In all honesty, my afternoon at the promenade with Rachael and Meghan wasn’t that bad. They didn’t spend too long in the same store, they didn’t blow their entire allowances on shoes, and surprisingly they both love coffee, which I discovered when we stopped at a small, minimalist coffee shop just around the corner on Santa Monica Boulevard. It was called the Refinery and it served the best latte I’ve had in a long time.
“Are you sure you’re not coming?” Dad asks for the eighth time now as he pops his head around my door.
I’m in the process of painting my toes a bright sapphire, but I pause to glance over my shoulder to the irritating human being behind me. “I’m sure,” I say. “I still don’t feel too great.” I return to my nails and keep my face down. I’m an awful liar, and back when I was younger Dad used to know whenever I was lying just by looking at me. Hopefully it’s not that noticeable anymore.
“There’s food in the refrigerator if you get hungry.”
“Okay,” I say, and he leaves the room.
Perhaps avoiding a family meal is an unsociable thing to do, but just the thought of spending Saturday evening with my reconstituted family is enough to give me a migraine. In the two hours that I’ve been home from the promenade, Dad has done nothing but pester me about attending this horrendous event. I am consistently rejecting the offer.
Finishing off my nails and tidying up after myself, I prance around my room on the balls of my feet and then head out onto the landing when Ella calls up the staircase that they’re about to leave. I’ve barely begun to descend the stairs when Tyler emerges from his room.
His eyes narrow the second he sees me, and for a long moment he just glares at me. Me and my sweatpants. “Aren’t you going?”
“Aren’t you?” I shoot back. He’s wearing a navy hoodie with the hood pulled up. There’s an earphone dangling from one ear.
“Grounded.” He snorts and rubs his temple. “What’s your excuse?”
“Sick,” I lie. I turn around and make my way downstairs to the hall, but I feel him close behind me. “And that’s weird: Being grounded didn’t stop you from going to American Apparel,” I throw over my shoulder in a hushed voice.
“Shut the hell up,” he hisses.
When we reach the hall, Dad is waiting by the front door with Ella by his side. Jamie and Chase look bored as hell. Being younger, it must be harder for them to get out of these sorts of atrocious social events.
“We won’t be too late,” Ella says. She fixes Tyler with a firm look. It’s almost as though she’s worried to leave him alone. She should be. “Don’t even think about leaving.”
“Mom, I wouldn’t dare,” he says, but the sarcasm is dripping from his voice. He leans against the wall and folds his arms across his chest.
“Can we go now?” Chase asks. I’m thankful I don’t have to go through what he’s about to. “I’m hungry.”
“Yes, yes, let’s go,” Dad says. He opens up the door, tells Chase and Jamie to go to the car, and throws me a sympathetic glance. “I hope you feel better, Eden.”
I just smile. “Bye.”
“Behave yourselves,” Ella warns. She still looks apprehensive, but they all leave nonetheless.
When they shut the door behind them and the house falls into an odd silence, it occurs to me then that I’m left alone with the moron next to me. For the entire evening. I turn to face him. His eyes are already on me. “Um,” I say.
“Um,” he mimics in a voice that sounds absolutely nothing like mine.
“Um,” I say again.
“I’m gonna grab a shower,” he tells me. “That’s if you’d get out my way.”
I step to the side of the staircase and he barges past me, the same way he shoved past yesterday, like I’m merely an obstacle in his path. “Rude,” I mutter under my breath. In the forty-eight hours I’ve been here, he hasn’t said one nice word to me. He doesn’t appear to have any manners, either. I’m thankful I won’t have to talk to him for at least five minutes.
Bored already, I head for the living room and get comfortable on the couch. The truth is, when you’re new to a city and have zero friends, you end up spending your Saturday night alone in your stepfamily’s immaculate living room watching reruns of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, because the only thing to do when your life sucks is to watch someone else’s. Admittedly, Amelia would kill me if she knew I watched this show. It’s not that I actually like it or anything. Well, maybe a little, but I’d never tell her.
During my time in front of the TV, I also bombard my mom with several texts containing nothing but complaints about Dad. She agrees with each one.
I’m looking at my phone when a female voices calls “Hello?” from the hall. The front door clicks shut. I stop moving and pause the TV. Surely it’s not Ella. It’s only been thirty minutes and I doubt they’ve even eaten their appetizers yet.
“Hello?” I call back.
“Who the hell is that?” the voice explodes, startling me to the point where I retreat back into the couch. A figure swings open the living room door and enters with her lips pressed firmly together. It’s Tiffani. She breathes a sigh of relief when she sees me. “Sorry, I thought . . .”
“You thought what?” I prompt as I stare back at her blankly.
“Nothing,” she says quickly. “Where’s Tyler?”
That is the moment when I become no longer interested. I turn back to the TV, taking it off pause and continuing with the episode. “I haven’t seen him since he went to take a shower.”
“Thanks.” She leaves the living room, and I listen to the sound of her footsteps as she jogs up the staircase as though this were her own home. I slowly lower the volume of the TV and wait, admittedly attempting to eavesdrop.
For a good three minutes I can’t hear anything, but then their voices grow louder as they head downstairs together. I press the back of my hand to my lips and stare at the door in curiosity.
“Chill out,” Tyler says. “I was gonna head over in an hour, like you said.”
“You could have at least answered my calls,” Tiffani says.
“I couldn’t hear them over my music.” They both come to a halt in the hall and I stare at them through the open door. Tyler notices. “Now what the hell is your problem?”
“Geez,” I say.
Tiffani shakes her head disapprovingly at him. It makes me wonder how she puts up with him. “Shut up, Tyler.”
“Whatever,” he mutters while turning his back to me, his face nothing but a rigid scowl. “Let’s just get outta here.”
“Actually . . .” Tiffani’s voice tapers off and her bottom lip juts out as she glances up at him from beneath her eyelashes. Tyler doesn’t take her smug expression lightly.
“What now?”
Tiffani enters the living room and steps in front of the TV. I’d call her out on it, but I’m not quite yet in a comfortable enough position to be able to argue with these strangers.
“New plan,” she says, and I notice how she begins glancing between both Tyler and me. I feel inclined to listen. Rightly so, because what she says next takes us both by surprise. “Austin’s throwing a last-minute party and we’re going. You too, Eden.” She fixes her eyes on me. “It’s Eden, right? You don’t really look the partying type, but Rachael says I have to invite you along. So come.”
“Back up a second,” Tyler orders, furrowing his eyebrows and marching over to her. In a hushed voice, he murmurs by her ear, “I thought we were going to your place. You know . . .” But it’s not hushed enough, and it’s clear what their intentions had been.
“Reschedule that,” she whispers. Clasping her hands together, she steps around him and raises her voice again. “Okay, so you’re coming, Eden. And you too, Tyler. You’re coming and you’re not getting wasted for once.”
“The fuck?”
“Rachael and Megs are already at my place getting ready, so come on, let’s go!” She pulls a set of car keys from her back pocket and makes for the door, but I quickly call her back.
“Wait, I need to get an outfit,” I blurt. I get to my feet and glance up at the ceiling. Maybe if I’m lucky it’ll collapse on me. “Give me five minutes to find something.” Right now I’m wondering why I keep finding myself in these awful situations, but for some reason I just can’t seem to say no.
Tiffani laughs, reaches for my arm, and pulls me toward her. When she talks again, her voice is laced with pity. “You can borrow something of mine. Now come on! We’re leaving in two hours.” Letting go of me, she twirls away and heads outside. Tyler shoves his way in front of me and also makes for the front door.
“I thought you were grounded,” I say.
Turning around, he stares back at me evenly, smirking in a way that is far from friendly. “And I thought you were sick.”
That shuts me up.
The drive to Tiffani’s house is nothing but a journey full of anxiety. I can think about one thing and one thing only: I haven’t shaved my legs. This fact torments me for the entire ten minutes that I’m in stuck in the sporty vehicle, crammed into the tiny backseat with my knees shoved into my chest because Tyler selfishly decides to push his chair as far back as it can go. Neither of them includes me in the conversation. Not that I care, anyway. They’re only talking about the latest drama and gossip in their high school. Apparently Evan Myers and Nicole Martinez broke up, whoever they are.
Tiffani’s house is on the edge of the neighborhood on a large piece of land, and it’s made of the kind of marble that suggests she probably has a butler to wait on her. But when we pull up and get inside, there are no butlers and no servants. It’s just a regular house made of very expensive material.
“Your mom’s still out, right?” Tyler asks. His previous intentions are even clearer now.
“Yeah,” Tiffani says. “There’s beer in the kitchen. Kick back down here while we get ready, but take it easy.” She shoots him a warning glare. There’s music echoing loudly from upstairs. She grasps my hand and begins pulling me in the direction of it. We ascend the staircase—marble, of course. “We won’t be long!” Tiffani calls over the banister.
“Tiff?” Rachael’s disembodied voice calls from the room at the end of the long hallway. The music dies at the same time. “Tiffani?”
“I’m back!” Tiffani pushes open the closed door and waltzes in. I trail behind.
“Eden!” Rachael immediately gets to her feet, despite being in the process of doing Meghan’s hair, waving the curling iron around in mid-air and grinning at me. “You came!”
I didn’t really get the chance not to, I think. “Are you sure it’s okay for me to come?” I ask no one in particular.
“I guess so,” Tiffani answers. It’s not very convincing. She heads over to her closet—which is merely an archway leading into a section of the room overflowing with clothing—and glances over her shoulder at me. “Rachael says you’re only here for the summer, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Right, so you’ve got to make the best of it, I suppose.”
“She’s right,” Meghan says from her position on the floor, draped in a silk dressing gown with her hair only three-quarters curled. “We’ll make sure your summer doesn’t suck.”
Too late, I think. It already does.
“Come pick a dress!” Tiffani squeals, but the enthusiasm sounds fake. “I say go for black. Black or red. You’d suit that. And tight. Yeah. Wait, Meghan, you’re wearing red, aren’t you? Okay, tight and black. Let’s go for that.” Despite just asking me to come pick a dress, she hands me one before I even get the chance to look at it, but then she immediately draws it back. “Actually, this one might be too tight on you,” she murmurs as her eyes run up and down my body, and I can feel myself shrinking beneath her scrutiny. Did she just imply I’m chubby?
I’d like to believe it wasn’t intentional, that she didn’t mean it in such a way, but it still hurts. I try my hardest to let it bypass my mind, but it’s already too late. It repeats itself over and over again, endlessly and agonizingly, even while Tiffani is piling new dresses into my arms and bubbling with more of that same forced enthusiasm. I try to breathe in. I try to deceive myself into believing that she’s wrong.
With a stack of outfit options in my hands, all black dresses, she leaves me to get ready, and I start by letting my hair down and borrowing her hot iron to straighten it. Meghan offers to do my makeup for me. Tiffani finds a pair of platform heels that match the dress she’s given me, because fortunately we share the same shoe size. And when the time comes for me to actually put the dress on, I confide in Rachael about my unshaven leg hair. After a brief moment of laughter, she sends me into Tiffani’s grand and glorious bathroom to fix myself up, giving me clear instructions on where to find the disposable razors.
I’m just finishing up and slipping into the dress—the very, very tight dress, which only makes me feel worse—when I hear Tyler enter Tiffani’s room. I step back into the room to find that all of us are now dressed and ready to leave. But even though Tiffani, Rachael and Meghan’s dresses all look as tight as mine, I still feel awfully inappropriate. I can feel it clinging to every inch of my body.
“Alright, can we head over there now?” Tyler asks, quite blatantly bored. He’s been waiting around for two hours with beer as his only companion, and this is evident in his unsteady balance. “Dean and Jake are already there.”
“Do I look good?” Tiffani asks, twirling around in a slow circle to ensure he gets a good look at her body. Her dress is white, and despite its tightness and shortness it creates an aura of elegance.
“Baby, you look fine,” he slurs. He takes one final swig from the beer in his hand before setting it down on the dresser and stepping forward. “Real hot.” He clasps her waist and pulls her body toward him. And as though there aren’t three other people in the room, he rams his lips against hers in a way that looks almost painful, one hand grazing her ass and the other pressing against the small of her back. She doesn’t pull away.
I throw Rachael a disgusted glance and she rolls her eyes. All I can hear is that horrendous smacking sound again. Tyler and Tiffani: the world’s worst couple when it comes to PDA. “Are they always like this?” I mutter in a hushed voice, because interrupting their intimate moment for a second time isn’t exactly something I want to do.
Rachael just shakes her head. I think it’s in commiseration. “All the time.”
I glance back over to the pair. They don’t seem to be stopping anytime soon, even when Meghan nudges them to the side so that she can step out into the hall. You’d think they hadn’t seen each other in three years. They’re that engaged in one another.
And so Tyler may be irritating, and Tiffani may be obliviously rude, and I may be chubby. But at least my dress isn’t as clingy as those two.
