Chapter 29 – My Fairy Godmothers
Saturday
“I don’t have a secret crush,” I said.
Liam laughed. “You really do though. Come on. Just say it.” He leaned forward and I could smell the pot on his breath. “I’m only helping,” he whispered.
Only helping?! “I don’t have a secret crush. I have...a very real one.” I pointed over at Jacob. “And if you’ll excuse me, I need another drink.” I hurried away from the bonfire and over to the keg. Freaking Truth or Dare. Whose idea had it been to play this?
I grabbed a new cup and filled it to the brim. I had narrowed my list down to six. Kind of. It could still easily be Jacob. Or Axel. Or Mr. Halifax. Or a drifter. God.
I took a huge sip of my drink.
“You look upset, baby doll.”
I jumped, accidentally spilling some of the beer over the rim of my cup. Luckily it all fell on the ground. I sighed and turned to see RJ standing next to me with a joint in his mouth.
What the hell was he doing? “Not you too,” I said. I pulled it out and threw it on the ground.
“You probably should have had a hit and then maybe you’d calm down.”
Calm down? CALM DOWN?! “RJ, I’m going to kill you.”
“What did I do?”
“It’s what you’re not doing. You promised to fix the hole in the floor by the end of the week. I’m going to be grounded again.”
“And I told you I had it covered.”
“By covering it with a rug,” I mumbled under my breath.
“Baby doll. Come on. Relax. It’s Saturday night and we just won our first game. I didn’t want to miss the party.”
I sighed. That was actually fair. It was his first win at his new school. This was a big deal for him. “Yeah. I get it.”
He smiled. “How did the blackmail thing turn out? Did you figure out who the mascot was?”
“I...did.”
“So who was it?”
My stomach churned. “I’d rather not say.”
RJ whistled as he pulled another joint out of his pocket. He pulled out a lighter next.
“Where did you even get that?”
He shrugged. “A friend of a friend.”
“Well, you’re hanging out with the wrong people.”
He laughed. “I mostly hang out with you. Now back to the blackmail thing. Does that mean I can remove the cameras in the men’s locker room before someone sees them? Because someone might find out you and Soph put V21s on the kissing booth to blow it up...”
“I had no idea about the V21s. And it wasn’t like we planned to blow it up. It was an accident.”
“Either way. If the principal figures it out, he might search the rest of the school for hidden cameras. So...can I take them down?”
“Yes. Wait. I mean no.”
“Yes or no?”
“I still need access to them.” Just until I figured out 100% for sure who my kiss thief was. I might be able to capture the person texting at just the right moment. Or...something. Anything. I knew I was grasping at straws, but I was desperate. I needed my kiss thief to be Jacob. I could catch him. I knew I could. I just needed more time.
“So does that mean you actually didn’t find out who the mascot was?”
I’d already told him that I had. But he was high. And if he was asking again, I could change my answer. “It was inconclusive. Just...give me another week, okay?” My phone buzzed and I pulled it out.
My kiss thief had finally texted me back. “I think it’s very clear that you have no idea who I am. Or else you wouldn’t be kissing so many guys on the football team today. Or flirting with underclassmen. Or wearing another guy’s jacket when you know it should be mine.”
My heart started hammering in my chest. Did my kiss thief think I was flirting with RJ right now? Ew. I looked over at Jacob. He and Axel were laughing about something. Both of them knew I’d never flirt with RJ. And the text said another guy’s jacket. As in...not Jacob’s. Screw me.
“You okay?” RJ asked. “You just got really pale.”
No, I wasn’t even close to being okay. My kiss thief had basically just told me he wasn’t Jacob. I pressed my lips together. But it could just be Jacob lying. But why the heck would Jacob be lying to me when he’d been so honest at the diner the other day? God, I just wanted to throw my phone into one of the bonfires.
“Scar,” RJ said and lightly touched my arm. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.” I wasn’t. I downed the rest of my cup.
My phone buzzed again. “And it doesn’t matter whose jacket you wear. We both know I’m the one you’re dreaming about every night.”
I swallowed hard and my throat made a weird squeaky noise. I looked back over at Axel and Jacob laughing.
I didn’t see either of their phones out.
Was Mr. Halifax seriously texting me right now? I was going to throw up. “It’s late,” I said. “I should probably get home so I don’t miss curfew.”
“It’s barely past midnight. Isn’t your curfew one?”
I ignored him and started walking back over to the bonfire to let my friends know I was leaving.
But I froze when I saw the bottle slowly come to a stop, landing on Axel.
RJ started to ask me a question, but I was just staring in horror at Axel.
It felt like spin the bottle from sixth grade all over again. And I knew I was here with Jacob. And that I’d kissed like a freaking million people today already. But...still. Not again.
“Truth or dare?” the girl asked who spun the bottle.
“Dare,” Axel said.
“I dare you to make out with me.”
“Desperate much?” RJ said under his breath.
Axel turned toward me.
I wanted the hurt to not be showing on my face. But I knew it was there. I felt like a kid seeing the boy of my dreams give his first kiss to someone else all over again. The ache in my chest was stronger than ever. It was like I was watching the beginning of our end on repeat. And I couldn’t bear to do this again. Not when the first time had broken a piece of me that still hadn’t healed.
I knew I’d just been thinking about how Axel was cruel. But he wouldn’t do this to me again, would he? Now that I’d told him I’d saved my first kiss for him? I knew he remembered that conversation. Don’t do this to me again, Axel. It would be like taking the worst moment of my life and throwing it in my face. And as I stared at the scene unfolding, it felt like I was watching my past in slow motion.
In sixth grade, I’d been quiet during spin the bottle. I’d told him it was fine if he kissed Ava Williams. When it had been anything but. I’d had a chance to stop him, and I hadn’t taken it. If I didn’t want Axel to do the dare, I needed to say something this time. I opened my mouth but no words came out.
Axel cleared his throat and turned back to the girl. “Lame. Let’s do something more fun.”
I stared at the side of his face. Maybe I was wrong before. Maybe he wasn’t as cruel as I’d painted him to be.
Axel turned to Jacob. “Dare me something better, Jacob.”
Jacob laughed. “I dare you to throw someone in my grandparents’ pool.”
“Much better.” Axel stepped over the log and walked toward me.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He didn’t respond. He just lifted me over his shoulder.
I screamed and put my hands down for purchase. My palms collided with his butt. And I was very aware that this was the third time I’d had my hands on Axel’s butt recently.
“Put me down!” I screamed.
He chuckled. “Gladly. In the pool.”
“Axel!” I slapped his butt.
He didn’t respond.
So I spanked him again.
“I didn’t know how much you loved your hands on my ass,” he said.
“You’re one to talk!” Because his hand was on the back of my jean shorts right now. “Put me down!”
“Then stop acting like someone I don’t know.”
Me? ME?! I slapped his butt again.
He chuckled.
“Axel Stevens, put me down this instant.”
“No.”
“If Mr. and Mrs. Caldwell catch us I’ll never be able to leave the house again. My dad will ground me for eternity.”
“They’re out of town. Or else Jacob wouldn’t have told me to throw you in the pool.”
“He didn’t tell you to throw me!”
“Same difference.”
I heard laughter behind us. I lifted my head to see everyone from Truth or Dare following us through the woods.
“Axel, I’m serious. I can’t come home soaking wet. My dad would freak.”
“Your dad really would freak if you came home soaking wet.” Axel’s hand shifted down onto the back of my thigh.
I tried to ignore the tingly sensation and the way his touch made my heart race. “So put me down!”
He didn’t respond.
The ground beneath me shifted from fallen leaves to plush grass and I knew I was running out of time. “Axel.”
No response.
I screamed and slapped his butt again.
He chuckled.
And then I heard the squeak of a fence gate opening.
No.
And the ground turned to cement.
“Axel! Please!”
He slowly lowered me. Right on the edge of the pool.
“Axel, you can’t throw me in the pool. I...I...I have my phone on me.”
He reached into Jacob’s varsity jacket and pulled it out. “And now you don’t.”
I opened my mouth, trying to come up with another reason.
“Maybe next time you’ll think twice about making out with guys on my team, Scarlett. Just so we’re clear. I’ve added an amendment to our deal. Don’t flirt with anyone on my team. Or I’ll hook up with the whole cheerleading squad.”
I didn’t even get a chance to respond, because he put his fingers in the center of my chest. And then he pushed me.
I fell backwards, splashing into the pool. The most ungraceful backwards bellyflop.
The water was completely freezing. And my clothes weighed me down more than I was used to. My sneakers finally found the bottom of the pool and I pushed off. My head broke the surface of the water and I gasped for air.
“Cannon ball!” someone yelled and splashed me.
I wiped the water out of my eyes to see everyone stripping down to their underwear and jumping into the pool.
Everyone else looked sexy and spontaneous. And I looked like a fully-clothed drowned troll.
I glared at Axel.
He smiled back. And then he slowly peeled his shirt off.
I was too annoyed to be thrown off-kilter by his exposed six-pack. I hadn’t agreed to the original deal we’d made. I’d been under duress. And I didn’t agree to this amendment either.
***
My sneakers squished as I made my way onto the elevator. There was no way I could walk into my apartment like this. I hit the button for the floor beneath the penthouse. I needed to borrow something to wear from my Russian neighbor. And check on the hole.
I knew nothing about construction. But it was becoming very clear that I needed to fix this problem myself. My first thought was that maybe I could rearrange the furniture in the guest room. Just...push the bed into the middle of the room. But I was a little worried that the entire floor might collapse as soon as someone sat on the bed. Moving the bed could be a temporary fix though.
I grabbed the key from under the mat and unlocked the door.
All the lights were on in the entranceway. I cringed. Sophie and I had left in such a hurry the other day. We’d probably left them on.
I pulled off Jacob’s jacket as I made my way into the Russian woman’s bedroom. I started humming as I walked into her closet.
It took a while, but I finally found a pair of sweatpants and a tank top. This chick had so many bikinis. Whenever she was in New York, she must have only ever attended pool parties.
I tucked my wet clothes under my arm and smiled to myself. Now that I was dry and almost home an eerie sense of calmness washed over me.
Had tonight gone perfectly?
No, not even close.
But Jacob had given me his varsity jacket. And asked me to homecoming. And told Noah off when he’d kissed me. And said that the kissing booth had made him jealous. I squealed. It was a great night. A really freaking great night.
No, Jacob hadn’t asked me to be his girlfriend. But maybe he would on Monday night when I went over to his house for dinner. For just a few minutes, I wanted to forget about everything else. I’d been waiting my whole life for a night like this. And I just wanted to focus on the good things.
I started humming again as I walked out of the closet. But my feet froze when I heard the sound of a power drill.
What the... I tiptoed down the hallway. And then I could hear the sound of humming that wasn’t mine. Crap. Was the Russian woman home? I should have gone out the front door, but I was too curious. I kept tiptoeing.
The door to the room with the hole in the ceiling was closed. But the humming was definitely coming from in there. I opened up the door.
Uncle Rob was holding a power drill in his hand beneath the ladder. He hummed to himself and twirled around in a circle before grabbing a screw.
“Uncle Rob?”
He didn’t hear me as he shimmied his shoulders and stepped up onto the ladder.
What the hell was he doing here?
“He has earbuds in,” someone said.
I jumped. Someone was sitting on the couch, his face hidden behind a magazine.
I screamed.
And then Uncle Rob screamed and dropped the drill. He cursed as he pulled his earbuds out of his ears. “Shit, Scarlett. You scared me.” He laughed and picked up the power drill and screw. And then he proceeded to climb up the ladder and start drilling again.
Mr. Tanner lowered the magazine he’d been paging through. He looked at the wet clothes tucked under my arm. “Rough night?” he asked.
I stared at my parents’ friend in horror. Wait, my parents! I looked around, waiting for my parents to pop out of nowhere and yell at me. But unless they were hiding behind that couch... Wait. This room had been empty. Where had that couch come from?
“There,” Uncle Rob said and blew on the end of the power drill. He hopped off the ladder. “We still need a few more items. And maybe a fresh coat of paint. But it’s a work in progress. Why is your hair all wet?”
I opened my mouth and closed it again. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”
Mr. Tanner started whistling and looking through his magazine again.
“I asked Tanner for help,” Uncle Rob said. “He’s not very handy though.”
“I’m handy when no one is looking,” Mr. Tanner said as he kept flipping through the magazine.
What the heck did that mean?
“I know your Uncle Matt knows how to do all this stuff,” Uncle Rob said. “But I thought he might freak out about this. Since he has a son your age and all that.”
“Speaking of which,” said Mr. Tanner. “Is that Jacob’s jacket? Are the two of you dating?”
I held the jacket a little tighter. “I don’t really know. We’re going to homecoming together.”
Mr. Tanner looked very excited about that news.
Uncle Rob smiled. “You’re dating then.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Kid, he gave you his jacket and asked you to homecoming. Yes. You’re dating.”
I smiled. But then my smile immediately fell when Uncle Rob tossed his power drill into a toolkit. “I still don’t understand what’s happening.”
“You couldn’t have picked a better lad than my grandson,” Mr. Tanner said. “I knew this was going to happen. I predicted it when you were just kids.”
Had he? I smiled. Mr. Tanner wasn’t Jacob’s actual grandfather. But when Jacob had moved to New York City when he was little, he’d called Mr. Tanner Abuelo and it kind of just stuck. The two of them knew each other well. Mr. Tanner must have known about Jacob’s crush on me this whole time.
Wait. “That’s not what I was talking about when I said I didn’t understand what was happening though. I’m talking about...this.” I gestured around the room.
“Sophie has a vision for the place,” Uncle Rob said. “We need to order a few more things, but it’ll be all decked out soon.”
“She circled a lot of things in this magazine,” Mr. Tanner said and tossed it aside. He stood up and stretched. He was in a full suit even though it was the middle of the night. “I’ll handle it from here.”
“You...I...” Ah! “But...this...” Did they not know we were standing in someone else’s apartment right now? They had to. Because we literally were. “My parents are going to kill me.”
“Don’t worry,” Mr. Tanner said. “We’re not going to tell your parents about your secret lair. Or Matt.”
“I didn’t ask for any of this. RJ was supposed to fix the hole, not get you to turn this into a...what?”
“Secret lair,” Mr. Tanner said. “It’s going to be pretty epic.”
“So epic,” Uncle Rob said. “I always wished I’d had a secret lair growing up. As soon as RJ told me about the hole, I knew what I needed to do. It’s going to be fantastic. It’ll be the perfect place for you kids to hang out. A little better than a treehouse, I think.”
“A tree what?” asked Mr. Tanner.
“A treehouse.” He stared at Mr. Tanner. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of a treehouse, weirdo.”
Mr. Tanner laughed. “Sounds like a pauper thing.”
Uncle Rob shook his head and chuckled. “Anyway, it’ll be done soon. In the meantime, you better get up that ladder. It’s almost one. Isn’t that your curfew?”
I just stared at them. “You’re seriously not telling my parents that we put a hole in the floor?”
“The hole is fixed.” Uncle Rob pointed to the trapdoor. It reminded me a lot of how you got in and out of the treehouse actually. “So there’s nothing really to tell.”
There’d be a lot to tell if they actually turned this into some kind of secret lair. “If my dad finds out about this...”
Uncle Rob laughed. “We both know he had this coming. He’s too strict if you ask me. And stalking you at school? Not cool, man. It’s the least we can do to help.”
Sometimes I had a hard time remembering that Uncle Rob and my dad were brothers. “Thank you.”
Mr. Tanner glanced at his watch. “You best hurry, Scarlett. You don’t want to be late.”
I nodded. It weirdly felt like the two of them were my fairy godmothers, warning me to hurry so I wouldn’t turn into a pumpkin when the clock struck the hour. I hurried up the ladder and pushed open the trapdoor in the ceiling. “Goodnight,” I whispered down to them.
“Congrats on your first boyfriend, Scarlett,” Uncle Rob said.
I smiled, closed the door behind me, and replaced the rug. I tentatively put a little of my weight down on the carpet. Huh. It was actually secure.
Uncle Rob’s words spun around in my head. I had my first boyfriend. And I made it up to my room without being seen. I sighed and fell backward onto my bed. Jacob Miller was my boyfriend. I just need him to officially ask me.