I don’t know exactly what I was expecting before I arrived in Los Angeles, but I can say this: I did not expect to have a lunatic for a stepbrother.
“He’s the third one?” I spit as the guests around me ignore what just happened. I, on the other hand, simply can’t shake the bizarre scene from my mind. Who does that guy think he is?
“Uh, yeah,” Rachael says, and then she laughs. “I feel for you. And for all of the heavens above, I really hope your room is nowhere near his.”
“Why?”
She looks slightly flustered all of a sudden, as though I’ve just uncovered her deepest and darkest secret and it just so happens to be the most embarrassing thing in the world. “He can be really annoying to be around, but hey, I really shouldn’t say anything. It’s none of my business.” With her cheeks flushed and a lopsided smile playing on her lips, she quickly changes the subject. “Are you busy tomorrow?”
My mind is still dwelling on what she said about my room. “Yeah—wait, no. Sorry, I don’t know why I said yeah. Um.” Way to be awkward, Eden.
Thankfully Rachael doesn’t write me off as a complete idiot just yet. Instead she laughs again. “Do you wanna hang out? We could go to the promenade or something.”
“Sounds good,” I say. I’m still a little distracted and a little confused and a little irritated by Jackass’s rude entrance. He couldn’t have just come in through the front door? Was it necessary to even say anything?
“It’s amazing for shopping!” Rachael continues to talk, occasionally flicking her blond hair over her shoulders, the strands whipping my face each time. Eventually she stops babbling about the promenade and says, “I’ve got a bunch of stuff to do, so I’m gonna head home. Sorry I can’t stay longer. Mom wanted me to drop by on my way back to the house to say hey. So hey.”
“Hey,” I say. She tells me she’ll see me tomorrow, and then departs just as quickly as she arrived, leaving me alone with a semi-drunk group of adults. And Chase.
“Eden,” he says as he approaches. He says my name so slowly and so carefully that it’s obvious he’s testing it on his lips. “Eden,” he says again, this time much faster and blunter, “where’s the soda?” His friends slowly edge toward us, their wide eyes innocent and anxious. Right, I think, because I am oh-so-intimidating.
“Probably on the table,” I suggest. “Ask your mom.”
“She’s inside,” Chase says. And then one of his friends shoves him forward, laughing as though it’s the greatest prank in the world, and Chase bumps into my body with a soft thud. He reels back immediately and is, quite obviously, a little embarrassed. It’s then that I realize my tank top is damp. “Sorry,” he blurts. He glances down at the empty plastic cup in his hand. It was a quarter full a second ago.
“It’s fine,” I say. In fact, it’s great. Now I get to head inside and escape this terrible barbecue while I change my shirt. I make my getaway then, almost gleefully twirling into the house. Hopefully Dad will have one beer too many and won’t notice if I decide not to head back out there for the rest of the night. I’ll hang out in my ever-basic room and call my mom or video chat with Amelia or maybe break both my legs. Any one sounds better than standing alone outside.
I heave an exhausted sigh—it’s been a hell of a tiring day—and make for the staircase. But I’ve barely set foot on the first step when I hear explosive yelling bouncing from the walls of the living room. And I’m too curious, too intrigued to even think about ignoring it. So I don’t. I edge toward the small gap in the door.
From my limited view, I see Ella close her eyes and bury her head in her hands as she rubs her temples. “I’m not even late,” a male voice says from somewhere at the opposite side of the room. His tone is harsh and I immediately realize it belongs to Jackass.
“You’re two hours late!” Ella yells, and I find myself taking a slight step back as her eyes snap open. I’m afraid she’ll spot me.
Jackass laughs. “You really think I’m gonna come home to watch a damn barbecue?”
“What is your problem this time? Forget the barbecue,” says Ella, and she begins to pace back and forth across the cream carpet. “You were acting like a little kid before you even got out of the car. What’s wrong?”
He’s a little out of breath as he clenches his jaw and angles his face to the side. “Nothing,” he says, his teeth grinding together.
“It’s clearly not nothing.” Ella’s tone is stern and scolding, which is a far cry from the sweet tone I was offered just fifteen minutes ago. “You just humiliated me again in front of half the neighborhood!”
“Whatever.”
“I shouldn’t have let you leave,” Ella says, more quietly this time, as though it’s herself she’s mad at. “I should have just made you stay, but no, of course I didn’t, because there I was, trying to cut you some slack, and you throw it back in my face as usual.”
“I would have left anyway,” Jackass retorts. He steps into my view, shaking his head as he chuckles at Ella. His back is turned and it gives me a chance to get a half-decent look at him—he stormed past us all so quickly the first time that I barely had a chance to take in anything. “What are you gonna do? Ground me again?” His voice is deep and husky and his hair is almost jet black. It’s tousled yet neat, and his shoulders are broad, and he is tall. Very tall. He towers over Ella by several inches.
“You’re impossible,” she states through gritted teeth. But as she says this, her eyes flicker over his shoulder for a split second and she fixes her gaze directly on me.
My breath catches in my throat as I scramble away from the door, desperately wishing that she hasn’t actually seen me, that perhaps she was glancing toward the door and not the person hiding behind it. But my wishing proves to be a waste of hope when the door swings open seconds later, before I’ve had the chance to make my escape.
“Eden?” Ella steps into the hall and her eyes drop to mine, for I’m half sprawled across the staircase. My pathetic attempt to quickly clamber upstairs hasn’t worked out that well.
“Um,” I say. If my arms weren’t frozen stiff, I’d be facepalming right now.
And then the worst thing in the world happens. Jackass sticks his head around the door frame and moves out into the hall beside us, and that’s when I get a good look at him up close for the first time. His eyes are emerald—too bright to be considered a mere green and too vibrant to be considered normal—and they narrow at me in a way that sends a shiver down my spine. His jaw clenches again, wiping the smirk completely off his face.
“Who the hell is this chick?” he demands, his eyes flashing sideways to Ella as he awaits an explanation for why there’s a clueless teenager on his staircase looking like she’s doing aerobics.
I can see the hesitance cross Ella’s features as she carefully considers how to reply. Gently, she reaches for his arm. “Tyler,” she says, “this is Eden. Dave’s daughter.”
Jackass—or, more formally, Tyler—snorts. “Dave’s kid?”
I push myself up a little and get to my feet, but he’s still looking away. “Hi,” I try. I’m about to hold out my hand, but then I realize how stupid I’ll look, so I interlink my fingers instead.
His eyes finally move back to mine. He just stares at me. Stares, and stares. It’s like he’s never seen another human being before, because to begin with he appears confused, and then angry, and then perplexed again. His sharp eyes make me feel uncomfortable as he studies me, so I drop mine to his casual brown boots and jeans for a second. When I steal a look at him, he slowly swallows and glances at Ella. “Dave’s kid?” he repeats, this time his voice much quieter, laced with disbelief.
Ella sighs. “Yes, Tyler. I already told you she was coming. Don’t act stupid.”
He’s facing Ella, but out of the corner of his eye, he’s looking me up and down again. “Which room?”
“What?”
“Which room is she staying in?” It feels odd hearing him talk about me like I’m not even here, and judging by his reaction, I’m guessing he wishes that was the case.
“The one next to yours.”
He dramatically groans, exaggerating his annoyance at knowing I’ll be near him, and then turns back to fully look at me. Now he’s glaring. Does he think I want to be living in this house with this pathetic excuse for a family? Because I don’t.
Once he’s glowered at me, as though to make a statement, he nudges Ella to the side and then barges past me and storms upstairs.
For the several long seconds that it takes for us to hear a door slam, Ella and I remain silent. Waiting for him to slam a door before talking again seems like it must be a daily occurrence in this house.
“I’m sorry,” Ella apologizes. She genuinely looks stressed and mortified, and I find myself feeling sympathetic. Maybe even empathetic. If I had to deal with as big a moron as him every day, I’d probably have three breakdowns every twenty-four hours. “He’s just . . . Look, let’s head back outside.”
No thank you. “Actually, Chase spilled his drink on me, so I’ve got to change my shirt.”
“Oh,” she says. Her eyebrows arch as she studies the damp stain on my tank top with a slight grimace. “I hope he apologized for it.”
As she makes her way back to the yard, I finally move up the staircase—swiftly this time, without looking deformed—and collapse into my room, breathing a sigh of relief the second I get the door shut. Alone at last, with no one to irritate me.
For exactly eight seconds, until music starts blasting from the room next door so loud I fear the wall might collapse. Rachael said she hoped my room was nowhere near Tyler’s. Forget being near—I’m next door. I feel speechless and annoyed and tired as I stand in the center of my room and stare at the far wall. On the other side of it, a moron sleeps at night.
Thankfully after about five minutes the music dies down until it’s silent again, the only noise the sound of a door opening. Perhaps my stepbrother has calmed down by now. And it’s this hope that draws me toward my own door, pulling it open slowly to meet the fierce, far-from-calm eyes outside.
“Hi,” I try again. If this person is now a permanent fixture of my new “family,” I need to at least make an effort. “Are you okay?”
Tyler’s emerald eyes laugh at me. “Bye,” he says. With the same red flannel shirt on his back and brown boots on his feet, he smoothly descends the staircase and heads out the front door without a single person noticing his departure besides me. He is quite clearly grounded, but it seems he couldn’t care less.
I simply sigh and shuffle back into my room. At least I tried, which is far from what he did. I slip off my blazer and haul off my tank top, dropping it on the floor before collapsing onto my new bed for the first time. The foam mattress engulfs my body, and once I develop the ability to tune out the faint pumping of music laced with drunken laughter, I stare at the ceiling and just breathe. I breathe even when an engine growls to life outside and catapults a car down the street. Presumably Tyler.
I use the next hour to call Amelia, emphasizing just how agonizing the barbecue was and how lame my dad is and how much of a douchebag Tyler is. I offer my mom a similar summary.
“Eden.” Dad’s voice echoes through my door a little while later when I’m half asleep. He opens my door and walks in before I even give him the right to. “That’s the neighbors all pretty much headed home,” he says. He smells of burnt meat and beer. “We’re going to hit the sack. I’m done for the day.”
I offer him a quick goodnight and then roll over to face the wall, burying my head in my comforter as he leaves. People say it’s either very easy to fall asleep in a foreign bed or very, very difficult. And right now, despite the fatigue overcoming every inch of my body, I’m beginning to realize that it’s the latter. I roll back over and press a hand to my forehead. The day’s heat is trapped in my new room, and the AC still hasn’t come on. I can’t decide if it’s broken or if Dad has just completely forgotten about it. Either way, I’ll mention it in the morning.
It takes me a good hour of tossing and turning and testing my will to live before I do finally fall asleep. For exactly forty-seven minutes. Nothing seems to last long in this house before it gets interrupted.
I’d assumed if anything were to waken me it would be the scorching heat in my room, not the sound of drunken wails bouncing through my open window. The moans and groans and occasional cursing make my ears prick up and my eyes widen. I creep across the floor on my bare knees, slowly and on high alert. I steal a peek over the window ledge. The cool night air feels great against my face.
“No,” a drunk Tyler tells the air. “No.” His expression is completely solemn. A hand is pressed firmly to the lawn. “What the hell is going on?” As he talks to no one but himself, his voice is hushed. I figure he must have walked home, since his car seems to be nowhere around, which reassures me that he does have some common sense. Driving under the influence is too idiotic even for him. “When did it pass midnight?” A tremendous laugh escapes his lips and into the air.
“Hey,” I whisper-yell out the window as I sit up and push it open a little wider. “Up here.”
It takes Tyler’s rolling eyes a good few seconds to locate my voice, and when he spots me up on the second floor he blesses me with a glare. “What the hell do you want?”
“Are you okay?” Once the words leave my lips, I realize how pointless the question is. He is clearly not okay.
“Open the door,” he says. His words are slightly slurred as he talks. With a single nod, he advances beneath the slanted roof and out of my view, but not without swaying.
Because I’ve stripped down to nothing but my underwear in an attempt to cool down, I quickly grab the first pieces of clothing that find their way into my hands and pull them on as I jog down the staircase. I’m careful to remain silent. I keep the lights off and my steps quiet. The outline of his figure is sharp through the glass panels of the front door.
“What am I doing?” I whisper as I play around with the lock. The jackass who has done nothing but irk the hell out of me is asking me to let him into the house, and I’m doing it? Yet without hesitating, I pull open the door the second I hear the lock click.
“You took your damn time, huh?” Tyler mutters as he barges past me. He carries with him the charming scent of booze and cigarettes.
I close the door and lock it again. “Are you drunk?”
“No,” he says. His grin is wide and it soon quickly falters into a smirk. “Is it morning yet?”
“It’s 3AM.”
He chuckles to himself and then attempts to get upstairs, but it involves a series of stumbles and trips. “When did these get here?” he asks as he pats one of the steps. “They weren’t here before.”
I ignore him. “Do you want water or something?”
“Get me another beer,” is his answer. Through the darkness, I see him reach the landing and then disappear into his room, thankfully without slamming the door this time. Surely Ella would have him murdered if she saw him right now, drunk and unable to hold himself up for more than a few seconds.
I swiftly follow suit, creeping upstairs and into my own room, hauling off my clothes again and strewing them carelessly across the floor. The room is still unbelievably hot, so instead of crawling back into bed and dying of heat exhaustion, I sit down by the window. I press my face to the cool glass and breathe in the night air. There’s a crushed beer can by the mailbox.
Jackass.
