Chapter 20 #2
Chase doesn’t know about Dad. The truth would hurt him, and he doesn’t need to know that our father is a monster.
Mom couldn’t protect me and she couldn’t protect Jamie, but she wants to protect Chase.
He is so much better off believing that Dad is in prison for grand theft auto.
That’s what most people think anyway. But Jamie knows the truth.
Jamie discovered it. Jamie stopped me from nearly being killed five years ago.
We never talk about it though. I think it scares him.
“Can you guys promise me something?” I say, reaching for the remote and turning off the TV. The room goes silent. I stand up and turn on the lights, and then I sit down on Jamie’s bed and look down at them on the floor. I’m not laughing anymore. My expression is serious.
“What?” they both say in unison, staring back up at me with curious, wide eyes.
“Don’t do anything stupid when you’re my age.
Okay?” I say. Unlike me, they actually have a shot at a decent life.
A shot at a college, a good job, healthy relationships…
a shot at being happy. I really don’t want them to mess that up.
They have the head start that I didn’t. “I don’t want to see either of you getting into trouble. ”
They stare at me blankly, and then Jamie gives me a goofy grin and asks, “So what stupid stuff is it that you do?”
I laugh and lean forward, ruffling his shaggy hair. “You think I’m gonna tell you?”
“I’m hoping you will, and then I can blackmail you into buying me Madden 12 in August,” he says, and his grin widens.
“How about,” I say, reaching into my back pocket for my wallet, “I just give you some cash toward it right now? Don’t tell Mom.” I’m feeling generous because they’ve put me in a good mood, so I grab thirty bucks and hand it to Jamie as his eyes light up in disbelief.
“Hey!” Chase says. “What about me?”
Damn. I pass him twenty, and luckily, he doesn’t notice that I’ve fleeced him. Fifty bucks is a small price to pay to see the pair of them grinning as though they’ve won the damn lottery. I shove my wallet back into my jeans and stand up, tell them goodnight, and then leave the room.
I’m crossing back over to my own room when, as I’m passing the stairs, I notice Eden running up them at full throttle. She just got home? She was only a few minutes behind Tiffani and me when we left the Sunset Ranch. She should have been home ages ago.
“Eden?” I stare down at her, wondering where she’s been, because she clearly didn’t come straight home. “Where the hell did you go?”
She freezes on the stairs for a split second and fires back, “Where the hell did you go?” She walks up the last few stairs and stops in front of me. She’s much smaller than I am, but she holds a mean stare down. “You just ditched the rest of us. Nice teamwork.”
Shit, so she is mad at me. But for what? For the way I snapped at her in the car? For the way I squared up to Jake? I’ve done a lot of things that could have potentially pissed her off today, and I groan at the thought of them. “I don’t work well with cops, alright? I can’t get caught again.”
“Again,” Eden repeats, scoffing. Yet another con of mine to add to her list: gets arrested . “When did you get home?”
“Twenty minutes ago,” I say. “Mom finally stopped grilling me about the whole beach thing earlier.”
“Cool,” she says with absolutely zero emotion. As though I’ve disappeared into thin air, she strolls straight past me and walks into her room. I wasn’t done talking to her, so I aimlessly follow. She runs her eyes over me and deeply inhales. “What do you want?”
I don’t know. To figure out why she’s mad at me, I guess. “Nothing,” I say, and then look at the floor. God, what the hell is wrong with me? I should get out of her room. She obviously doesn’t want to talk to me. Feeling embarrassed, I quickly turn around and walk next door to my own room.
“What was your problem with Jake?” I hear Eden ask, and when I look over my shoulder, she has followed me this time. Her arms are folded across her chest and her stance is confident as she stares at me, an eyebrow raised as she awaits an answer. “I asked you a question,” she says.
“I’m not answering it,” I say. Is my room even tidy?
I glance around. No, of course it’s fucking not.
I didn’t make my bed this morning. There’s beer on my bedside table.
There are pairs of my boxers by my bathroom door.
I need to distract her from noticing, so I grit my teeth and turn around to face her.
“Wait, I will. That guy is the second biggest asshole I’ve ever met.
Don’t waste your time. He’ll screw you over. ”
“Who’s the first? Yourself?” she quips, and I wish she wasn’t being sarcastic, because the first is Dad. My own blood.
“Close enough,” is all I say.
“Okay, well, Jake’s actually really nice. Unlike some people around here.” She steps back and I can see her gaze shifting around the room, checking everything out. “And you don’t really get a say in whether I want to hang out with him or not.”
“You’re kidding, right?” She is, isn’t she? She has to be. Jake is a stranger. She doesn’t know him like the rest of us do. She doesn’t know that he’s a player and he’s proud of it. She doesn’t know that he’s combative, argumentative. “Alright,” I say. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Why do you even care?” she asks.
“I don’t,” I say, my voice defensive. Or do I? If I don’t care, then why am I getting pissed off at the thought of Jake messing with her?
“You clearly do.”
I walk away from her, shoving my hands into my pockets as I think of how I’m going to change the subject. I have a pile of old DVDs by my TV, and I sound like a damn idiot when I blurt out, “What’s your, um, favorite movie?”
Eden stares at me. She’s probably thinking I’m an idiot too for changing the subject to movies, out of everything I could have possibly chosen. “ Lady and the Tramp ,” she eventually confesses.
“The Disney movie?” I almost laugh. There she is, surprising me again. If she were Tiffani or Rachael or Meghan, I would be teasing her to hell and back right now. But I think it’s sort of cute that she wasn’t too shy to give me an embarrassing answer. So I ask, “Why?”
“Because it’s the greatest love story of all time,” she explains.
“Romeo and Juliet have got nothing on Lady and Tramp. They were so different, yet they made it work. Lady was totally normal and Tramp was totally reckless, yet they fell in love.” She smiles as she talks, not really looking at me, and I’ve never seen anyone look so happy over a damn Disney movie.
“And plus, the spaghetti scene is totally iconic,” she adds.
“Totally,” I agree, laughing. I’ve never seen the movie, but I think I know how it goes. “And I’m pretty sure Lady wasn’t normal. She was boring and didn’t know how to have fun. Tramp’s my kinda guy.”
“What, because he roams the streets the same way you do when you’re stumbling home drunk on the weekends?” She tilts her head to one side, those hazel eyes of hers sparkling as she gives me a teasing smile. I laugh again, and she glances around my room once more. “You play football?” she asks.
“Huh?” I look over my shoulder to see what she’s talking about.
Dean’s varsity football jacket is hanging over the edge of the top shelf in my closet.
It’s been there for like a year, and it brings back bad memories.
I took a bad trip once. Last summer. I don’t remember much, but I remember waking up with Dean’s jacket on.
Apparently, I’d been shivering too hard and they wanted to keep me warm.
I’m much more careful now. “No,” I say. “That’s Dean’s. I’m not really the football type.”
“Dean plays football?” she says slowly, as though she’s surprised. “And you don’t?”
“Yeah. So does Jake.” I walk over to my closet, subtly kicking my boxers to the side as I pass. “I used to play when I was younger, but I stopped back in middle school.”
“Why?”
“According to some people, football is a waste of time.” My throat tightens.
I used to love football. I couldn’t wait for high school so that I could try out for the team, but Dad never let it become a priority.
“ Why waste your time on sports? ” I recall.
“ Throwing footballs around isn’t going to get you into Ivy League schools.
Stay inside and study instead so that you can actually be successful . ”
Eden is watching me closely. “Who told you that?”
“Just someone.” Someone she is never, ever going to know about. “So that’s why I wasn’t allowed to play.”
“Allowed?” She raises an eyebrow.
Crap. I really need to censor what I say sometimes.
“I mean, that’s why I stopped,” I say, reaching up to push Dean’s jacket further back onto the shelf.
I run my eyes over my clothes and decide that I need a fresh shirt after all the shit that’s happened today.
I feel gross, so with my back to Eden, I quickly pull off the shirt I’m currently wearing and then swap it out for a new one.
“I really have to give Dean his jacket back. He’s been bugging me about it for ages,” I say over my shoulder.
A few moments of silence pass, and then I hear Eden quietly ask, “What does your tattoo mean?” I spin around to look at her, confused, and she adds, “I’m going to ignore the fact that you clearly got it illegally.”
“My tattoo?” I only have one. It’s on the back of my left shoulder, and she’s right: I did get it illegally last year in the basement of some guy Declan knows.
“Uh, it says Guerrero ,” I answer, feeling a little awkward.
I scratch the back of my head, and before she can ask, I say, “It’s Spanish for fighter .
” I still don’t know why I chose that. I guess at the time, it was sort of a fuck you to Dad.
He used to always tell me to fight hard for success.
So I decided, in that basement that stank of weed and stale beer, that I was going to do exactly as he asked of me.
I was going to fight for my own version of success, which is to not let what he did ruin my life.
Though I haven’t exactly done a great job of that so far.
Eden is still staring straight at me, and she’s genuinely curious, which is sort of nice, I guess. Tiffani once told me the tattoo is stupid, but she doesn’t know the meaning of it. “Why Spanish?”
“I’m fluent,” I admit. “Both my parents are. My dad taught me when I was a kid.” I don’t speak it much anymore. It only reminds me of him.
“I don’t know any Spanish,” Eden says. She bites her lip and then gives me a playful smile. “I speak French. Like the Canadians,” she jokes. “ Bonjour .”
What the fuck? Did that husky voice just become foreign?
I didn’t know French could sound so good.
“ Me frustras ,” I reply in Spanish, running my hand back through my hair.
She looks confused, but it’s entertaining.
“ Buenas noches. That means ‘Goodnight.’” I don’t translate the first part for her. I don’t tell her she frustrates me.
She seriously does though. She questions me constantly, but she also pays attention to me. One minute she’s all shy and embarrassed, and the next she’s confident and challenging. She listens, but she also doesn’t put up with my bullshit. That’s sort of cool to me.
“Oh,” she says. The corner of her plump lips curves into a small, sweet smile and as she turns around and walks out of my room, I’m so glad to hear that mesmerizing voice of hers murmur, “ Bonsoir .” Maybe it means goodnight in French? Whatever it is, it sounds amazing on her tongue.
My gaze remains glued to her until she disappears back into her own room.
I’m smiling as I stand rooted to the spot, staring out into the empty hall.
Something doesn’t quite feel right. I don’t know what it is, and I stand in silence for a few minutes, racking my brain and trying to figure out why I’m feeling so off.
It’s not until I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror that it hits me.
My smile isn’t the same as it usually is. It’s not a smirk, it’s not challenging, it’s not cocky. My eyes aren’t as narrowed or as fierce. My heart sinks in my chest when I realize that for the past few minutes, I wasn’t acting. For the first time in a long time, I forgot to be Tyler Bruce.
I was just me, and that is the biggest mistake I could ever possibly make.