Did I Mention I Love You?

by Estelle Maskame

  “Go to my room,” he instructs as we get out of the awkwardly parked car and head toward the front door. Thankfully, he has his keys on him. “I’m gonna grab a drink and then we’re gonna discuss that asshole you’re so keen on.”

  I hesitate behind him at the door as he swings it open. “I don’t want to discuss anything with you,” I say. He has no say over my decisions, and I can’t figure out why he thinks that he does.

  He just sighs nonchalantly. “Go upstairs and go to my room. I’ll be up in two minutes.” He saunters down the hall toward the kitchen as I make my way to the stairs.

  As I’m heading up them, I call down, “Just to clarify, I’m going upstairs to my room, not yours.”

  “I’ll be in your room, then, in two minutes,” his voice gently yells back, and I find myself shaking my head in defeat as I reach my door. For someone who doesn’t care about much, he can be very persistent.

  I kick off my shoes and quickly shove my mound of dirty laundry into the bathroom and shut the door. Other than that, my room isn’t too messy. Tyler doesn’t notice anything when he wanders in with a bottle of beer clutched tightly in his hand.

  “Okay, where to start,” he muses to himself. He pauses to take a swig of the beer and then holds up his hand. “Let me simplify it for you: Jake Maxwell is the biggest player of the year.”

  “Funny,” I say, “I thought you were.”

  Tyler looks almost offended. He clears his throat, shaking his head. “No, there’s a big difference between Jake and me. Girls want me; Jake wants girls. You know, I don’t purposely go out of my way to find other girls. I just kind of bump into them at parties or whatever, maybe flirt a little, sometimes kiss them if I’m drunk and Tiffani isn’t around. That’s it.” He watches my confused expression for a moment while he takes another long drink, and then he finishes off with a sigh. “Jake, on the other hand, is a player. He leads chicks on for weeks and sometimes even months, sleeps with them, and then never talks to them again. Guy does this with like three girls at a time.” He laughs, but it’s a somewhat solemn laugh. “I can guarantee you that the second you put out, he’ll disappear. He always does. Pulls out either the ‘Sorry, I’m not feeling it anymore’ or the ‘I can’t talk to you anymore because my mom’s super strict and says I can’t date until college’ card.”

  I stare at him. He’s going to such lengths to scare me away from Jake, but so far Jake’s been the one who’s treated me much nicer. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because I am,” Tyler says.

  “That’s not a valid reason.”

  He only smiles. “Neither was my reason for leaving the restaurant.”

  * * *

  As expected, Dad and Ella are livid when they get home that evening. Not only did they have to pay for two wasted meals, they’re also extremely “upset” that we ruined our first family event, according to the pair of them. Tyler is reminded that he’s grounded, and I’m banished to my room for the night. And it’s a long night.

  I video chat with Amelia for a while, and she fills me in on all the Portland gossip. Our English lit teacher, Mr. Montez, was apparently caught shopping for rubbers in Freddy’s the other day by some seniors. Mr. Montez is in his fifties, so this information makes me feel nauseated, yet Amelia doesn’t stop laughing for at least five minutes. But other than our teacher’s personal life, there’s not much other news, so we end up discussing college. Amelia’s all set on studying biochemistry at Oregon State University, an hour south of Portland, in Corvallis. Unlike her, I can’t wait to get the hell out of Oregon. I start babbling to her about how great the University of Chicago’s psychology program is, but the chat disconnects while I’m midsentence. The Internet connection has cut out. I stare at my laptop for a few minutes while it tries to reconnect, but it only buffers endlessly and hopelessly. That’s when I hear someone knocking on my wall—the one separating my room from Tyler’s. There are three taps.

  With an eyebrow arched suspiciously, I push my laptop to the side and crawl across the floor, cautiously edging my way toward the wall. I don’t know if the knocks are accidental or on purpose, but either way I find myself tapping back. I knock once and wait. Four knocks come back.

  I don’t know what the hell Tyler is doing, but I highly doubt he’s learning Morse code, so I figure he’s just determined to irritate me even more than he already has.

  “Can you stop?” I ask, my voice loud enough for him to hear me through the walls but quiet enough for Dad not to notice.

  “I turned off the Internet,” Tyler’s muffled voice says back, and it sounds almost like there’s laughter stuck in his throat. “Your conversation was giving me a headache. ‘God, Amelia, isn’t Chicago just so freakin’ awesome? School is my favorite thing in the entire world! It’s so great! I love psychology and homework and studying!’”

  I glare at the door to my bathroom as I cross my legs and press my back to the wall. “I didn’t even say that.” To express my annoyance, I elbow the wall.

  And so he knocks back again, this time repeatedly rapping his knuckles against the plaster for a good fifteen seconds before he pauses to say, “I could do this all night. I heard no one gets any sleep at college, so this is good practice for you. I’ll turn you into an insomniac in no time.”

  “Has anyone ever told you how frustrating you are?” I fold my arms across my chest and roll my eyes in aggravation, but somehow I’m almost smiling. I can’t figure out why, to begin with, but when he talks back, I realize I’m smiling at his playfulness. It’s not often that I get to hear it.

  “Hmm, I don’t think anyone ever has,” he tells me. I wish I could see past the wall, see his face. Is he smiling like I am? Is he lying on the floor or standing up or sitting down? What do his eyes look like right now? “How am I frustrating? Enlighten me, college girl.”

  He sounds like he’s grinning, but I can’t be sure. I just tilt my face up to the ceiling and press my ear to the wall, so that I can hear his soft voice better. His friendliness is rare. “For starters,” I say, “you disconnected the Internet and now you won’t stop knocking on my wall.”

  “Technically, it’s our wall.” He knocks again. Just once.

  “Either way, it’s extremely annoying. Please stop.”

  “No can do,” he tells me. He starts to tap his knuckles against the wall again, relentlessly and loudly.

  I punch the wall then, creating a thud, and Tyler finally laughs.

  I return back to my bed after that, shut down my laptop, and get under the comforter. I can’t help but wonder what Tyler is doing on the other side of the wall. Is he lying in bed staring at the ceiling too? Is he texting his friends? Is he looking for a good movie to watch?

  It’s beyond midnight when I finally fall asleep, after thinking too much about Jake and what Tyler said about him, and reminding myself of the way Jake’s mom treated me in the morning. She acted as though I was a statistic, just another girl in her son’s room. She wasn’t surprised. And so I can’t help but wonder if what Tyler said was true.

  Chapter 14

  By morning, I’m too tired to even eat breakfast. I stare at the floor, my face a picture of exhaustion, and I slowly attempt to finish off the toast Ella made for me.

  “Are you okay?” Dad asks. He tucks in his shirt and adjusts his hideous tie.

  “Yeah,” I say. Every few hours I kept waking up because I swore I could hear more knocking. “Just tired.”

  I receive a single nod. “Any plans for this week?”

  “Nope.”

  Dad has always been a terrible conversationalist, asking dumb questions and making stupid remarks just to fill silences. Half the time, I pray he doesn’t talk to me at all. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll be home late tonight.”

  I don’t bother to reply. I just lower my head and get to my feet, heading over to the dishwasher and slipping my plate inside as he shuffles out into the hall. Week two of eight, and already I’m struggling to survive in this place. Dad
sucks. This merged family sucks. Summer sucks.

  “Morning,” a voice says as I slam the dishwasher shut.

  I spin around, and the second I lay eyes on Tyler approaching, I pull a face of disgust. “Ugh,” I spit.

  “You’re supposed to say good morning back,” he tells me and bumps me to the side with his shoulder as he passes. He’s wearing black shorts and a loose multicolored tank top, and I can’t help but stare at his arms and the way they bulge when he throws open the refrigerator.

  My eyes narrow. “You kept me up all night.”

  He glances over his shoulder, his eyebrows furrowed. “Huh?”

  “The knocking.”

  For a long moment he just stares at me, his eyes shifting through several different moods, and then he laughs. “I wasn’t knocking. Didn’t your dad tell you the house is haunted? Demons everywhere.”

  “Oh, shut up,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Couldn’t you get to sleep or something?”

  He turns around with a bottle of water in his hand, kicking the refrigerator door shut behind him. “Not exactly.” He smirks as he folds his arms across his chest. I notice his tattoo again. “I was hoping you’d wake up and knock back.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “I wasn’t in the mood for communicating with you through the wall at 4:00 a.m.” There’s an enlarged vein running down his left arm, but I try not to pay attention to it. Amelia and I have always gushed over guys with veiny arms and veiny hands and veiny necks. Veins are attractive, somehow.

  “Ouch.” Slowly he bites his lip, his eyes gently meeting my gaze. I know we’re only playing around, but he looks serious all of a sudden. “What about tonight?”

  “What?”

  “Tonight,” he says. “Will you knock back?”

  I tear my eyes away from his chest and throw my hands up in surrender, giving up on the odd game we’re playing. “No, Tyler, I don’t want to knock back and forth. It’s just weird.”

  “Damn,” he mutters. He shrugs his broad shoulders and diverts his attention to his watch instead.

  I’m just about to escape to my room when the sound of the front door swinging open causes me to pause. Perhaps Dad forgot something or Ella is heading out to buy some groceries.

  But it’s neither one of our parents. It’s just Dean. I can tell by his gentle voice as I hear him stick his head into the living room, saying, “Morning, Mrs. Munro,” before entering the kitchen.

  He, too, is dressed super casual and has his car keys in one hand and his phone in the other. Giving me a nod, he turns to Tyler. “Ready?”

  “Dude, you’re twenty minutes late,” Tyler complains, which I find surprising. He doesn’t particularly look like he’d care much about punctuality, but apparently he does.

  “My bad,” Dean says. “I had to stop for gas.”

  Tyler’s eyes fall to me disapprovingly. He snorts before turning back to Dean. “You left me to hang with this fucking loser. Let’s just bail already.” There’s a long silence. Both Dean and I narrow our eyes at him, and under the pressure he quickly backpedals. “Chill, guys. Just a little sibling rivalry, right, Eden?”

  I blink. “We’re not siblings.”

  “And thank God for that.”

  I choose to ignore his stupid remarks and head over to the patio doors, pushing them open and allowing a warm breeze into the house. Behind me, Tyler and Dean call that they’re off to the gym. It doesn’t surprise me; it’s evident that they work out a lot. I contemplate asking Tyler later which gym he uses, because I’m considering joining one for the remaining six weeks that I’m here, but I decide to stick with my morning runs instead. Quite frankly, I don’t think Tyler would appreciate his so-called sibling rival tagging along with him.

  * * *

  By the time Wednesday rolls around, everyone is back in town. Rachael is back from a weekend with her grandparents that she claims was so traumatizingly boring that she was on the verge of setting their house on fire; Tiffani is home after staying at her dad’s place, which she stated was the equivalent to living with Shrek; and Meghan feels great again after throwing up for three days in a row.

  Instead of meeting up to gossip at the beach or over coffee or even at the promenade, we end up catching up over manicures.

  “Honestly, my grandpa made me play bingo with him,” Rachael continues to moan. She’s been venting to us about her awful weekend for the past fifteen minutes. “Every single night. ‘Rachael, time for bingo!’ Here’s a thought, Gramps: hell no.”

  “My dad started pulling out the old albums from, like, 1801,” Tiffani says, cringing. She’s perched on a chair with her hands pressed onto the table, with a nail technician huddled over them.

  Rachael and I were up first to have our nails brought back to life, and now it’s Tiffani and Meghan’s turn. I can’t help but constantly glance down at my hands, admiring how glossy my nails are, and then get comfy in my reserved spot on a chair in the corner of the salon. I should do this more often. It’s really not that bad.

  We’ve traveled into Venice for these beauty treatments, because Tiffani claims this is the best nail bar around. I don’t mind traveling out of Santa Monica to come here, because Venice Beach looks amazing—at least from the four minutes that I got to see it.

  Rachael paces back and forth across the room, checking her nails every few seconds. I can’t blame her. “I’ll take historic photo albums any day over bingo.”

  “I’ll take either over throwing up,” Meghan comments from Tiffani’s side. Thankfully, she’s a little shyer than Rachael and Tiffani, so I’m not the only one who’s barely contributing to the conversation. “My insides feel like acid.”

  “At least you’re feeling better in time for your birthday,” Tiffani says. Side by side, she and Meghan have their technicians filing away at their nails. Tiffani throws a glance at Meghan. “Are you throwing a party?”

  A frown grows on Meg’s lips, and she shrugs. “You know how strict my parents are.”

  “Oh my God, Meghan!” Rachael explodes, halting mid-pace and throwing her hands up into the air ecstatically. “I have a free house on Saturday night; you can have a party at my place!”

  “Another party?” I murmur, but luckily none of them hear me. I’ve been here for just over a week and already I’ve been to two of these trashy parties where unlimited booze, drugs, and sex seem to be a general theme. I’m just not that into them.

  “Are you sure?” Meghan looks at her from over her shoulder. She looks doubtful and a little guilty, and I can understand why. Rachael’s risking her house getting trashed.

  Rachael rolls her eyes. “Obviously, Meg. It’s no problem. Let’s do it.”

  “I’ll get Tyler to spread the word,” Tiffani offers, and when she mentions his name, something flutters in my stomach. I wonder what he’s doing right now.

  “Tell him not to invite Declan’s crowd,” Rachael says, and she shoots Tiffani a firm look. “I don’t want anything illegal in my house, because if anything’s left behind, my dad will kill me.”

  “I’ll make sure he knows.”

  I vaguely remember Declan being the person who threw that horrendous stoner party over the weekend. Thank God Rachael has the common sense not to invite the potheads.

  “You guys can all come over on Saturday morning and help me get the house ready,” she says, then squeals in excitement. The nail technicians flinch. “This is gonna be so good!”

  It doesn’t sound that good. I’ll hate every second of it. I’ll hate the alcohol, I’ll hate the drunk strangers, I’ll hate the noise, I’ll hate Tyler. He gets even more irritating when he’s been drinking, and I’ll be the one who has to drag him home across the street at the end of the night.

  “Meg, you should invite the cute guy from the beach,” Tiffani teases, but it’s almost sincere. “And, Rach, I already know you’re going to invite Trevor.” Rachael’s cheeks flush with color, and she quickly turns to face the windows. As Tiffani giggles, she rests her eyes on me. “And I’ll ha
ve Tyler, so there’s just you, Eden. We’ll need to find someone for you.”

  For a second I feel guilty for not being a good friend by telling her that Tyler’s just not that into her, but my lips have a mind of their own and soon I’m blurting, “I’ll just hang out with Jake.”

  There’s a simultaneous “What?” from all three of them.

  Tiffani even draws her hands away from the table so that she can spin around to stare at me, and I can feel all of their eyes on me at once. “Jake? Our Jake?”

  “Oh my God, what have we missed?” Rachael demands, her eyes wide and eager, her bottom lip drawn into her mouth. “You don’t just say you’re going to hang out with someone at a party, okay? There’s always a reason behind it. Are you crushing on him?”

  “We hung out on Saturday night,” I admit, and my cheeks are now tinted rose as my eyes drop to the floor. I wish I hadn’t said anything. “And I, um, stayed at his place.”

  “Jesus,” Meghan breathes. She blinks at me before exchanging glances with both Tiffani and Rachael. “It only took him a week to get the new girl?”

  “Meg,” Rach hisses, but quickly locks her eyes on me again. “How far did the two of you get?”

  “What?”

  “You know…” She glances unsurely over to Tiffani, and Tiff decides to finish for her by obnoxiously asking, “Did you suck his dick?”

  I splutter, almost choke, and fail to compose myself. I manage a quick, “No,” and then shake my head. “We watched The Lion King.”

  Rachael tilts her head. “Is that a code word or…?”

  “No. We literally watched The Lion King.”

  “Oh,” she says, then bursts into laughter.

  “Rachael, just stop talking,” Tiffani says. She turns back around and places her hands down on the table again and allows the nail technician—who is understandably a little lost—to continue.

  “But didn’t anyone tell her about the Maxwell Base?” Meghan says, and by this point I just wish I could run out of the salon and go straight back to Santa Monica. I feel mortified and way out of my comfort zone.