Chapter 7
Ace
I swear, I tried to keep it cool. I really did. But when Julia asked me to stop texting her and reminded me she was on a date, I panicked. I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing while she’s across town eating garlic breadsticks with Drewchebag.
Now, my palms are sweating, and my shorts are clinging to my thighs, and when I hang up the phone, the guilt of what I’ve just created almost chokes me alive.
Good Lord, what have I done?
I’ve just made her abandon her date because I’m a jealous little fuckboy.
My chest grows tight, and the rubber band of injustice snaps me in the dick.
I pace the room like a caged animal, dragging my hands aggressively through my hair. If I made her leave that date for anything short of Armageddon, I can kiss my chances of making her love me goodbye. I’ve got to mobilize. I’ve got to improvise.
And I’d better do it fucking quick.
I transition from an aimless march to an all-out sprint out of my bedroom. I’ve just insisted she come home to help me with the party that Gunnar is throwing, and there’s no party. There’s no anything but me with my dick in my hand.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
Upon arrival to Gunnar’s room, I’m disappointed to find him doing nothing other than lounging on his beanbag chair, some sort of fucking documentary playing on the TV at a neutral volume.
There’s no fire. No belly dancers. There’s not even a vape pen.
I’m in big, big trouble here.
“What are you doing?” I shout, and Gunnar looks up at me in confusion.
“Uh…” Gunnar shrugs. “Watching the making of the International Space Station.”
“You’re fucking kidding me!”
Gunnar’s brows draw together. He’s obviously not kidding me, but of all the times for him to act like he’s not the biggest menace to society on Planet Earth, he picks tonight. This is the kid who egged the governor’s mansion on his school trip to Albany, for Pete’s sake.
“Okay, fine. You’re not kidding. You’ve gone through a metamorphosis from you to a…vegetable. But I need you to do something. Anything but this.”
“I’m not following, bro.” He’s detached. Uninterested. Making my fucking heart burn.
“Can you, like, I don’t know…light something on fire…steal a car…throw a party? Be you, for fuck’s sake!”
“You want me to throw a party? Like, right now?” He mutes the TV and turns himself in his chair to face me fully.
I don’t like the look in his eye, but I got off the phone with Julia at least two minutes ago, so I don’t really have the room to start thinking through how bad of an idea this could be now.
The train is in motion, and baby, it ain’t stopping.
“Yeah.”
Gunnar shrugs and gets out his phone, scrolling so calmly my balls shrivel into my body. He’s either going full sociopath or fucking me over by being the most normal he’s ever been, and right now—I can’t believe I’m saying this—I need it to be the latter. I need him to be less contained. Pronto.
“What are you doing? Now isn’t the time to play fucking Pokémon Go, bro.”
He sighs. “In order to have a party, I need to invite people.”
“Oh. Hitting up the group chat?”
Gunnar snorts. “I invited the whole contact list, excluding Mom and Dad.”
“You what?”
He sighs again, this time rising from his beanbag chair and pulling off his pants until he’s standing in nothing but his underwear. “You’re really starting to annoy me. You wanted a party, and I’m throwing a party. What’s the problem?”
“Your contact list? The entire thing? Our fucking grandparents are in your phone. Julia’s parents. Dad’s assistant.”
He shrugs and pulls a different pair of shorts from his drawer, slinging them on. He doesn’t get a shirt, though. He never gets a shirt, and he never responds when I try to explain that we’re all tired of seeing his nipples. It’s like his vocal cords stop working. “It’ll sort itself out.”
“Into chaos! You think Kline Brooks is getting a text about you throwing a fucking monster party at our house and not contacting our father? Dad’s assistant Madeline? She’s worked for him since before we were born!”
Gunnar shrugs. “Maybe they’ll finally realize I’m gone, then.”
Fuck me. He’s not entirely wrong. It’s been almost twenty-four hours at this point since he up and mysteriously flew back to New York from the Bahamas on some random airline while my parents slept or partied or who the hell knows.
My parents are a unique set of individuals—I know that—but I can’t believe they haven’t noticed him missing yet. It just doesn’t track.
For all I know, Gunnar blocked both of us as contacts in their phones and the Bahamian authorities are dragging the whole damn ocean right now.
“They probably did realize but have the Bahamian authorities doing an island-by-island grid search. Have you called them? Texted?”
“No. Have you?”
“Well, no. I’ve been…busy.” Obsessing over Julia, trying not to self-destruct. It’s been a very crowded agenda.
“Then it is what it is. If they find out, they find out.”
“How are you the most casual human on the planet at fourteen? Like, are you missing the gene that synthesizes consequences? Are you a fucking sociopath? I really don’t get it.”
“You don’t get it because you take life too seriously.”
“Me? Take life seriously? Do you know who the fuck you’re talking to?”
Gunnar scoffs. “Think what you want, but you’re living in a tiny little box created by the nuances of societal expectation. I live without boundaries.”
“I am not conventional,” I protest. Ace Kelly is a fucking wonder. A visionary. A man with his own drum. Just ask anyone other than this fucker. I don’t know what the hell he thinks he’s talking about.
“Please. What have you done since the moment you realized you’re in love with Julia? What are you doing right now? You’re not throwing the party. I am.”
I shake my head, aggravated. “Never mind. Just…invite whoever you want and get fucking chaotic, for the love of God. Julia’s on her way over here now expecting you to be flashing the neighbors with a porn star’s twig and berries or some shit.”
Gunnar laughs, shrugging. “Suit yourself.”
Shoving past me, he heads for the living room and starts pushing furniture out of the way piece by piece.
I stand and watch, my hands on my hips and my heart in my throat.
He opens the glass expanse back doors to the patio and turns on the string lights my mom hung as soon as they moved back into the city last summer.
For years, we lived in Jersey while my parents worked in New York, just so we could be in the same neighborhood as the Brookses.
But with me going off to college at Dickson and Gunnar fucking disappearing to the city all the time anyway, they decided to stop phoning it in as commuters and take the plunge back into city life.
They changed our Short Hills estate into some kind of investment property that does luxury vacation rentals and Hollywood film sets and relocated to our penthouse in Manhattan.
I won’t deny it’s a pretty bougie version of “city life” in this mega-penthouse, but it’s still the city.
And with all the New York debauchery at his fingertips, who the hell knows what Gunnar is going to have showing up here in the next few minutes.
Gunnar passes by me on his way to the front door, and I pivot like a flag in the wind. “You ever seen a peg-legged stripper before?” he asks.
“What?”
“A peg-legged stripper. She’s got a leg that’s a peg.”
“Jesus, Gunnar. You’re fourteen. How have you seen a peg-legged stripper?”
He rolls his eyes. “Little tiny box, bro. Little tiny box.”
“I’m starting to think I’m okay with my box,” I say, my voice escalating as he disappears into the hallway. “If the outside looks like whatever fresh hell you’re living in,” I finish on a mumble.
Moments later, he’s back, with a cooler and two strong guys wheeling a hand truck full of liquor. My eyes bulge. “What the hell?”
“Don’t worry,” my underage brother says. “The kegs will be here in five minutes max.”
“The kegs?”
He rolls his eyes. “Yeah, Ace. The kegs. How else do you think we’re going to have enough supply for a thousand people?”
I gulp. “A thousand people?”
“What’s with the shock-and-awe act?” he asks, getting frustrated with me. “You told me to throw a party. A rager. To create chaos, did you not? What did you expect? A group of old ladies knitting?”
“No. Fuck. I just didn’t think you’d invite our fucking dentist.”
He laughs. “Dr. Bunnfield can get down.”
“God help the profession of dentistry. God help us all.”
Our elevator dings open, and an onslaught of girls in tiny dresses disembarks, right into the apartment like it’s their own.
They give Gunnar air kisses on the cheek, promptly steal cans of wine spritzers from the coolers the two hulky guys are loading and retreat to the patio.
Within three minutes, two more cartfuls arrive, and the noise level in our previously quiet penthouse ticks up ten decibels.
When a fifth cart of people shows up and makes themselves at home, I finally find Gunnar again and ask another question. “How are all these people just getting up here without you escorting them?”
“I gave out the elevator code in the text.”
“You… Did you set a new one?”
He laughs. “No. I just gave the code.”
“Fuck me, Gunnar.” A deep sigh escapes my lungs. “Mom and Dad are going to kill us.”
“You. They’re going to kill you. Because one, I don’t care enough to be killed.
And two, you’re the catalyst for this little soiree.
I was happy watching my doc about the space station.
” He shrugs. “Just think, if you’d just had the balls to tell Julia you didn’t want her on some date with some other dude, you could have avoided all this trouble. ”
“Screw you.”
Gunnar laughs and wiggles his fingers. “Toodle-oo! Have a good night!”
“Toodle-oo? Toodle-oo? Where the hell are you going? Gunnar? Gunnar!” I yell as he officially disappears.
I am so, so fucked.