Chapter 14
Ace
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Julia’s dad yells, the volume well outdoing the music and bringing everyone else up silent.
I cover Julia’s ears with my hands as a makeshift pair of those protective mitts, but she moves them away, fear that she’ll miss something being said.
“Seriously, Thatch. You need a diagnosis! That’s a fucking crocodile! ”
“Fluff yeah, son. I picked it out special, just for you,” my dad booms. “But why are you screaming, Special K? Maybe you should lower your voice.”
“Why am I screaming?” Kline Brooks keeps shouting. A prominent vein is now bulging from the center of his forehead. “Because you brought a fucking crocodile to my house!”
“His name is Crocky,” my dad corrects him. “And he’s a little sweetie pie. A little snappy at times, but sweet.”
“Sweet?” Kline questions in outrage. “He’s sweet? He’s a reptile with fucking teeth, Thatch! Pretty sure he almost bit Nathan!”
“At least he’s not a sex offender,” Evie whispers into the small void.
Julia gasps in front of me before whispering, “Oh, Evie. Nooo.”
“What?” Kline asks, his head whipping around lightning-fast. “What did you just say?”
“Don’t, don’t, don’t,” Julia whispers.
But Evie is undeterred. One hand to her hip, she keeps going despite her father’s pulsating forehead vein and wide eyes. “I said at least he’s not a sex offender,” Evie repeats, this time at full volume.
Oh boy. Is it just me or is this going somewhere ugly fast?
I suck my lips into my mouth before releasing them on a whistle and wrapping my arms around Julia to protect her from whatever shrapnel is about to fly our way.
“What in the hell are you talking about, Evie?” Kline is clearly confused but still very, very mad. “A sex offender?”
“Yes!” she yells back at her dad, her path officially set. “Heather Donovan found all your old messages on TapNext and has been posting on the internet about you sending unsolicited dick pictures, Dad!”
My jaw drops.
Julia gasps again.
“Oh shit,” my dad mutters under his breath, and I know with sudden clarity that whatever dick-pic bullshit Evie is currently talking about is something my father hatched in his terrible idea factory years ago.
It’s probably why he’s now pretending to be incredibly interested in the crocodile, even choosing right now to try to feed Crocky a fucking carrot that he picked up off the floor.
Crocky hisses and chomps loud enough to startle everyone in the room, and my dad just shrugs.
“I feel ya, Crocky. I’m more of a meat guy myself too. ”
And Kline, well, he’s still standing there with a face that looks combustible enough to power the whole fucking city.
“She started a website with it all to discredit my run for student body president!” Evie exclaims, now in her own version of outrage. “Dad, your dick pics are ruining my reelection chances!”
“Evie,” Georgia says softly, cautiously. “Let’s everyone calm down and take a breath.”
But Kline is done.
“I’m all out of fucking breaths, Georgia,” he shouts so loudly, even Crocky appears to cower in his box.
“You wanna know what that is, Evie? That’s good old Thatcher Kelly.
When there’s a problem in my life, it’s always fucking Thatcher Kelly.
” Clearly, the man is fed up to the point of overflow from years and years and years of torment at the hands of my father, well-meaning as he might be.
“Hey now, Special K,” my dad chimes in. “I only sent that one batch of gargoyle dick pics, and if you’ll recall, I thought they were going to my future wife. And let’s not forget they’re technically the reason you’re even with Georgie. Clearly, they made you a standout. You should be thanking me.”
“Thanking you?” Kline repeats, and I swear, if his eyes bulge any farther out of his head, they’re just going to pop right out and land by the discarded carrots Crocky knocked off the table.
“I know you’re completely delusional ninety-nine percent of the time, but let me straighten this up for you, Thatch.
Your gargoyle dicks did not help me land my wife,” Kline says through gritted teeth. “I landed her all on my own.”
My dad laughs. He just fucking laughs. “Oh my, how the memory fades, K. But that’s okay, you are really fucking old.”
All our heads swing from one end of the kitchen to the other as the two of them volley back and forth, hurling insult after insult. The tension is so thick, we nearly all get sucked out the front door when it opens for Finn, Scottie, and Kayla’s arrival.
“Sorry, we’re late,” Scottie announces good-naturedly. “Traffic was murder.”
I turn to face them and shake my head, and Julia reaches back to squeeze my hand.
“Whatever, Thatch. I’m old. And boring. And I’m not fucking crockin’,” Kline says as he rolls up a sleeve aggressively. “This party is over. And you’re taking this fucking reptile home with you, and you’re doing it right now because I want you to get out of my house.”
Shit. This isn’t good. This isn’t just tension. This is war. And a war between our families is the last fucking thing I need. I give Julia one last squeeze and then step around her to intervene, hoping I can salvage something from this shit before it goes too far.
“Mr. Brooks, sir. I’ll handle the crocodile. I won’t let it stay here, I promise.”
My dad’s chest puffs up to say something, and I cut him off. “Dad, not now.”
“Not now,” Kline repeats then. “Not ever. I know you have some sort of fantasy about our kids ending up together, but I’m telling you right now, I’ll put myself in the grave before I let us become actual fucking family.”
“Kline,” Georgia whispers, grabbing his forearm and glancing to me and Julia with worried eyes. My heart jumps to my fucking throat, but I do my best to keep my composure.
“I’m serious! I won’t be fucking related to this man, and if any of my daughters want to be, they will have to do it over my dead body!”
Kline’s words hit me square in the chest, leaving debris of forbidden love and despair and downright desperation behind. The Brookses and the Kellys have been friends for the entirety of my life, and now what? We’re switching fucking storylines and becoming the Capulets and Montagues?
Romeo is a cool fucking name and Julia is eerily close to Juliet, but I don’t want us to have to die at the end of this semester because our parents have forbidden us from being together.
I want to be with her. For a long and happy life. Once I convince her to love me back, that is. Though, it’s becoming difficult to get Julia to love me back when our parents are in an outright war.
“Like I’d ever date a Kelly,” Evie mutters, her verbal choices today feeling very confrontational if you ask me.
“Like a Kelly would ever want to date you,” Gunnar chimes in.
“Gunnar, you and I both know I’d be the best you ever had,” Evie says, blowing a kiss in Gunnar’s direction, and her mom Georgia screeches in shock.
“Evie!”
My mother, on the other hand, provides a fucking slow clap of admiration. “Damn, girl. Aunt Cass loves the confidence.”
Kline watches the whole exchange go down before storming out the back door on a huff. The door slams behind him and leaves the rest of us standing there speechless. Or what should be speechless. My father, unfortunately, is missing the gene.
“After all I’ve done for that fluffing asshole,” Thatch mutters. “This is the thanks I get? Come on, Cass, we’re leaving.”
Cassie and Georgia make apologetic eyes at each other, and Gunnar shoves away from the wall to follow my dad, flipping Evie the bird. To which she just blows him another kiss. And I linger there, unsure what to do or where to go from here that won’t make things even worse than they already are.
“Lia,” I turn to whisper, hoping she’ll have some kind of answer.
“It’s okay,” she whispers back. “I’ll cool him down. Just…make sure you get rid of that fucking crocodile and pronto.”
I jerk my chin at Finn, and he moves around Scottie to come help me lift the offending Rubbermaid off the counter and carry it outside.
But Nathan is already pulling away from the curb when we get outside, and my dad is hanging out the back window, shooting me the finger.
I sigh as Finn and I set Crocky on the ground, and I pull my phone out of my pocket to call Gary.
“So…fun party,” Finn says as Crocky hisses and thrashes his tail around in the container so hard that both Finn and I have to place our hands on the top to keep it from falling on its side.
Oh yeah. A fucking thrill and a half.
Especially considering my goal to win Julia over just got ten times harder. I’m not in the fold—I’m officially removed entirely.