She rubs my back. “Happy birthday, sweetie. I can’t believe this is the first one I’ll ever spend apart from you.”
My dad nods at the cooler. “Miles, grab the other side and help me carry this out.” My dad could carry this cooler one-handed if he had to, so I have a feeling I’m in for a talk.
I try to stop at my car, but he motions me toward his Land Rover.
“Really? You’re gonna let me take that?” I ask.
He lifts the gate, and we set the cooler in the back. “Got to fit all the girls somewhere.”
I blink, not sure what to say.
“Come on, son. You’ve got the lake house for your eighteenth birthday, and you’re planning on hanging with just Dev and Nat? How dumb do I look?”
I look down, knowing I’m busted.
“It’s fine, just don’t tell your mother.” He holds up a hand. “Trust me, she knows, she’s just trying not to acknowledge it.” He peers down at me. “Do you have condoms?”
My blood pressure just spiked, and I don’t even know what that feels like. “I’m not with any of these girls, Dad.”
“What about the one who was over here the other night?”
“We’re not together. We’re just songwriting partners.”
He huffs. “Hmm. What do you know. I thought that was a cover.”
I shake my head.
“Still, son, stuff happens. Stop at a convenience store and buy a box of condoms. Put it on my credit card.” He nods at my back pocket. “If you or any of your friends is going to have sex, I’d rather it be somewhere safe than at an abandoned construction site or in a parked car somewhere. I don’t need to be picking you up from the police station for indecent behavior or something ridiculous like that.”
I scratch my eyebrow, so ready for this talk to be over.
“Don’t tell your mother I said that. She’s still holding out for your abstinence.” He laughs. He has no idea that my mom is closer to the truth than he is.
“You’re turning eighteen now, son. That means you’re legal, which means you’ve got to think long and hard about any stupid decisions you’re considering.” He holds up one finger. “If you’re going to drink, don’t drive anywhere.” He holds up two fingers. “If you’re going to have sex, you wear a condom. Double up, in fact.” He holds up two fingers and his thumb. “Don’t do any drugs, and that includes pot. It’s not legal here. One day you and your bonehead friends will take a trip to Colorado or somewhere and toke up for a week. Hold out for that. Do you hear me? Who’s bringing the beer?”
I try to look confused.
“Oh, please. Don’t insult me.” He claps my shoulder and points at me. “Listen, son, I’ve always been able to count on you for being the responsible one. I don’t care if you drink a few beers as long as nobody gets in the car and drives, and nobody does anything stupid like jump off the balcony into the freezing cold lake.” He lowers his chin. “I want the girls sleeping separate from the boys, and if I find out that any one of those girls had too much to drink and one of the boys took advantage of her, I swear to god I will beat the hell—”
“Dad, it’s nothing like all this. It’s Dev and Nicolette who have been together forever, and then none of the rest of us even like each other in that way. Greta’s even gay.”
It’s a little white lie. I definitely like Jenna in that way, but he doesn’t need to know that.
He looks confused. “Greta? Is she the one with the black hair?”
“Yeah. She just came out.”
He shrugs. “Well, listen, things happen. I understand that. You think I wasn’t once your age?”
If he says that one more time…
“Just be smart, kid. Okay?”
“Of course.”
He surveys me. “You’re my smart one. Whit’s book smart, but you somehow ended up with smarts all around. You must have gotten that from your mother.” He narrows his gaze. “That girl who was over here, is she going?”
My heartbeat quickens. “Yeah.”
“Is she helping to stoke the fire about this Belmont nonsense? Is she going there, too?”
I scrunch up my face in frustration. “No, Dad. She’s leaving for L.A. when she graduates.”
“L.A.? You’re not thinking about that, are you?”
This is so insulting. “No. I’m going to Belmont.”
He nods, waving me off. “So did you get the Emory application completed?”
I swear, he doesn’t hear a word I say. I let out an exhausted breath. “Yeah, I did.”
He peers down at me. “I want to see the confirmation email.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. Send it to me before you leave.”
“So you don’t believe me?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Nope.”
I pull my phone out of my pocket and dig the stupid receipt out of my trash. I forward it to him and then pocket my phone. I nod at his pocket. “There it is. Can I go now?”
He peers at me and then checks his phone. He looks back at me, sorry, but not sorry. “You can go.”
Thank you, your royal highness.
He points at me. “I’m gonna be checking my bank account. There better be a convenience store charge on it. The last thing we need is for you to get a girl pregnant.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Okay, Dad.”
This will be fun…me walking in from the store with a box of condoms. Wonder what Jenna will think of that.
“I’m not sitting next to Nat,” Jasmine says.
“I get carsick,” Greta says. “I have to sit in the front.”
Nicolette and Dev don’t even hear the rest of us. They’re too busy in their own personal world back in the third row.
“I’ll sit between the two of you,” Jenna says.
I’m a little disappointed. I wanted her in the front with me. But at least I can see her now every time I look in the rearview mirror.
Nat still annoys Jasmine across Jenna’s lap, and Greta can’t get her head out of her phone.
“Who have you been talking to?” I ask her.
Greta grins. “Nobody.”
I catch Jenna in the rearview, smiling at me.
I put off the condom pickup as long as I can, but we’re at the last stop before we head deep into the woods, and I know this is my final chance. The last thing I need is my dad calling me while we’re here, or even worse, showing up.
I shift into park. “I’ll be right back. Does anyone need anything?” Nobody answers, so I head inside. I find the condom section, and then check that they’re still in the car. I grab the first box I see along with a bottle of water for a decoy and then let the guy ring me up.
He’s not that much older than me. He looks out at the packed car. “Which one’s your girl?”
“None of them,” I say.
“Too bad. They all look hot. You want a bag?”
“Yes, a few of them.”
He smiles. “Ah, of course.” He pulls out a brown paper bag. “How’s this?”
“Perfect.” I grab it from him and head out.
“Good luck, dude!” he shouts as I make it through the door.
I shove the brown bag under the seat and back out of the parking lot, all clear. I breathe a sigh of relief.
The girls ooh and ahh as I pull up to our house. I don’t like to flaunt my family’s money, and it embarrasses me a little when the guys tease me about it.
Nat and Jenna unpack the food from the cooler while Nicolette and Dev have already disappeared to one of the bedrooms.
Greta can’t get off her phone long enough to help with anything, and Jasmine is putting clean sheets on the two beds Dev and Nicolette aren’t using.
“Nat!” Jasmine shouts. “Come help me with this window. It’s stuck. We need some air in this room.”
Nat waggles his eyebrows. “Likely story.”
Jenna puts food in the refrigerator from the cooler. “This is amazing,” she says. “Who put all this toge
ther?”
“My mom,” I say.
She shakes her head. “I can’t even imagine.” She holds up a plastic bag of rolls. “She made these from scratch for us?”
“Well, technically, for Nat, Dev, and me, but yeah.”
She holds up another bag. “Homemade blueberry muffins. I’m dying.”
I smile. “I guess she likes to cook.”
She peers at all the stuff on the countertop. Homemade cookies, salads, a vegetable platter, a bowl of fruit. She picks up a note my mom included and holds it out in front of her.
“Dev, Nat, Miles, and anyone else who stowed away (don’t tell me, I don’t want to know), welcome to our home away from home. Mr. Cleveland and I hope you enjoy your stay. All we ask is that you be safe. Have fun! Oh, and don’t forget to wish Miles a happy birthday tomorrow.”
Her eyes threaten to water. She meets my gaze. “She signed it at the bottom with hearts on either side of her name. This is so sweet.” Her voice cracks on her words, and I want to wrap my arms around her, but I remember what she said to me the night we were in my room. You need to be stronger than that, Miles Cleveland.
“Yeah, my mom’s really cool,” I say.
She keeps putting food into the refrigerator. “Your dad seemed cool, too.”
I shrug. “It’s a little harder with him.”
She smiles. “That’s funny. I’m the opposite. I guess if we paired my dad and your mom we’d have love overload.”
My heart warms. “Guess so.”
We work together putting everything up and getting stuff organized on the countertops. She finds a couple of platters and puts some of the cookies and brownies on them and sets them out on the bar. “Should we go ahead and put this lasagna in the oven?” she asks.
“Okay,” I say.
She opens the oven door and slides it in and then swipes her hands together. “This is kind of fun.”
I huff a laugh as she goes over and plops down on the couch next to Greta. Man, am I glad I put this weekend together.
When the lasagna is finished, Jenna makes us all sit at the dining room table like a family to eat. Even Dev and Nicolette make it out of their bedroom long enough to join us. After we eat, we sit around in the living room playing a sort of trivia/betting game that Nicolette brought.
It’s ten o’clock before I realize we never even got out the beer. That’s usually Nat’s department, and he’s been too busy up in Jasmine’s business. She’s been especially prickly at him today, which just makes him worse. Sometimes I can’t tell if she thinks of him as an annoying little brother or if she might actually like him.
Nicolette stands. “That’s it for Dev and me.”
Jasmine looks at her phone. “For real? It’s ten o’clock?”
Dev takes her hand. “You’re lucky we came out here at all.”
“Gross,” Jasmine says and flips through her phone.
Nat leans in. “There are two more bedrooms.”
“Get your skanky ass out of my face.”
Dev pulls me aside. “Dude, did you bring condoms?”
I lower my chin. “You didn’t?”
“My dad wanted me to leave my car, so Nicolette picked me up. I didn’t want her to think I was assuming anything.”
I shake my head. “Dude.”
“Well?” he asks, looking desperately hopeful.
I roll my eyes. “Hang on.”
I grab the bag out of my car and try to be as discreet as possible as I bring it back in. I knock on the door to their bedroom, and he meets me there. “I owe you big, dude.”
“Yeah, you do.”
Greta stands up and yawns. “I’m going to bed, too.”
“You’re going to have phone sex is what you’re doing,” Nat says.
Jasmine hits him. “You’re so gross. She’s getting to know her. Why does everything have to be about sex with you?”
He tosses up his hands. “How can it not be?”
Jasmine stands up. “Is that the hot tub?”
I peer outside. “Yeah, it should be good to go. I checked it earlier.”
Jasmine shimmies, looking at Jenna. “Come on, girl. Let’s get our suits on.”
Jenna points at the fireplace. “Does that thing work?”
I go over and flip the switch, and the little fake flame ignites.
Jenna sits back on the couch, propping her feet up on the coffee table. “I think I’m all good right here.”
Nat jumps up. “I’ll get in the hot tub with you.”
Jasmine peers into the room where Greta went. “I guess I do need to give her some privacy for a little while.” She looks Nat up and down. “Okay, but the second you touch me, I’m drowning you.”
“Deal!”
They disappear to change, and I sit on the couch with Jenna, giving her a little distance. While I’m disappointed that I don’t get to see her in a bathing suit this evening, I’m glad she wants to stay inside. I just don’t know if it’s to be with me, or just because she likes the fire.
She stares at it. “So you and your family…you like, come here, all together?”
I chuckle. “Yeah.”
She looks around the living room and out the glass windows at the lake. “This is so cool.”
I shrug. “I guess.”
She meets my gaze. “No, I’m serious. This is amazing.”
I look around again trying to see this place from her eyes.
“Your mom like…cooks dinner?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
She smiles, looking at the kitchen as if she’s imagining it. “Tell me about her.”
I let my knees drift apart as I get comfortable on the couch. “She’s really supportive of my music. She and I go to music shops a lot on the weekends. We’ll hear of a little store in Mount Juliet or Franklin, and we’ll make a day of it—drive out there, hang at the shop for an hour or so just looking around or tinkering with the instruments. Then we’ll go eat or whatever.”
“That’s really cool,” she says.
“She’s the only reason I get to go to our school. If it were up to my dad, I’d be at MBA.”
She grins. “Mama’s Boy Academy?”
I huff a laugh. “I guess I kind of am a mama’s boy.”
“What about your brother? Who is he closer to?”
“My dad, for sure. They’re both really career-focused—even my brother, and he’s only in his junior year of college. He’s worked for my dad’s firm every summer since he was sixteen.”
“He’s at Emory?”
I pull at a loose thread on the sofa. “Yeah.”
“Are you close with him?”
I shake my head. “We never had much in common. Never went to the same school, not since elementary.” I huff a laugh. “Nat’s more like my brother than he is. We were practically raised together.”
She furrows her brow.
“My mom and his mom were best friends in college. His mom got pregnant in law school, and my mom kept Nat while she worked and went to class, all the way till we started kindergarten.”
“So he’s basically your twin brother.”
I chuckle. “Yeah. My mom said people used to ask her if we were twins all the time.”
She nods, narrowing her gaze at me. “And you and he are going to Belmont together.”
“Yeah.” I shift in my seat, feeling a little scrutinized.
She re-crosses her feet on the coffee table. “So your brother’s a daddy’s boy and you’re a mama’s boy.”
I shrug. What else can I do?
She chuckles. “I can’t say anything. I’m a daddy’s girl.”
“Yeah, well, your way sounds cute. My way makes me seem like I’m a wuss.”
She nudges me with her foot. “You are a wuss. I think we established that this week in Music class.”
I turn to face her. “I won that argument.”
She pulls her foot up onto the couch. “You totally did not. I annihilated you.”
“You wish yo
u did.”
“Oh please. Without lyrics it’s just a bunch of noise. Who even likes instrumental music?”
I turn my body toward her now. “How can you say that, when your favorite music has no lyrical substance?”
She pokes me with her foot. “You know you only say that because you’re too big of a music snob to actually take a moment to hear the poetry in pop.”
I laugh. “You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, I’m serious. When’s the last time you even heard a pop song?”
I think about it and realize it was when she sang at tryouts, so I shut up.
She pokes me again with her toe. She needs to stop doing that. It makes me want to touch her back.
“That’s what I thought,” she says.
Jasmine comes walking out of the bathroom in a string bikini. “You sure you won’t come?” she asks Jenna.
“I will tomorrow, I promise. I’m liking being all cozy in here by this fire.”
She’s looking at the fire with a little smile, and my heart does that weird fuzzy thing as she cuts her eyes in my direction.
“Mmm-hmm,” Jasmine mutters with a little grin and then heads to the deck. Nat comes running after her with his tongue wagging.
Jenna peers over at me with a knowing smile.
“What?” I ask.
She rolls her eyes and puts her feet back on the table. “Oh, please.”
I chuckle. “What’d I do?”
She looks out at the deck and then back at me. She reaches over and pushes up on my chin. “Your tongue’s still hanging out. You might want to put that thing up.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “That’s insulting. Jasmine’s my friend. I don’t see her that way.”
“Yeah, right. And I sat through all the seasons of the Vampire Diaries for the acting.”
I motion outside. “You saw Nat with his shirt off.”
She reaches over and pushes me with both hands. “Oh my gosh, you’re mental.”
I laugh. “Nat’s hot.”
She grabs a pillow and starts beating me with it. I take it from her and turn the tables.
She throws up her hands. “Don’t hit me. I’m fragile,” she says through laughter.
“Now who’s full of it?” I say, ignoring her request.
She grabs the pillow back from me and sticks it in her lap. “I’ve got a question.”
Falling for Forever Page 21
