Chapter 10
RIGGS
Then
“Where are you going?”
I look up from the knotted mess that is the drawstring of my swim trunks to find my sister standing in my open bedroom doorway. It wasn’t open but it is now.
“Do you ever knock?” I ask her, instantly annoyed because the answer, no matter what she says, is no. She never knocks.
“When I want to.” Cam flips her pale blonde hair over her shoulder before crossing her arms over her chest. “Where are you going?” she asks again.
Looking back down at the knot in my trunks, I shake my head.
“What do you mean where am I going? It’s Gem’s birthday,” I say it like I’m confused because I am.
Gem and Beck’s birthdays are like Christmas around here.
For Gem, her mom rents out the pool at the club for the day—a huge resort style pool with waterslides, a lazy river for tubing, and a waterfall with one of those grottos behind it like you see in the movies.
She does it every year. We swim and lay around on cushy loungers all day while waiters in white polo shirts bring us whatever we want off the menu.
Beck’s birthday is in October so he doesn’t get a pool party, but Mrs. Pierce rents out the theater room at the club and we have a movie marathon—usually horror flicks since it’s so close to Halloween—and enough pizza to feed an army.
Collectively, we Wheeler kids look forward to Gem and Beck’s birthdays more than we do our own.
“You were invited?”
“What?” The question pulls my head up. “What are you talking about? We go every year.” Refocusing my attention on the knot in my drawstring, I shake my head.
I’ll have to cut it and risk them falling down if I can’t get it out because this is the only pair I have and the club has a strict dress code.
“You better get ready—Beck’s gonna be here to get us at noon and you know he’s not going to wait.
Remember last year? Mom had to drive you and?—”
I look up again to find Cam watching me, her face gone slack. Big blue eyes glinting with what suspiciously look like tears. That’s when I remember what Gemma told me the night I walked her home.
“Gem didn’t invite you.” Which is dumb because I wasn’t invited either. There’s never been a formal invitation to Gemma’s birthday party. It’s always just been assumed that we’d be there. The both of us.
“Sera and I have plans. We’re going to see a movie.” Arms still crossed over her chest, Cam looks away from me with a shrug. “It’s too hot to swim.”
“You guys still fighting?” I ask, momentarily giving up on the knot. “Gem told me?—”
“Yes, please tell me what Gem told you,” Cam snipes at me from the doorway. “Because I’m sure whatever it was, it was the absolute, gospel truth.”
“Alright—she said Sera called her a creeker and that you tripped Emily during the mile run in PE,” I tell her, recounting what Gemma told me.
“Yeah…” Arms tightening defensively enough to tell me that Gem told me the truth, Cam shakes her head. “Well, did she tell you that she threw a fucking rock at Sera’s head or that Emily kissed Cade Montgomery and then bragged about it, even though she knows I’ve been waiting for him to ask me out?”
“Yeah. She told me that too.” Nodding my head, I look at her while trying not to remember everything else that conversation brought on.
Like Gemma telling me that she wanted me to kiss her and the fact that since that night, kissing her is pretty much all I can think about.
Looking back down at my trunks, I start to fumble with the knot again. “I just figured you guys were smart enough to realize that Cade Montgomery and who he decides to kiss isn’t worth ditching ten years of friendship over, and would’ve made up by now.”
“Well, I guess we’re not,” she snipes back at me. “I guess we’re just a bunch of dumb, stupid girls who let boys ruin everything.”
I let out a scoff. “You said it, not me.” Even though I can feel her glaring at me from the doorway, I don’t look up. “Can you go ask Mom for her scissors? I don’t think?—”
“Gawd, you’re hopeless.” Cam heaves out a sigh, moments before my knotted-up trunks are yanked out of my hands.
Plopping herself onto the edge of the bed beside me, she shakes her head at the mess in her lap.
“What did you even do to them?” she asks while her fingers start to pluck and pull at the knot.
“It’s like you did it on purpose. You know, Mom’s not going to buy you a new pair of trunks just because?—”
“Do you want me to stay home?” I ask her quietly because Cam is helping me without me having to ask and now I feel bad. “I can call Beck. Tell him?—”
“You can’t do that, Riggs.” Wide, sky-blue eyes flying to my face, I watch them fill with tears. “You look forward to Gemma’s pool party every year.”
“So do you.” I give her a flat smile. “I won’t go if you don’t want me to.”
“No.” Aiming her gaze at the pair of trunks in her lap, she shakes her head while untwisting and untying the strings dangling from the waistband. “I want you to go. I want you to have a good time.”
“Maybe if you apologized…” When I say it, her shoulders stiffen enough to tell me she’s thought about it.
That she wants to, but it’s something her pride won’t allow.
“Look, I don’t know what the answer is, Cam.
All I know is that you and Sera, Gem and Emily have been friends since kindergarten and Cade Montgomery isn’t worth it. ”
Cameron makes a soft noise in the back of her throat. One that tells me I’m wrong. Cade may have been the catalyst but what’s happening between her and Emily goes far beyond him.
“Cam…” I say as gently as I can because we might fight most of the time but it’s because we’re close.
Less than eighteen months apart, we grew up in each other’s space.
If I left her here without at least trying to help her fix what’s wrong, I’d drive myself crazy thinking about her at home by herself, excluded over some stupid fight over a guy that doesn’t even matter. “Talk to me.”
“Emily’s closet is the size of both of our bedrooms, put together.
She has her own bathroom that’s twice as big as that.
The tub has Jacuzzi jets,” Cam tells me quietly.
“She has a balcony too—one that looks over a garden and a pool that Tabitha Sorensen’s dad takes care of every week.
Tabitha’s mom is the one who scrubs Emily’s tub.
I see them there sometimes when I sleep over.
I know it’s shitty, but if Emily or her grandparents are around I ignore them.
” The Sorensens live three houses down from us.
They’re nice people. “They get everything—girls like Emily and Gemma. They get the cool cars and the expensive clothes and the Cade Montgomerys… things are easy for them.” Knot worked loose, Cam’s fingers go still and she looks up.
“It’s not like that for girls like me. Girls like Tabitha and Sera. ”
“Gem isn’t like that.” Even though I’ve never been in Gemma’s bedroom, I’ve been to Beck’s house in Clearwater so I know it’s every bit as lavish as what Cameron is describing. “She’s different. She’s not a creeker.”
“Yes, she is,” Cameron says, just as insistent. “She is a creeker. She pretends she isn’t—maybe she doesn’t even want to be—but she is.”
Brow furrowed, I shake my head. “Cam?—”
“I know I shouldn’t have tripped Emily,” she concedes in a rush.
“I know it was wrong and I want to apologize so everything can go back to the way it was, but every time I see her, I think about her stupid closet and just get so mad that I can’t.
” Offering me my unknotted trunks with a flat smile, Cam stands up.
“I want you to go and have a good time,” she tells me. “Don’t worry about me—I’ll be fine.”
Before I can tell her no, that I’ll call Beck and tell him to go without me, I hear his truck pull into the driveway, a second before he lays on the horn, two quick bursts to let me know he’s here and that he’s already tired of waiting.