Chapter 2 – Pretty Sure I Was Your First
Sunday
I woke up with my head on Jacob’s chest.
I smiled and took a deep breath. Jacob wasn’t my fake boyfriend anymore. He was my real boyfriend.
But my smile faltered when I felt Axel’s breath on the back of my neck. His body was wrapped around mine from behind.
Everything that happened last night came back to me all at once. I was grounded for the rest of my life. And if my dad came into my room right now he’d probably kill me, Jacob, and Axel.
There was a comforter between me and Axel, but that didn’t make it any better. And there hadn’t been a comforter between us the other nights he’d come over. I squeezed my eyes shut tight and lay completely still for just a moment.
Jacob was my boyfriend. I should have been shoving Axel off the side of the bed. And I felt guilty for that not being my first reaction.
But this was it. The last time Axel would ever be holding me like this.
I tried to shake the thought away. It didn’t matter. I was with Jacob. And that was what I wanted. I elbowed Axel in the stomach.
He groaned and his body uncurled from mine.
I kept my eyes shut. It would be easiest if he just left. It would give me time to let Jacob know that Axel had been spending the night recently. I was done keeping secrets.
But instead of leaving, Axel yawned loudly. And then he pulled my comforter and sheets clean off of me.
I yelped and tried to grab them, but he shoved them off the bottom of the bed like a barbarian.
“Rise and shine, sleepyheads,” Axel said.
I should have pushed him off the bed. I threw my arm across my chest and leaned over to grab the comforter.
“Your ass is everywhere,” Axel said.
What? I looked behind me. I’d forgotten I was only wearing a thong.
“Here.” Axel pulled his tuxedo jacket off the back of my desk chair and handed it to me.
I quickly pulled it on.
Jacob was still sleeping soundly. How was he sleeping through this nonsense? I lightly pushed on his shoulder.
Jacob yawned and blinked a few times. It seemed to take him a couple of seconds to remember where he was. “Hey.” He smiled at me and slowly sat up. But then he saw Axel standing there. His eyes bounced back to me and dipped to the jacket around my shoulders. His smile was gone.
“Should we go get some breakfast?” Axel asked. “I’m starving.” He reached for my doorknob.
“I swear to God, Axel,” I said. “If you walk out of this room I will murder you. I’m already grounded.”
He laughed and dropped his hand. “And how many times do I have to tell you...your dad won’t care.”
My eyes grew round. He’d basically just blabbed that he said that all the time. Since he was in my room all the time, threatening that exact thing. Had Jacob noticed? I really wanted to tell Jacob myself.
But Jacob just yawned again. He was still waking up. “What time is it?” Jacob asked.
I reached over him and grabbed my phone off the nightstand. But I couldn’t unlock it.
Axel handed me my glasses.
Asshole. I slid them on. “It’s 10 o’clock.” I was a little surprised my parents hadn’t tried to come check on me last night. But I guess they were as mad at me as I was at them. I tossed my glasses back on my nightstand.
“I should go talk to your dad.” Jacob slid off the bed and started to get dressed. He pulled on his tuxedo pants.
“You can’t talk to my dad wearing the same thing you were in last night,” I said.
“I’ll just tell him I was at an after party.”
I wasn’t sure that was a good idea. But Jacob seemed so calm about it, that I couldn’t help but trust him.
He pulled on his jacket and then grabbed his phone. “Well today is going to be fun. I have ten missed calls from Coach.”
I groaned. “Jacob, you’re probably going to be grounded too.”
“No one’s going to be grounded. I’ve got this.” He sat down and pulled on his shoes. “I’ll call Coach back and then come up to talk to your dad.” He picked up Axel’s varsity jacket and tossed it at him.
Axel caught it with one hand.
And then Jacob walked over to me. He leaned down and kissed my cheek. “I’ll come to the front door in ten minutes. Meet me there?”
I nodded. “I feel like we need some sort of plan here though.”
“It’s going to be fine.” Jacob turned to Axel. “Why aren’t you getting dressed? Where are your shoes?”
“I’ll leave in a minute,” Axel said. “I need to talk to Scarlett about our coding project.”
I resisted rolling my eyes.
Jacob ignored him and opened my closet. He pulled out my fuzzy flannel pajamas and handed them to me. “You don’t want to be wearing that jacket when we talk to your father.”
“Good plan.” And my dad loved these pajamas.
Jacob kissed my cheek again. “It’s going to be fine,” he whispered.
“I hope you’re right.”
He opened the trapdoor. “Ten minutes,” he said. But he was staring at Axel instead of me. And then he walked down the steps.
Axel kicked the trapdoor closed and whistled as he walked over to my desk. He draped his varsity jacket on the back of my chair again.
“I think Jacob wants you to take that back.”
“Do you want me to take it back?”
I pressed my lips together. “Yes.”
“You hesitated.”
“I didn’t hesitate. Take your jacket. I’ve been trying to give it back to you.”
He patted it on the top of my chair. “Nah. Like I said before...it looks better on you.”
Why did my heart suddenly hurt so much? “Axel, you can’t come over at night anymore.”
“Why?”
“Because Jacob is my boyfriend.”
“Hm.” He stared at me. “I see you haven’t reconsidered our vow of singledom?”
It wasn’t our vow. And I hadn’t considered it at all. “Absolutely not. Jacob is my boyfriend,” I said again.
“He was every other night the past week too, and you had no problem sharing a bed with me.”
“Well...everything is different now.”
“Is it?” He just stared at me.
“Yes. And you sleeping in my bed when I have a boyfriend is completely inappropriate.”
“Is it?” he said again.
“Yes! Just think of how Jacob must feel. I mean, if I was dating you and you had another woman in your bed every night I’d be very pissed at you.”
“You and another girl in my bed every night? That sounds a lot hotter than last night.”
I threw a pillow at him.
He laughed and caught it. “I’m fine with it just being the two of us tonight though.”
“Axel,” I said as sternly as I could. “What are you not getting? No.”
“You’re actually being serious right now?”
“Of course I’m being serious!”
“Did you find religion or something?”
I glared at him. “Stop it.”
“I didn’t do anything. I just don’t understand the sudden change of heart.”
“Because Jacob’s my first boyfriend,” I said. “And I’m taking that seriously.”
“Pretty sure I was your first.”
“What?”
“I was your first boyfriend,” Axel said. “Not Jacob.”
“Kindergarten doesn’t count.”
“I think technically it does. Jacob is your second boyfriend. And I really don’t think he cares if we sleep together, or he would have kicked me out last night.”
“Would you stop saying it that way?”
He smiled out of the corner of his mouth. “But we are sleeping together.”
I glared at him.
He laughed.
“Did you have fun hooking up with whoever you hooked up with last night?” I asked. I told myself it was the first time I wouldn’t care about the answer. But I still held my breath for some reason.
“When would I have had time to do that? I spent the whole night sleeping with you.”
“Seriously, stop saying it that way!”
He smirked. “You better change. It’s already been five minutes.”
“Get out of my room.”
“You’re wearing my jacket.”
“I hate you,” I said.
He laughed again. “I think we both know that isn’t true.”
I ignored him and pulled on my flannel pajama pants. “Stop looking at me.”
“I literally already saw you in a bra last night and this morning. And I’ve also seen underneath...”
“Whatever.” I took off his tuxedo jacket and pulled on my flannel pajama shirt.
“I guess that Jacob and I have similar taste,” Axel said.
My heart did something funny in my chest. “What?” Was he saying he liked me?
“He picked out those pajamas for you to wear. I guess we both like how they look on you.”
Oh. Right. “My dad likes them too.” Ew. I’d thought Axel was saying Jacob had similar taste when it came to me. And adding my dad into that sentence sounded gross.
Axel pulled his tuxedo jacket on. “So what is Jacob talking to your dad about? Something about being grounded?”
I forgot that Axel had walked in after that conversation last night. “My dad grounded me for eternity, said I was being homeschooled for the rest of the year, and...”
Axel laughed.
“It’s not funny.
“He thinks you’re sleeping with Mr. Halifax. Of course he wants to homeschool you.”
“I’m not sleeping with Mr. Halifax.”
“I know. Because you’ve been sleeping with me every night. Maybe I should come talk to your dad too. I’m the proof.”
I sighed. “I don’t want my dad to get in a fist fight with you next.”
Axel shrugged, like he didn’t think getting into a fight with my dad sounded so bad.
Was he insane?
“So Jacob is going to try to get you ungrounded?” Axel asked.
“I think he’s going to try. But mostly he’s talking to my dad about us.”
“Why is Jacob talking to your dad about me and you?” Axel asked.
“What?”
“Jacob’s talking about us?” He lowered his eyebrows like he was actually worried that was what was happening. He seemed genuinely concerned.
“Axel, you’re being very dense this morning. Jacob is talking about me and him. Not you and me. On top of being grounded and homeschooled, my dad also forbade me from seeing Jacob anymore.”
“He did?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh.” Axel laughed. “That sounds more like the Uncle James I know and love.”
I stared at him. That was a weird thing to say in this situation. “He’s ruining my life.”
“He likes to do that. It was honestly stranger that he was okay with the two of you dating in the first place.”
“Yeah.” I’d thought that was strange too. But none of that mattered right now. “So Jacob is hopefully going to get my dad to let him keep dating me.”
“Well, good luck with that. You’re going to need it.”
“Thanks?”
He smiled. “To be a fly on the wall during that conversation.” He walked toward the trapdoor.
“Wait, did you say you had a question about our coding project?”
“Actually...I guess I can be a fly on the wall,” he said, ignoring my question. “I can watch on the computer downstairs, right?”
What?! “No.”
“Are you sure? I thought RJ hacked the security cameras in your house.”
“I meant please don’t watch.”
He started walking down the stairs.
“Axel,” I hissed. “Axel!”
But he’d already closed the trapdoor.
It was tempting to run after him, but Jacob would be arriving soon. And I didn’t want him to have to face my father’s wrath alone. I hurried out of my room.
The living room was empty. And so was the kitchen. The whole house was eerily quiet. Were my parents still asleep? And I wouldn’t have been surprised if Liam never came home. But of course he wasn’t in trouble.
There was a knock on the door. I answered it and smiled up at Jacob. His bowtie was untied around his neck and his tux was a little wrinkled. It looked like he really had been out partying all night. Or sleeping with me. I swallowed hard. This was a bad idea...
The security door down the hall opened and Porter came running out.
“Hold up!” he called as he jogged over. “I’m sorry, Mr. Miller. But you’re no longer allowed on the premises.”
No way. “Are you serious?” I asked.
“Sorry, Scarlett,” Porter said and lifted up his clipboard. “He was taken off the approved guest list last night.”
I guess my father hadn’t wasted any time. “That was a mistake. Jacob is still allowed in.” I held the door open for him.
Porter stepped between us. “Not a mistake. James told me about it himself.”
I sighed. “This is ridiculous. Jacob is my boyfriend.”
Porter looked back and forth between us. “Your father told me that you guys broke up.”
“Definitely not,” Jacob said.
“Inaccurate,” I said at the same time. “So he can come in.”
Porter glanced at Jacob again. And for the first time I noticed that he wasn’t looking at him very nicely. “Not happening,” Porter said. “Mr. Miller, you can go.”
“Porter,” I said. He didn’t have to be so rude about it.
“Scarlett, your father told me what Jacob said about you.”
Gah!
Jacob laughed because this whole thing was ridiculous.
“You think what you said about her is funny?” Porter said. “Do you see me laughing?”
“I didn’t call her a slut,” Jacob said. “I’d never say that.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
The elevators dinged and Uncle Matt stepped out.
Oh God. What was he doing here?
Uncle Matt looked at Porter. “What is going on here?” he asked. He was wearing athletic shorts and a t-shirt and sweat was dripping off his forehead. It looked like he’d been in the middle of a run and changed directions to come here.
“I’m sorry,” Porter said. “But Mr. Miller is no longer allowed on the premises.”
“You’ve gotta be shitting me. Where the hell is James?” Uncle Matt walked right past me and Jacob. “James!” he yelled at the top of his lungs.
Jacob groaned. “I’m so sorry. I told him not to come.”
This was a disaster.