who doesn’t know is Chase. He was too young. Mom didn’t want to scare him. The rest of the family all hate Dad now.”
“When did it stop?”
“When I was twelve,” he says, but he pushes himself up from the floor at the same time. He’s still clenching his jaw as he speaks. “Jamie came upstairs one night and saw Dad hitting me. Called the cops, even at his age. Dad was arrested that night. It didn’t go to trial, because he pleaded guilty, so it was never publicized. I got to keep it a secret. I get to pretend that I’m fine.” A heavy sigh escapes his lips as he walks away from me once more and begins to pace back and forth across the room. “I really fucking hate him. Really, really hate him. After a year or something I started to believe that there must have been a reason for it all. I thought I deserved it for being a worthless piece of crap. I still do. I can’t even move on from it, because it’s impossible to forget, which sounds so pathetic, but it’s true. I’m supposed to be on antidepressants, but I don’t take them, because I want to drink and get high instead and you can’t do both. And you know what, Eden? You’re right. I’m lost. I’m totally fucking lost in this mess.”
From my position on the floor, I press my hands down on the carpet and push my body up. Once I’m on my feet, I try to analyze the emotions flickering within his eyes. There’s everything at once, shifting from one emotion to another so fast that I can barely keep up.
I hear him inhale sharply right before he yells, “I depend on distractions! They make coping easier, because in the hours that I’m drunk or high or both, I forget that my dad fucking hates me!” And then, almost as quickly as the wave of anger washed over him, adrenaline kicks in. He stops pacing and reaches for the glass on the bedside table, snatching it and then hurling it across the room.
I jump a step back, startled when the glass shatters against the far wall. There’s an awful sound and it pierces through me for a second. The pieces of glass all drop to the floor in a ragged pile and Tyler just stands there, staring, breathing. Satisfied, he collapses onto the bed.
“I hate him,” he spits. With his eyes now trained on the window again, I approach him in an effort to comfort him. His features might be hard and his expression might be twisted, but I know he’s genuinely upset. I can hear it in his voice, and I can see it in his eyes.
It’s dark now, and the music from the beach is beginning to fade away to nothing as the party wraps up. The moon is floating above the ocean and there’s a soft glow illuminating the condo. Tyler’s face is lit up, and I slowly edge over to the bed, where he’s slumped. His eyes drift up to meet mine when I step in front of him.
I’m shivering. Not because it’s cold in here, but because nerves are rattling every inch of my body. Tyler’s still holding my stare and he just looks anxious and I wonder if he’s expecting me to bombard him with more questions, but that’s not my intention. My intentions are better.
Nervously, I reach out for his face and cup his jaw with both hands, forcing him to hold my gaze as I sit myself down on his lap. He doesn’t budge, doesn’t move, doesn’t breathe. I don’t think I’m quite breathing, either. I move my lips to his but linger before I get there, and we stay like that, just him and me, for a short while. It’s comforting yet absolutely terrifying at the same time, and I know he’s just waiting for me to lean in, and I know I want to, but I wait. I wait until I feel his breath against my cheek.
“Thank you for trusting me,” I whisper ever so carefully against his jaw, and then I finally kiss him.
Through the darkness and the silence, something ignites. I don’t know what it is, I can’t put my finger on it, but I feel it. I feel the way my pulse takes off and my heart aches in my chest, and I feel the way goosebumps begin to appear all over my body, the hairs on my arms rising, and I feel Tyler’s lips against mine. Plump and moist and eager, just like always. I can feel him channeling his hurt, his anger . . . I can feel him channeling it into desire. It’s that desire for something we both want but can’t have.
He tastes like beer and tobacco, but there’s something enthralling about it. It’s so familiar, because it’s so him, his permanent taste. He kisses me slowly and slips his hands under my skirt, squeezing my ass as he sits up. I’m still in his lap and I press my chest hard against his as I rub my thumbs against his skin, his jaw still cupped between my hands. I feel the muscles in his arms tighten as he lifts me off his lap and lays me back down on the bed next to him. My entire body feels like ice, frozen beneath him as he hovers over me, his hand sliding along my thigh beneath my skirt. For a second I worry that I’m suffering from paralysis, but my lips are still moving, still kissing, so I’m not. It’s just anxiety and the fear of the unknown.
But no matter how nervous and nauseated I’m starting to feel, I refuse to tear my lips away from Tyler’s. He suddenly intensifies the kiss, quickening the pace, and while my lips are locked with his I let go of his face and shrug off my sweater. I pull it out from beneath me and toss it to the side. When my hands find their way back to Tyler, they’re reaching for his white T-shirt. My arms feel numb as I awkwardly fumble around with the hem, trying my best to figure out how to pull off his shirt without breaking the kiss. He notices my struggle and laughs against my lips. It’s a hearty laugh, the kind of laugh that makes you smile back, a laugh that makes you feel comfortable. Pulling away and sitting on his knees, he swiftly yanks the T-shirt off and throws it over his shoulder. My cheeks flush with color as my eyes linger on his chest and his abs and the indention of his V lines, and it makes me wonder if I’m dreaming, because Tyler belongs in Abercrombie & Fitch, not here on the bed with me.
He moves his body back over mine and presses his lips to my collarbone, one hand gripping my waist, the other edging its way up my skirt again. He kisses my skin slowly as I tangle my hands through his hair, twirling the strands around my fingers. My eyes are closed and I rest my chin on his forehead as I try to steady my breathing, because I’ve never been so excited and nervous in my entire life. The heat from his chest contrasts with my shivering as the tips of his fingers run along the lace that decorates the top of my underwear. My stomach churns in anticipation and for a moment I feel like I might throw up.
He’s so experienced and has everything down to a T., and I’m so inexperienced and have yet to discover why guys find boobs so attractive. So many fleeting thoughts come and go, like when do I move my hands? Where do I put them? Do I wait for him to advance or do I make the move myself? Does he expect me to moan? Do I moan? I can’t possibly imagine myself moaning. Am I supposed to be doing something right now, like unbuttoning his jeans or kissing his neck? Who was the first person to ever have sex, anyway? John F. Kennedy was a total player, and if the beloved former president of our nation was able to seduce girls at his every whim, then I’m pretty sure that sex can’t be that bad. Those girls would not have thrown themselves into the president’s bed if sex was terrible. For a second I wonder why I’m thinking about our assassinated president. I bet if Lee Harvey Oswald was still alive even he wouldn’t be thinking about JFK while getting it on with his wife. And he freaking killed the guy.
Stop it, Eden.
Tyler’s lips trail kisses from my collarbone up to my jaw as his hands explore my body, one running from my waist to my face. He brushes my cheek with his thumb, and I can feel his affection through his fingertips and the way they leave a warm trace over my skin. I never want it to end, even when I’m losing my breath and tightening my grip on his hair. I don’t mean to, but I end up tugging on the ends as I arch my back.
Thankfully, Tyler leads me through it all, never once saying anything for the rest of the night. Even when I hesitate at one point, struck with worry over what he’ll think when he sees my body, he pauses, waiting until I swallow the nerves before continuing. And even when he’s undoing the clasp of my bra and even when he gets up to kick off his jeans and even when he’s fumbling around in his wallet, he never once says a word, but I like it this way. I like the deafening silence of the whole experience as I stumble my way through it with the person I’ve fallen head first for.
That’s what makes all of this better.
It’s because I’m with Tyler.
Not Jake and not Snotty Scotty, the guy from algebra class, but Tyler. The guy with the secrets and the weaknesses, the guy who trusted me enough to admit them all to me. I respect him for that. It took a lot for him to tell me the truth and now I only want him even more. I don’t want this to stop. Tyler and I . . . We shouldn’t be together and we shouldn’t be doing what we’re doing, because the bottom line is that we’re stepsiblings, no matter how much we wish we weren’t. I’m so attracted to everything about him and I shouldn’t have to feel like I’m doing something wrong because of it. It’s not wrong. Where’s the blood relation? There isn’t one.
I just know that if anyone ever found out the truth about Tyler and me, we’d be frowned upon. I can’t even begin to imagine how we’d go about telling our parents. How do you break the news to a married couple that their kids are dating each other? How does all of this work?
There’s no going back from this moment. There’s no changing the way Tyler’s groaning against my ear, no erasing the fact that I’m digging my nails into his back, no forgetting the way our hips are rolling together.
Because Tyler might have told me his secrets, but now he has a new one.
