Chapter 12
Lacey
“ W hat are you guys having?” Dia’s voice is just background noise as I watch houses parade past the car window on the way to our favorite coffee place.
“I can only do decaf,” Aveena answers before pressing a button on the passenger door and reclining her seat all the way down. She says it helps with her motion sickness. Turns out you can still get carsick in an eighty-thousand-dollar car.
Aveena’s flashy new ride is a gift from her younger sister, Ashley. Aveena doesn’t like to brag about it, but her sister is kind of a big deal in the music industry.
Ashley’s an up-and-coming singer-songwriter who got her start on a talent show when she was just six years old. Although her career really took off last year when she started dating some guy in a boy band that’s all the rage right now.
She was touring with that same boy band as their opening act, but the tour concluded last week, and she dropped by to visit Aveena, who looks like she’s about to give birth any day now.
Apparently, Ashley took one look at her sister’s old car and declared it an unfit vehicle for an expecting mother. She said her sister and nephew deserved nothing but the best and dragged Aveena to a car dealership to get her a new one.
Oh, and did I mention Ashley is the girl Theo chose over me when we were in high school?
These two fell head over heels in love during senior year. I used to hate the girl. Of course, that’s all ancient history now, but back then, I was over the moon when she moved to LA to chase her dreams, shattering Theo’s heart in the process.
As petty as it might sound, it felt good to see him suffer the way I’d been suffering for years.
It seemed to wake him up as to what he’d put me through because a few months later, he sat me down and apologized for stringing me along all these years.
I’m not sure how long Ashley’s planning to stick around or if Theo even knows she’s in town visiting Aveena, but I’d be surprised if he didn’t track her down the minute he finds out.
“Lacey? Do you want anything?” Dia jolts me back to reality, and I snap out of it, realizing we’re up next in the drive-through.
“I’m good, thanks,” I say, seconds away from diving back into deep thoughts when a female voice cuts through the car.
A string of young girls has been reported missing in the past few months, making fourteen-year-old Leah Jenkins’s disappearance the third in just three weeks. Her family is urging anyone who might have information about what happened to come forward.
My heart drops thinking about those poor parents. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have no idea what happened to your kid.
“Jesus, that’s horrible,” Dia comments as we pull up to the drive-through speaker.
“It’s all over the news. Young girls have just been vanishing in the area,” Aveena informs us.
“Do they have any idea what happened?” I ask.
“Could be anything. Serial killer with a thing for teenage girls, maybe? Or they could all be runaways.”
“Doubt it. He said she was the third this month. That’s a whole lot of runaways,” Dia points out.
She’s right. It would be a weird coincidence for so many girls in the same age range to just up and leave simultaneously.
I make a mental note to keep a close eye on Sierra just in case, and Dia mutes the radio to order the coffee.
We’re exiting the drive-through fifteen minutes later. Getting coffee with the girls after school sounded like a good idea until I realized I could barely sleep these days, and that’s without caffeine. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the clusterfuck that was my date with Aaron.
From making out with TJ in the locker room, to Chance nearly walking in on us, to having to do the walk of shame back to my table and finish my date with Aaron—all the while, TJ was watching us like a hawk from behind the bar.
I did everything in my power to act normal, but I was still a mess over what had just happened, something Aaron definitely noticed because he asked me if I was okay three times.
Are you sure you’re okay? You look a little flushed.
I then proceeded to eat two bites of my meal and cut the evening short under the pretense that I was tired and had class early in the morning.
Lame move, I know.
Aaron hasn’t texted me since, and that’s a relief. I think he got the message from our first two dates ending early. TJ texted me the next day, asking when our next lesson was going to be. I haven’t answered him yet.
Might be a reckless decision on my end, seeing as he lost his shit the first time I went silent on him. In my defense, he was such an unpleasant dick that night. An infuriatingly sexy one, but still. And I don’t like the way that kiss made me feel.
So… powerless and needy.
And I certainly don’t like the flashbacks I’ve been getting of that wicked smile on his face while he was playing with my?—
“Chance told Finn something crazy yesterday.” Dia’s comment steals my breath.
I nibble at my bottom lip. “Really?”
“Yup. Something about you and TJ groping each other in the Grill House locker room.”
“That’s bullshit,” I protest. “We weren’t groping each other.”
Chance walked in just as I was leaving, so there’s no way he could’ve seen anything. Although, it was pretty obvious what we had been doing.
“But wait, that’s not even the juicy part,” Dia adds.
Here we go.
“He said you were on a date with Aaron. And after he caught you with TJ, you went back to him.”
Aveena raises her seat back immediately and whips her head around to give me a look that says , “Bitch, you did not!”
“You and TJ? I thought you were faking it,” Aveena says.
“We are.” I pause. “I mean, we were . I mean, I don’t know. TJ kept blowing up my phone during the date, asking me to meet him in the locker room.”
Aveena squeals. “Look at you, making out with your fake boyfriend while on a date with another guy.”
I cover my face with my hands. “I know, I’m a horrible person.”
Dia laughs. “Girl, what? You never even kissed Aaron. And he was all over Heather after your first date. As far as I’m concerned, you don’t owe him anything.”
“Still, that was a shitty thing to do. I shouldn’t?—”
“Skip the guilt trip. How was it?” Aveena urges, making me chuckle.
“It was…”
Hot.
Out of this world.
By far the best kiss I’ve ever had.
“ Okay .”
“Okay? Ma’am, I’m going to need you to cut the crap right now. The sexual tension was through the roof that night he kissed you at the party. Now, will you just let me live vicariously through you so I can reminisce about a time when I wasn’t a pregnant whale?”
Dia chokes on her coffee. Meanwhile, I’m laughing so hard I can’t catch my breath.
“You’re not a pregnant whale,” I argue.
“Are you kidding? The Great Wall of China is smaller than me. Now, spill.”
I lift my hands in surrender. “Fine, it was incredible. It was so hot it could’ve melted Antarctica. Happy now?”
“Are you two, like, a thing?” Dia asks.
“I don’t think so. I mean, he did say something that confused me, but I’m sure it didn’t mean anything.”
“What did he say?” the girls ask in unison.
“He said that if I wanted to do this, I had to end it with Aaron. Because he doesn’t share.”
Silence fills the car.
“Call me crazy, but that sounds a hell of a lot like asking you to be exclusive,” Aveena says.
I scoff. “Please. TJ in a relationship? Never going to happen.”
“Okay, but if he wasn’t asking you to date him, he was definitely asking you to be exclusive fuck buddies,” Aveena adds.
“I don’t want a fuck buddy. I want something serious.”
Dia turns to look at me at a red light. “It’s up to you, but if you want my advice, I say you wait and see where this thing goes. He was obviously jealous if he had to crash your date. Who knows? It could become more in the long run.”
I slouch into my seat, blowing out a breath. This wasn’t supposed to happen. TJ was only supposed to help me get back into the game in exchange for my tutoring him. A means to an end, that’s all I wanted him to be.
And if there’s one thing I know for a fact, it’s that TJ will never be boyfriend material. He’s only going to mess with my head, and after Theo, I promised myself that I’d never let a man play me like a violin ever again.
And if I have to permanently cut this guy out of my life to protect my heart?
Then that’s what I’ll do.