Chapter 5
Kinsley
Chapter Five
After Thomas left, Connor gave me a proper tour around the house. We took advantage of the few hours left of the day and spent some time on the pier, sunbathing and dangling our legs into the lukewarm water of the lake. When the sun started to settle, we decided to retreat into the guest room, where we had already deposited my bags. It was a nice, beige-colored room with a queen bed, a desk, a mirror, a small closet, and a window that looked over the pine forest.
Connor was leaning backward on the bed, watching some show on his laptop. He was already dressed and ready for the party, unlike me. I readjusted the white minidress I chose and spared a last glance at my reflection to make sure I wasn’t showing more than I intended to, before I fell backward on the bed.
“Do you always have to watch something?” I mocked him the same time he said:
“You will wrinkle your dress.” He was right, but I wasn’t going to just stand until his brother arrived. “It’s relaxing,” he added with a smile, turning the laptop so I could see it too. I rolled my eyes, but they still fixated on the screen while Connor played with my hair. He always made really bad braids, but he enjoyed it, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him they looked terrible.
I glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen and bit into my cheek. I realized two things at once. The house was perfectly clean for not having been used for more than ten years, and Thomas should have been here by now. He was never late, and he hated people who were, which was maybe why I usually was.
“I still can’t believe there are no taxis or Ubers here.” Connor sighed.
I shrugged. It wasn’t that surprising; this was a small town, after all. And even if the town had those, it would cost a fortune to order them out here.
“We could check his location,” he added, and I looked up at him, eyes widening.
“That’s for emergencies only, not for spying.”
“We turned it on for a reason.”
I gave him a look. “Emergencies,” I repeated. “Besides, I don’t care that much about where he is.”
Connor raised an eyebrow at me. “Sure.” He tipped his head, biting into his lip to hide a curling smile. “I guess we just have to wait then.” I hummed agreeingly, and he went on, “Unknowing of when or if we will ever make it to the party.” He sighed, elbowing me.
“Con.” I gave him a stare while I tried to come up with something else to talk about. “How is it so clean here?” I blurted out the first question that came to my mind, and Connor knotted his brows, letting out a laugh.
“What?”
I sat up, letting the braids slide out as I reached toward the nightstand and ran my fingers over the surface. “How is it so clean here?” I asked again, this time truly curious.
He shrugged. “Dad pays a cleaning lady,” he answered, turning his eyes to me and then looking at my fingers. “He said something about her coming here every two weeks or so to clean.” The front door closed with a thump, and we both straightened up on the bed.
“Finally.” Connor stood up, grabbing his green sweatshirt and crossing the room.
I quickly pulled on my black Converses and followed him downstairs. Thomas was standing at the bottom of the stairs with an unreadable mask over his features. I was curious where he had been for the last two hours, but I would never ask him—and even if I did, he would never answer me. The front door was open behind him, and Connor was nowhere to be seen, which meant he already went to the car. I fixed my gaze ahead of me while I hurried past Thomas, and it felt like torture not to turn around when I felt his gaze burn into my back.
The car was parked next to the house, and I basically flew over to it, jumping into the backseat and shutting the door behind me.
“Woah.” I heard Connor from the passenger seat, while I tried to catch my breath. “And I thought I was more excited.”
Well, yes, I guess I was a little more excited than I wanted to be, but for a completely different reason than he thought. My excitement had much more to do with the boy wearing the dark blue T-shirt and khaki pants, and who was walking toward us than it had to do with the party.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” Connor said as soon as his brother took his seat and turned on the engine. “We have a party to catch.”
I glimpsed at Thomas, who rolled his eyes with a slight smile. He was devilishly handsome with his emotionless, almost scary face he liked to put on for show. Almost every girl on campus talked about him. How he was so hot, scary, exciting…good in bed. My stomach dropped; I hated to think about that. But as I looked at him now, when he let that mask slip away, he looked almost beautiful, angelic in an ironic way. I looked away and stared out the window, not wanting to get caught peeking into that private moment.
Braxton’s house was a ten-minute drive around the forest, which would have been a lot longer on foot. I looked at the house that was not much smaller than the Rhodes’s. This one was white with smaller windows, and it reminded me of a modern farmhouse.
“Is this really the closest house to yours?” I asked, remembering what Braxton said about him being their neighbor. To my surprise it was Thomas who answered my question.
“Not all ground is safe to build on around the lake,” he said, while opening his door. “So yes.” I made an imaginary note to look out while in the woods and try not to disappear into the ground.
“Are we going in or what?” Connor turned back to face me, and I nodded, trying to settle my mind into party mode.
We got out of the car, and the music instantly consumed me. The ground between the house and the lake was full of people. The beat pulsed across the yard while bodies swayed and writhed in front of a bonfire. A few people laid back on the ground, either making out or already sleeping, which was wild—not just because of the loud noise but because it was only ten p.m.
“Come on.” Connor grabbed my hand and pulled me into the crowd. When I had the chance to glance back over my shoulder, Thomas was nowhere in sight. Someone placed a red cup in my hand, which Connor gently took away from me and put on the table next to us.
“Let’s get something fresh!” he shouted with a grimace, and I nodded in agreement. Connor searched for two unused cups and filled them up with something that looked like vodka to me. He handed one of them over, and I smiled, knowing this was when he would say some complete nonsense we could drink to.
“To the start of a great summer,” he said, raising his cup against mine while other people’s bodies jostled against us.
Well, I could drink to that.
The alcohol burned my throat, and I made a face, putting the cup back down. This wasn’t my first drink. I just happened to like 20 percent alcohol with 80 percent soda, and this wasn’t that.
“Fuck.” I coughed. “I always forget you drink like a veteran.” I grimaced, and Connor flashed me his sweetest smile back. “Nah, don’t do that, that’s what confuses me.”
“What?” He laughed, playing the unknowing saint while he handed me a new cup filled with orange juice.
“You and your angelic disguise, you devil,” I answered, making a face.
“Converse girl,” a voice called from behind my back, and a hand landed on my shoulder. “You came.” I turned around, gulping down the juice, and Braxton arched a brow at me, a smile tugging on his lips. “And you brought your boyfriend.” He indicated with his chin toward Connor.
Connor almost spit out his drink. “Not boyfriend,” he protested, and this time he was the one coughing. “Gay,” he added between two desperate tries to breathe, and I raised my hand to pat his back.
Braxton opened his mouth to answer, when his eyes widened, and I followed his gaze over my shoulder. A red-haired girl was standing not far from us, her gaze searching the crowd, her hair billowing around her.
“I— Talk to you guys later,” he mumbled, stepping away from us. “Samantha,” he called as the girl moved through the crowd, making Braxton chase after her.
“He’s weird.” I furrowed my brows, and Connor nodded along while still coughing.
“He is,” he finally spoke, clearing his throat one more time. “But I like him.”
I rolled my eyes. “You like everyone.”
He made a face at me, grabbing my hand and pulling me into the pile of bodies swelling against each other to the rhythm of the music. “Not true,” he argued. “I don’t really like you right now.” His tone was playful, and we shared a smile before I gazed up at the stars.
We found ourselves in the middle of a group of swirling bodies, and Connor let out a laugh when a random girl started to dance with him. The air was hot around us. His blond curls fell into his eyes as he moved his head to the rhythm of the song. I started to move, too, when the girl grabbed my hand, the light of the fire playing nicely on her dark skin. She was mesmerizing. I had no idea what was coming over me, and I knew I would regret it the moment I opened my eyes the next morning, but I started to move my hips and my ass while I reached toward the stars with my hands. We were laughing, shouting the lyrics of the song playing, and it felt like more bodies appeared around us, closing in and in.
“Drink,” the girl said, handing me and then Connor a cup, and I made the mistake of smelling it first. I coughed and the girl laughed. “Don’t smell it, silly,” she said, pulling me aside, her crystal bracelets rolling up and down on her wrists. “I’m Aaliyah, by the way.”
“Kinsley,” I answered, shaking her hand. “And that is Connor.” I pointed into the crowd to where Connor was dancing.
“Mm-hmm.” Aaliyah smiled. “I know him.” When I furrowed my brows, her expression changed. “Not in a creepy way,” she explained. “Everyone knows the Rhodes around here. What happened with their mom…let’s just say a small town like this doesn’t really forget about that kind of a thing.”
My chest tightened. What happened with their mom? It felt weird not knowing what a whole town did. I knew she wasn’t in the picture, but the boys were very closed off about it. I sat down with my laptop multiple times in the past months to find out more—or more like anything—about her, but there was something that stopped me every time.
“That’s my girlfriend,” Aaliyah added, pointing at someone in the crowd, and I nodded, gulping down the rest of the drink in my hand.
Half an hour later, it felt like I had heard everything about Aaliyah’s girlfriend. I didn’t really mind it, as I liked to analyze the people surrounding me, but it was hard to place her without a face. She was sweet, shy. All the basics. I even knew that she had only come to the party because Aaliyah made her, and that she was allergic to cats but still loved them.
I had no idea how much drink I had, but one moment I was talking with Aaliyah and the next I was back in the crowd, swaying my hips again. Hands were everywhere; I felt them on my arms, my hips, and while it felt suffocating, it had something more to it. Something freeing. Aaliyah gripped my hand as we sang the song that bellowed from the speaker. My eyes found Connor, not too far away from us, dancing with a boy I recognized from earlier as Kevin Miller. They laughed at each other, and I looked away, feeling like I got a glimpse of a private moment. I turned around, my eyes suddenly searching for another familiar gaze.
“I’m gonna go freshen up,” I mumbled, letting go of Aaliyah’s hand.
I felt numb as I made my way toward the picnic tables. I searched for anything that reminded me of water, but I found nothing. Great. My only option to get some water was to go inside, but pushing my way through the dancing crowd wasn’t in my plans for tonight. I exhaled and went for it, and while there were hands that reached after me and tried to pull me back into the pile of dancing bodies, I managed to make it to the front door.
I stopped for a short second, catching my breath and resting my hand on the doorknob. As soon as my blood relaxed in my veins, I felt it. I turned back toward the crowd, toward the lake, searching for the eyes that burned into me. Thomas was standing at the edge of the crowd, leaning against a picnic table with a cup in his hand. He was alone, but not really. There was a group of people surrounding him, talking to him, but his eyes lingered on me. His dark gaze captured mine and I fell into them. It was like getting lost in a deep well. Frightening but—calming.
A sudden pinch of pain pulled me back into my body. I bumped into someone. Or more like someone bumped into me, as I was still frozen in place.
“Sorry,” I said to the guy, who just stepped around me and disappeared into the crowd.
I took a deep breath and hurried into the house, shutting the door behind my back.