Did I Mention I Love You?

by Estelle Maskame

  I trace a line from his tattoo down to the bottom of his spine and back up to his other shoulder, edging my body closer into him, craving the heat from his skin. I wrap my arm around him and close my eyes, whispering, “Because you have no idea what you’re doing or where you’re going,” only moments before I fall back asleep once more.

  And by 7:00 a.m., he’s gone.

  Chapter 26

  “I am so excited!” Rachael squeals from her closet early Saturday evening. I hear the screeching of hangers right before she twirls back into the room in her strapless bra, a collection of tops in her hand. “Okay, which one?”

  I prop myself up onto my elbows on her bed and cock my head, studying the pieces of clothing as she lifts each one up individually and hooks them over the top of her door. “The white tube top.”

  Rachael ponders over it before she agrees with me. “You’re totally right!” All at once, she scoops up the rest of the clothes and tosses them into a pile in the corner of her room and then pulls on the white tube. It works well with the cerise maxi skirt that she spent twenty minutes contemplating.

  “Are you sure this looks okay?” I frown at her and glance down at my own outfit, a mint skater skirt and a white bustier, which, admittedly, does make my chest look slightly more impressive than usual. I’ve stacked a bunch of bracelets on my wrist, but I still feel too casual.

  “It’s a beach party,” Rachael says slowly, as though I’m a toddler who’s still learning how to comprehend words. She drops down onto her floor to pull on a pair of tan sandals, too focused on her footwear to even glance up at me. “You look hot. I really like that top.”

  “You’re only saying that because it’s yours,” I remark, but I’m smiling. Maybe I do look hot for once and maybe I do like the feeling of satisfaction that stems from this. It makes me feel like I fit in.

  Rachael rolls her eyes and then gets to her feet, carefully angling herself in front of her full-length mirror to ensure she looks good. I tell her she looks incredible, but she brushes my comment away as her cheeks flush with color, and we say nothing more in relation to our outfits.

  “We’re so gonna be the last ones to get to Dean’s,” she says a few minutes later, once she’s finished applying a third coat of lip gloss. She pouts at the mirror. “You ready?”

  “Rachael,” I say as I sit up, “I’ve been ready for thirty minutes.”

  “That’s true,” she muses. With a laugh, she reaches for her tan clutch purse on her dressing table and then springs over toward the bed, extending a hand and clasping my wrist. She yanks me up to my feet and then widens her eyes. “Remember,” she says sternly, “drink as much as you can at Dean’s, because once we get to the beach, that’s it. No more booze.” Her bottom lip juts out at the idea of alcohol having a time limit attached to it.

  “Got it,” I say. She lets go of me and twirls for the door while I pull on my sneakers. I reach back for my gray sweater on the bed and slip it on over my shoulders. Because the party is on the beach, I’m preparing myself for the ocean breeze. I steal a glance at myself in the mirror as I pass, deeming myself acceptable. “Let’s go.”

  The two of us head downstairs and into the kitchen, where Dawn is busy stacking the groceries into the cupboards. She pauses when she sees us and tuts.

  Rachael’s voice becomes overwhelmingly sweet as she twirls her hair around her index finger and asks, “Mom, can you give us a ride to Dean’s?”

  “Rachael, you know I don’t want you to go to this party,” Dawn says, looking doubtful as she places a can of pineapple rings into the cupboard. She shuts the door and turns to study us, her arms folded across her chest. “You’re not even old enough.”

  “But, Mom,” Rachael gasps in horror, “everyone’s going. Do you want me to be a loser? Is that all I am to you? A loser?”

  I want to laugh at Rachael’s acting ability as Dawn arches her eyebrows at her daughter, like she’s debating with herself whether she should play cool mom or loser mom. Eventually she must opt for cool mom, because she heaves a defeated sigh. “Don’t drink too much,” she says quietly, and I think she’ll cave in to Rachael’s request for a ride. “You too, Eden. Do your parents know you’re drinking?”

  “My parents are divorced,” I deadpan.

  Rachael lets out a tremendous laugh, but Dawn just looks flustered. Thankfully she doesn’t press the question any further, because if she did, I’d have to tell her that yes, of course my dad and Ella are completely aware that I’m going to a party to consume as much alcohol as I possibly can. Actually, they think I’m at the movies.

  “Wait by the car,” Dawn tells us. She wipes her hands on her pants and presses her palm to her forehead, soothing away the headache we seem to have caused. “I’ll get the keys.”

  Rachael throws me a triumphant grin, and the two of us hurl ourselves down the hallway and out the front door before her mother can change her mind. We hover outside on the driveway by the Honda Civic for a few long minutes. Rachael takes advantage of the wait by checking her makeup in the right wing mirror while I stare at the house across the street. Tyler’s car is still parked on the road. It makes me wonder if he’s still inside, still getting ready for tonight by showering himself in that stupid Bentley cologne that Tiffani adores so much. The thought makes me grind my teeth, so I turn away from the house and stare at my reflection in the car window. Rachael’s done a good job of my makeup, so good that I wonder if it’s even me that’s peering back.

  “That divorce line is an awesome way to dodge questions,” Rachael says approvingly, her head popping over the car roof as she straightens up.

  “I think I’ll use it more often,” I say.

  We hear the thud of the front door closing as Dawn unwillingly walks over to the vehicle. She unlocks it, and we all clamber inside, me in the backseat and Rachael in the passenger. It’s not until Dawn is backing out of the driveway that I suddenly feel nervous and slightly nauseous. I shouldn’t be. I’ve already been to a number of parties over the summer, because it’s the only hobby these people seem to have, but this time I’m especially apprehensive. Perhaps it’s because this is a community event, not just some trashy house party, or perhaps it’s because I know we’re underage yet we’re going anyway, daring to blend in with the adults. But maybe it’s this: I’ll be there, Tyler will be there, and Tiffani will be there.

  The ride to Dean’s house takes only five minutes, and it occurs to me when we’re outside that I’ve never been to Dean’s place before. I wasn’t even aware that he lived in the same neighborhood as Rachael and me. Dean’s car is parked out front, and I think of the gas money again.

  Abruptly, Dawn brings the car to a complete stop by the sidewalk and angles her body around to face Rachael. Her expression is earnest, her forehead creasing with worry. “Please don’t get drunk,” she says very softly. “Remember you’re four years away from being twenty-one, so be grateful I’m letting you go out in the first place. Be responsible.”

  Rachael heaves a dramatic sigh and stares longingly at the house. “I know, Mom.”

  Dawn cranes her neck to face me, a small smile on her lips. “You be careful too, Eden.”

  “Thanks,” I say, but my tone sounds almost sarcastic, and for a split second I worry that she’ll assume I’ve got a serious attitude.

  Finally Rachael swings open the car door and steps out, so I follow suit and wave good-bye to her mom before leaping up the driveway after her. Thank God I’m not wearing heels; it’s so much easier to do everything without them.

  “My mom is so embarrassing,” Rachael apologizes, and she genuinely does look mortified. Honestly, I didn’t think Dawn was that bad. My mom would be the same. “I get the same thing every time I go out. It’s like she’s trying to make me feel guilty.”

  I laugh when she shudders, so she glares at me and then sticks out her tongue. Nudging her to the side, I jog up to the porch, my hands trembling slightly with nerves. I can hear music pumping from inside, voices laug
hing.

  I throw Rachael a wary glance as she comes bounding over to me. “Do I knock?”

  “Do you knock?” she echoes in disbelief. “Oh my God, Eden, no. Just go in already.” Without waiting for me to ask any more seemingly obvious and apparently stupid questions, she reaches past me and throws open the door, a dazzling smile on her face as she floats over the threshold.

  I follow her into the house, and immediately we’re in the living room, the kitchen through an archway ahead of us. The music drills into my ears as I click the door shut behind us, my eyes scanning the place as I try to figure out who’s all here already. Apparently, everyone. Rachael is right: we’re the last ones to arrive, and our friends all pause around the island in the kitchen to stare at us. They look like they’re in the middle of taking shots.

  “It’s about time!” Jake yells as Dean shuffles around them all to get to us.

  Meghan’s standing with two cups of alcohol, one in each hand, alternating between them. She somehow manages to grin at us in between swigs. Jake’s standing next to two guys I’ve never spoken to and I wonder why they’re here.

  Dean wanders over to us, a beer in his hand and a smile on his face. “C’mon, guys, you need to catch up!”

  “You don’t have to worry about us catching up,” Rachael says, smirking as she elbows me in the ribs. “We can drink fast.”

  I almost want to say something. If Rachael has only learned one thing about me this entire summer, it should be that I’m a terrible drinker. Alcohol tastes like sewage, and drinking it fast is almost impossible for me, quite literally the equivalent of self-torture. Half the time the taste is so bitter and so strong that I can hardly even get it down my throat without gagging. But I keep quiet and say, “Yeah, we can drink super fast.”

  Dean arches a brow at me, as though he knows I’m bullshitting. “We’re about to play shot roulette.” He points to the kitchen, where everyone seems to have dived into deep conversation with one another, and we follow him through to where a roulette wheel is set up. Each glass looks gross, each one containing a different concoction from the glass next to it, and I can’t figure out the numerous types of booze they’ve been using to fill them.

  “Eden, I don’t think you’ve met the guys yet, have you?” Dean asks as he pops the cap off a bottle of Twisted Tea and hands it to me, and I’m thankful that he hasn’t handed me anything stronger. He nods in the direction of the two strangers standing next to Jake.

  They both glance over from their conversation, their words tapering off as they both offer me an acknowledging smile. One is extremely tall, taller than Tyler, and the other is more on the short side. The tall one has a hard look to his face, like he’s pissed off at everyone and could dropkick all of us in one go, and the shorter one is wearing a cap on top of his mound of brown hair.

  “That’s Jackson,” Dean says as he points his beer to the guy with the cap, then nods to the other. “And TJ.”

  “’Sup?” TJ says, but then he turns back to Jake and continues the conversation that we interrupted.

  “They’re on the team,” Dean continues to explain. “Jackson’s a wide receiver and TJ’s a cornerback. Did you know I play football? I’m a linebacker. Middle linebacker, that is. Do you like football?”

  I think it’s the most I’ve ever heard Dean babble, nothing but a bunch of slurred sentences somehow strung together. “Dean,” I say slowly. It’s not quite the reply he’s looking for. “How long have you been drinking?”

  With a sheepish eye roll, he holds up three fingers.

  “Three hours?” I ask, and he nods. “You guys sure do take this whole beach party thing seriously.” With a small smile, I pat him on the shoulder and move around the island to fetch myself a straw, slipping it into my drink and taking a long sip. The music is still loud and the voices are even louder, despite there only being nine of us.

  That’s when I realize there are two people I haven’t spotted yet. I have yet to see Tyler and Tiffani. I study the kitchen once more to make sure I haven’t just missed them, but they’re definitely not here. For a second I think that Rachael and I aren’t the last ones to arrive after all, but then something catches my eye.

  There are two figures hovering outside the kitchen window, and, of course, it’s Tyler and Tiffani. I stare through the glass at them, both of them oblivious to my watching eyes, and soon my face contorts with disgust. Tyler’s smoking while Tiffani wraps herself around his torso as though she’s clinging on for dear life. She kind of is.

  Taking a long sip of my drink, I place the bottle on the counter and head outside. No one inside notices me slipping through the kitchen door to the backyard, but Tyler and Tiffani do. They both fall silent as I click the door shut and spin around to face them. Tiffani’s lips are pressed together, irritated that I’ve interrupted their beautiful romance. I wish Meghan were here to snort.

  “Can you go back inside?” she says, and she doesn’t even attempt to say it nicely. Her tone is sour, her attitude bitter. “And, like, give us some space?”

  “Back off,” Tyler mutters, and I think Tiffani is just as surprised as I am that he’s actually defending me. She glares at him and turns back to me.

  Ignoring her twisted face, almost as twisted as my iced tea, I roll my eyes toward the joint in Tyler’s hand. “What are you doing?”

  “Relax,” he says as he lifts it to his lips, placing it between his teeth, and murmurs, “It’s just a cigarette.”

  “That’s all you’re gonna smoke tonight, right?” I give him a hard look. “Just cigarettes?”

  In the few seconds that it takes him to take a drag, drawing the smoke into his lungs and exhaling it back into the air, he just stares at me with a sense of nonchalance in his eyes. “Go back inside if you’re just gonna interrogate me, sis.”

  Tiffani laughs, but I barely even pay attention to her, my eyes are so fixed on Tyler, everything else around him slightly blurred through the smoke. He hasn’t spoken to me in such a condescending tone in weeks. Nothing gave him the right to do so back then, and nothing gives him the right to do so now. I almost want to slap him across the face, but then I notice the way his eyes harden right before he glances away and takes another drag. It hits me then that he’s acting, because acting is all he ever does. His facade is back, the stupid badass front that gives him a sense of control over himself and a sense of power over the rest of us. Of course, I think, Tiffani is here. He can’t have her knowing the truth about what he is, which is lost. Totally and completely lost.

  “We’re about to play shot roulette,” I say stiffly, acting as though I didn’t hear what he just said. “So if you wanna join in, then you should probably come inside.”

  “I’m totally game!” Tiffani announces. She pulls away from Tyler and skips over to my side, her balance not quite steady, her eyes wide with excitement. I give her a quick sideways glance, wondering what her priorities in life are. At the moment, I’m guessing Louis Vuitton purses and tequila shots and my stepbrother.

  My eyes drift back to Tyler, who is now taking a sip of beer in between each puff of his cigarette. I tilt my head and ask, “Are you joining us?”

  “Obviously,” he says with that same haughty tone, and at that I shake my head and make my way inside to join the rest of the pre-party.

  Everyone is gathered into a huddle around the island, circling the roulette wheel like vultures. Jake has the balls in his hands, throwing them up into the air and catching them again, which I find rather impressive considering the fact that he’s a little tipsy. He stops juggling and points a finger at Tiffani and me as he motions for us to come over.

  I slide myself in between Rachael and Dean, grabbing my Twisted Tea from the counter as I pass. Dean throws his arm over my shoulders and drinks his beer with the other. He jerks around almost too roughly, to the point where my neck hurts, and then Jake kicks off the game, flicking the balls onto the wheel. TJ and Jackson pound their fists against the countertop and I swear the shot gla
sses almost fly into the air, but Jake grabs his drink and tips it down his throat.

  “What the fuck is that?” he splutters in disgust a few seconds later as his face scrunches up at the foul taste of the brown liquid.

  TJ howls with laughter and claps his huge hands together. “Mud water from the backyard!”

  Jake presses his lips into a firm line as he fires TJ a furious glare, and then he shoves him to the side and pushes his way over to the sink, where he promptly spits all over it. While Jake is on the verge of throwing up, Tyler finally comes sauntering in, hands in his pockets, face blank. He joins the game: the awful game, the game of the unknown. I’m even more worried than I was a minute ago. Who knows what other cruel jokes the guys have thrown into the wheel?

  “I can’t wait to get to the beach!” Dean yells into my ear, and it’s so loud that I quickly draw myself away from him. “I really, really can’t wait!”

  “We need to get really drunk,” Rachael whispers into my other ear. I realize then that I’ve placed myself between the drunk and the drunk-wannabe. “Even Meghan is beating us!”

  This is true. I don’t know how long everyone else has been here for, but they’re all moving over the tipsy borderline. Either they’ve been drinking for hours or they’ve been drinking extremely fast. Most likely a combination of both. As Dean said, Rachael and I need to catch up, and quickly. I glance around the circle of my friends—my friends plus TJ and Jackson—and they’re all grinning and yelling at the roulette wheel and looking like they’re having the best damn time of their lives. Except Tyler. I notice then that he’s standing behind Tiffani, hovering a step or two back from her, like he’s terrified to touch her. And he’s staring at me. Only me.

  The whole situation is only stressing me out. Tyler’s still confused about the best way to handle our circumstances, and Tiffani’s grinning, bearing a huge smile that conveys a sense of authority as she glances at everyone around her one by one. I want to forget about the two of them for a little while. I don’t want to overthink the situation I’m in with Tyler, because I’ll only end up ruining my night, and I don’t want to attempt to figure out what Tiffani is thinking, because the only thing that’s rushing into my mind is that she thinks I’m not reckless.