I wish I could rewind the summer, back to my first night in this city with the neighbors piled into the yard and the barbecue sizzling and Dad cracking lame jokes. I want to do it all over again, but this time around, I don’t want to fall for my stepbrother. This time I don’t want to be in the mess I’m in now.
“You didn’t really hook up with Jake, did you, Eden?” Tiffani really is crying now. Angry tears: the worst kind.
“No,” I whisper.
“It was you that night at the pier,” she says, and I feel like I’m dying inside. Everything is shattering as the guilt consumes me. I refused to ever be a cheater, but that’s exactly who I’ve become. “You’re a liar.”
“I know,” I say, my voice cracking. I’m nearly crying too. I don’t want to be here. I want to be in Portland with my mom and Amelia. I want to be sleeping until noon and I want to be watching reruns of my favorite TV shows. I don’t want this. “I’m a liar. I’m a bitch. I’m a terrible friend.”
Out of nowhere, Tyler steps in front of me and clears his throat. He’s been silent for a while, and it makes me wonder exactly what he’s preparing himself to say. “You know what, Tiffani?” he says, and she looks at him with wide, hurt eyes. “I don’t even want to be with you. I’ve wasted three years because you blackmailed me into staying with you. Do whatever you want. Tell everyone everything you know about me, because having you keep it a secret isn’t worth the effort it takes to put up with you.” His voice grows louder with each word. I can see Tiffani’s ego taking the hit. “We’re over. Sue me. Report me to the cops. I don’t care. I’m done.”
I certainly didn’t expect this. Just the other week Tyler was claiming it was almost impossible to break up with her. She could potentially ruin him if he did. But now… It’s like he doesn’t mind, like he just wants to get away from her. Perhaps being in a relationship with her is worse than having his life messed with.
“This is all your fault!” Tiffani screams at me. Her voice is so strained that I unconsciously take a step closer to Tyler, which probably doesn’t help in the slightest. “I don’t even care about the fact that you’re basically siblings, which I should, because it’s disgusting, but no, the only thing I care about is that you’ve ruined everything.”
I feel even worse than I did before. I stole her boyfriend. Unintentionally, but still. Shaking my head, I step out toward her again. No matter how many hurtful comments she’s thrown my way, I’m still drenched in guilt. “Tiffani, I didn’t mean for—”
Tyler holds up a hand to silence me. “It’s over, babe,” he tells her instead. With a callous shrug, he points to the gate. He’s being so harsh about it, and I feel terrible, both about my actions and for Tiffani. If she didn’t want to kill me, I’d hug her right now, like the friend I’m supposed to be to her. I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt.
Frustrated and crying even harder, she throws her hands into her hair and screams, “But you can’t break up with me!”
He laughs. He actually laughs at her. I don’t think he’s processed the fact that she knows our secret and has every reason to tell it to the world. “Because I won’t be there to make you look cool? Because you won’t get to control me anymore?”
“Because I’m pregnant, Tyler!”
The second the words leave her lips, the atmosphere thickens so much that it’s almost suffocating. Tyler’s entire body deflates and the color drains from his face. I look back to Tiffani. She’s weeping now, and it’s the kind of crying that looks like it hurts, the kind that causes you to lose your breath. Now I really do think I’m going to hurl.
Tyler seems to lose his voice, the only sound he can breathe out being a minute whisper. “What?”
She starts backing away from us, her cheeks stained with tears and her heart broken. I can’t take it in. I feel like someone’s just punched me and knocked me out, because everything seems fuzzy and dull, the way your room feels when you first wake up.
I hear the patio doors slide open, but I’m too numb to even glance over. I make out Ella’s voice asking, “What’s all the screaming about?”
Tyler doesn’t say a word. I think he’s in shock. He’s just staring at Tiffani, his lips parted, his eyes an ocean of different emotions. I finally glance over to the patio doors, and Ella and my dad are staring at us. I know what they’re thinking. They’re wondering why Tyler looks like he’s having a heart attack and why Tiffani is a weeping mess that’s heading for the gate.
When she reaches it and pulls it open, she stops and turns back, sniffling back her sobs as she meets Ella’s eyes. “You should know that he’s hooked on coke!” she yells. “And he’s started dealing too!”
“You bitch!” Tyler snarls, snapping out of his frozen state just as she disappears through the gate, which slams shut behind her.
Her words echo through my mind so loudly that it hurts. That’s what she’s been holding over him the entire summer. It’s what Tyler was talking about when we were locked in the bathroom. It’s what she must have found out at the start of the summer, when she confronted him about it and angered him and caused him to storm into the barbecue in a horrible mood. That’s why he’s staying off the police’s radar.
Because he could go to jail for this.
If there is any way for today to get worse than it already is, then it’s this. There are too many things to deal with at once as the truth spills out: the truth about Tyler and the drugs, the truth about Tiffani, and, worst of all, the truth about Tyler and me.
“Tyler,” Ella says loudly yet slowly. “Please tell me I misheard that.” Her hands are on her chest as she steps outside, Dad close by her side. “Please, please tell me you’re not.”
I’m holding my breath as I look at Tyler, waiting to see if he’ll deny it. He’s just standing there again, like he’s so overwhelmed by everything that he’s ended up paralyzed. There are probably a million and one thoughts flying around his head right now.
He lowers his head, drops his eyes to the grass, and murmurs, “I wish I wasn’t.”
Ella clasps her hands to her mouth, muffling her horrified gasp, her eyes flooding with tears. Everything is going wrong today. She turns to Dad and buries her face in his chest, and surprisingly he wraps his arms around her and doesn’t say a word. By now, I’d expect him to be arguing. He might be silent as he comforts her, but it doesn’t stop him from glaring.
When Tyler looks up, I can see the pained expression in his eyes again, the same one as last night. The guilt is almost dripping from him. “Mom,” he says, his voice choked, “don’t cry. I’m not, like, addicted or anything. I just—well, it helps.”
Through her tears and through my dad’s shirt, Ella mumbles something, but it’s so muffled that I can barely make out what she’s saying. Tyler doesn’t either.
“Mom, breathe for a sec,” he says, and cautiously he begins to walk toward her. Even though my dad has her wrapped comfortably in his arms, Tyler reaches over to place a hand on her shoulder, but she shakes it off and lifts her head.
“I said,” she whispers, “get out.”
Tyler’s eyebrows knit together. “What?”
“Get out of this house.”
We all freeze. We’re all stunned. Dad’s eyebrows shoot up even higher, like he can’t believe that Ella is really kicking her son out of the house, and Tyler is speechless, his lips moving but not speaking. I really, really want to cry now. He can’t get kicked out. It’s the last thing he needs, especially after Tiffani’s bombshell.
“Are you serious?” His voice is so soft, so weak.
Ella doesn’t say anything, just steps back from Dad and dabs at her eyes, sniffing. She looks devastated. “Tyler, please,” she pleads gently and immediately bursts into tears again. “Just leave. I can’t handle this anymore.”
Tyler and I exchange shocked glances as Dad hugs Ella to his chest again. Neither of us was expecting all of this to happen. It’s a Sunday. Sundays are supposed to be boring. I shouldn’t be watching Tyler
get kicked out of the house.
Tilting his head down to face the ground, he stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jeans and walks past our parents. He moves in such a defeated manner, with his shoulders low and his steps slow. Like it’s second nature by now, I break out of my rooted spot on the lawn and go after him. I ignore Dad’s eyes as they follow me, because I’m beyond the point of caring about what he has to say.
Tyler’s already sprinted up the staircase by the time I catch up to him, and Jamie and Chase are standing on the landing, their eyes wide and curious. It makes me wonder if they’ve heard the entire thing, from Tyler being hooked on coke to getting kicked out. They quickly move to the side as Tyler and I push past them and into his room. He slams the door shut behind us.
I stand by the side of his bed and watch as he reaches into his closet and pulls down a navy duffel bag from the shelf. Dean’s varsity jacket comes with it, falling to the floor before Tyler kicks it out of the way. For a few minutes, he rummages around his room, pulling out shirts and jeans and piling them all into the bag without saying a single word. The stress shows on his face.
“Where are you going to go?” I ask, breaking the silence. I can’t imagine not having him in the house and hearing him argue about the bacon each morning. I can’t imagine the room next to mine being empty. I can’t imagine not seeing him smile at me when we pass on the stairs.
He glances up as he slides the strap of the bag onto his shoulder, but our eyes don’t meet for long before he looks away again. “I have no idea,” he says quietly, turning his back on me and heading across to his bathroom. I follow behind him. “Dean’s. Maybe. I don’t know. My head’s a mess.”
I pause at the bathroom door. My eyes are heavy, but it doesn’t stop me from keeping them trained on Tyler. I take a deep breath. “You’ve started dealing?”
Immediately he stops moving and just stands there, the only sound him exhaling slowly. He lowers his head and stares at the tiled flooring. “Only recently.”
Disappointment floods through me. I thought it was serious before, but now I’m even more concerned, knowing just how deeply involved he is with the criminal underworld. “Why?”
He shakes his head as though he doesn’t know the answer, and he still has his back to me. I wish I could see his face, mostly his eyes, so I could see if he looks sorry for what he’s doing. “It’s easy to…to get wrapped up in it all. Tiffani’s so mad. She’ll probably try to report me, I just know it.”
“I can’t believe she’s…” I can’t even bring myself to say it, because I’m struggling to wrap my head around the whole thing. The only thing I can think of is this: it’s a damn good thing Ella doesn’t know yet, because I’m pretty sure she’d have a mental breakdown if she did.
“Me either,” he murmurs, and right as he’s opening up the cabinet door in the bathroom, he spins around and doubles over the toilet. He presses a hand against the wall to steady himself and heaves. It must be the shock of it all. I felt the same way too. “Fuck.”
“I don’t know what to say, Tyler.” I honestly don’t. How can I tell him everything is going to be okay when it seems like nothing will be? I rub his back in an attempt to comfort him, but it only makes me feel stupid. His ex-girlfriend is pregnant, and here I am, rubbing his back while he attempts to throw up over the idea of it. “Where does this leave us?”
“What?”
“Us,” I say again. “What’s going to happen with us? You and Tiffani?”
He heaves again, but nothing comes up, so he blows out some air and stands. Turning to face me, he finally locks his eyes with mine. He does look sorry. “I don’t know. I need to figure all of this out first.”
“I don’t know either,” I say, but my heart falls through my chest the second the words leave my lips. What the hell is going to happen now? Tyler and Tiffani just got tied back together. Where does that leave me? Tossed to the side while they figure out how to handle the situation they’ve just found themselves in?
Tyler edges past me and reaches into the cabinet to gather his toiletries, tossing them into the bag and beginning to zip it up. I notice there are some bottles left behind on the top shelf, and I know exactly what’s inside them.
I nod to the antidepressants. “Please take them. You won’t feel so down all the time.”
Tyler follows my gaze, and for a moment, he contemplates the decision. I know what he’s struggling with: antidepressants or alcohol and drugs. He glances back at me, sees my pleading expression, and then reaches for the three white bottles and tucks them into his bag. I can do nothing more than hope that he puts them to good use. Perhaps he’ll feel better.
We stare at each other for a moment before he leaves. He still looks extremely pale, like he’s been throwing up for weeks and has yet to recover. With his dull eyes mirroring mine, he leans forward and wraps his arms around me, pulling me into his embrace. It’s the first time he’s hugged me. Sure, I’ve kissed him a hell of a lot—we’ve even slept together—but we’ve never once just stood and held each other. We’ve never shared a moment like this, where my face is buried into his chest and his chin is resting on my head, and I can only wish that it’s the first of many, because I like the way my body seems to fit perfectly into his.
And although I’m hungover and sweaty from my run, he presses his cold lips to my forehead and whispers, “I’ll figure it out.”
He pulls away, and in that moment, he looks terrified. He has absolutely no idea what he’s doing, and no matter how hard he’s trying to put up a strong front, it’s so clear that he’s fighting the will to break down. I can’t blame him, I really can’t.
With a nod, he brushes past me and makes his way over to his door. I can only stare after him. I still feel numb, like I’m suffering from endless pins and needles, so I just watch as he steps out onto the landing without glancing back.
The last words I say before he leaves are, “I really hope you do.”
Chapter 29
Two days go by.
Two days in which I haven’t seen nor spoken to Tyler, two days in which Ella has spent every waking hour moping around the house, two days in which everything feels out of place. Sometimes I hear Ella ask Dad where he thinks Tyler’s at right at the moment. Dad always says he’s not sure. Sometimes she even says that kicking him out of the house was the worst thing to do, because now she can’t keep an eye on him. He has more reasons to get high now, she believes. I like to think she’s wrong about this. I have enough trust in Tyler to hope that he’s viewing all of this as the wake-up call he needed. A chance to maybe figure out his life. Jamie and Chase, however, aren’t so understanding. Last night, Jamie argued with his mom. Yelled at her for kicking Tyler out, called her unfair and too strict. This morning, Chase said he didn’t like the house being so boring. Said he wanted Tyler to take him out for a ride in the Audi, something they do once in a while. Chase is into cars. But today his brother isn’t here to take him for a ride around the neighborhood while over-revving his engine.
Thinking of Tyler’s car, it’s odd not seeing it parked diagonally on the sidewalk. I imagine it parked outside Dean’s house, in that same I’m-a-terrible-parker manner, and it makes me think, in that split second, about heading over there to visit. Just because Tyler has been kicked out of the house doesn’t mean I can’t see him. He’s only five minutes away. Maybe I’ll ask Rachael if we can drop by.
Shaking my head as I run across the lawn and over the street, I make my way to the red Bug that’s waiting for me on Rachael’s driveway, its engine purring. Rachael is adjusting her hair when I slide into the passenger seat.
“You’re officially the worst person ever when it comes to time management,” she throws at me, but she’s smiling. She pushes shut the mirror in her sun visor and pulls on her seat belt.
“I’m sorry,” I say as I press a hand to my chest in mock horror, “I’m so, so sorry. I shouldn’t be three minutes late. Feel free to burn me at the stake, oh holy one.”
/> Rachael laughs and whacks my arm, rolling her eyes straight to the back of her head in the same way that Amelia often does. I feel homesick in that second. “So,” she says, “what’s the gossip from Saturday?”
As she drives, I stare at her. Worry consumes every inch of my being, combined with the fear that Tiffani has probably already begun to spread our secret like wildfire. Rachael knows, I think. And Meghan, and Jake, and Dean. They all know.
She glances out the corner of her eye, a playful grin on her lips. “C’mon,” she says, “you have to tell me! Did you go home with Jake?”
Maybe she doesn’t know, or maybe she does and is just trying to catch me, so she can stop the car and yell, “LIAR!”
It’s the first time I’ve seen Rachael since Saturday. After her three-day hangover subsided, she called up the house and demanded that we go for coffee to have a catch-up, because she hasn’t seen me in “two years.” Now I’m wishing I’d faked an illness.
Eventually I answer her question with a quick “No” and turn away from her. I prop my elbow against the window and pretend to find the neighborhood interesting and beautiful, but after living here for a while, it just looks familiar and normal and boring to me now. “What about you?” I throw her a quick glance, looking at her from beneath my eyelashes.
She grows flustered under my stare and leans forward, gripping onto the steering wheel and biting back a smile. “I stayed at Trevor’s.”
“Just stayed over?” My eyebrows arch.
“Well, that and some other unmentionable events.” A laugh escapes her lips, but it quickly falters into a sigh. She shrugs. “I just want him to ask me out on a proper date already.”
I feel bad for her. Trevor is all I’ve heard her speak about the entire summer, and although he may only be her “party fling,” according to Tiffani, it’s obvious Rachael is seeking something more from their encounters.
“Guys are assholes,” I tell her, because I’m starting to believe it.
Did I Mention I Love You? Page 32