by LJ Shen
“It’s true.” Melody sighed, staring at me in an I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-her expression. I shrugged. Not my problem.
Emilia walked out of the kitchen for the first time since we’d gotten there, holding a bowl of fruit salad. She put it on the table and rushed to us, wiping her purple hair from her face.
“Hey, what’s going on?”
Melody filled her in. Daria apologized, and Luna finally consented to let go of Edie and go with Emilia to wash her face.
Mel, Edie, and I stood in a small circle afterwards. The sun made everything more angry and heated, and between my anger and Melody’s obvious embarrassment, I knew we could explode pretty quickly.
“I think I’m going to go have that lemonade now,” Edie trailed off, turning around and walking into the house. Mel stared at me skeptically, and for the millionth time that year, I thanked God I was the fucking Mute and she didn’t expect an actual answer.
I walked into the house looking for Luna and Emilia. I trusted Vicious’ wife. She and Rosie had this thing about them. They made you feel at home, even when you clearly weren’t.
I passed by the two empty bathrooms on the first floor, about to walk up the stairs to the bedrooms when I stopped by the stairway. Edie was in Vaughn’s playroom, which was full of toys. Trucks and soldiers and whatnot. She was standing by a slide coming out of a giant castle, fingering something small in her hand. I squinted, trying to see what it was. It was a toy soldier.
She looked…sad. For the first time, I actually saw it on her. The wariness. The despair. She looked wrecked, and I’d always been too busy to notice, because this wrecked soul happened to have an amazing ass and a gorgeous pair of tits and a father I loathed. Fuck.
There was no excuse for what I was doing. For me walking into that room and closing the door behind us. For me striding over to her with chaos dancing in my chest, watching her as she lifted her eyes from the toy, reading everything that was inside of mine.
I could say it was because she’d protected my daughter, but that wouldn’t be true.
I could say it was because I saw her layers as she held that toy soldier in her small hand, but that would be bullshit, too.
I did it because I had to. Because fuck the consequences and Jordan Van Der Zee and everything standing between us. For the first time in five years, I put my lips on another person’s and kissed her. Hard.
My mouth coming down on hers was like riding a bike. It came to me instinctively, but at the same time, felt so fucking different I almost choked on that kiss. My hand cupped her cheek and drew her close, and my tongue darted out to open her mouth. She moaned into our kiss and clung to my face as if she’d wanted to do this since the day we’d met. I held both her cheeks and deepened our kiss, letting the strange, strange notion of my tongue dancing with another’s sink in. It was so fucking wet and intimate. I wanted to eat her.
“Tide,” I breathed, sinking my teeth into her lower lip and closing them until I heard the familiar whimper of joy. “You’re such a fucking tide.”
“Seahorse,” she retorted.
“I wish.”
“You are.”
“Maybe,” I said, sounding unsure for the first time in a long time.
“I’m not your tide, Trent.” Sorrow laced her words, and I knew she was right. She wanted my neck. Bad.
“No. You’re my Delilah, Edie, and I’m your Samson. You want to ruin me, destroy me, strip me of my power, and betray me. I should stay away from you, but I want you too fucking much. And when it’s all over, when all that’s left of us is sweaty flesh and shattered minds and torn hearts, you will remember me as the man who made you cry, and I’ll remember you as the girl I had to break to stay afloat.”
We stared at each other, almost smiling. What a fucking way to break my rules, with a girl who was both at my mercy and tasted of betrayal. Brushing my thumbs over her cheeks, I crashed my lips into hers, kissing her with abandon and passion and regret. I kissed her with everything I had that was worth taking. We nibbled and bit and made this kiss our fucking bitch, knowing there probably wouldn’t be another one. Doing what I’d been wanting to do since I’d seen her across Dean’s lawn standing next to her father, sneering at the world like she was ready to declare war on it.
I was opening up to someone who wasn’t my parents or my three friends, feeling the walls of something disastrous closing down on me.
Our lips were swollen and our eyes were hooded when we were caught, in the middle of the colorful playroom, propped against a plastic castle with a slide. The door swung open and Vicious leaned against the doorframe, hands in his pockets, examining us with boredom. Knight and Vaughn were standing next to him, each of them hugging one of his thighs, watching us without really understanding what they were looking at. “You said you were careful. No chance at getting caught.” My friend threw my words back at me mockingly.
My urge to deny everything was crushed by the impulse to claim her. I dropped my hands from her face, but only so I could tilt my body toward his.
“You need to leave.”
“You need to come up with a good plan before her father kills you,” Vicious retorted calmly.
“What I need”—I looked down, trying not to curse in front of the kids—“is your cooperation. Before I snap.”
That made Vicious take a step back. Before he closed the door, I heard him say, “I think it’s time to make some popcorn, kids. These two are going to give us the best show this town has to offer.”
I LIKED ROSIE THE BEST.
They were all nice, but Rosie was the one who truly got me. She was wearing a Queens of the Stone Age shirt and ripped jeans, cradling her son, Lev, in her arms and nodding at me.
“Yup. That sounds like our Daria.”
“I don’t mean to be rude, but hell, the kid is cruel. I’m not sure where to find an identical seahorse for Luna.” I plucked a grape from a fruit bowl in the middle of the table.
Rosie took a deep breath, her lungs straining for it, like her airway was blocked. After Vicious had caught Trent and me making out in his son’s playroom, he’d asked us to try not to hump each other on his property. Trent didn’t go down without a fight, telling Vicious everything there was to say with a look that could kill. We’d walked out of the room together. For a second, it looked like our hands were going to meet.
But they didn’t.
The buzz from that kiss still gripped every part of my body. I felt it on my swollen, stung lips. They throbbed, hummed, became alive. Almost like an entity separate from my body.
Rosie leaned across the table toward me when she spotted Emilia and Melody walking in our direction with bottles of wine. I knew I wouldn’t be offered a glass and that alone made me remember just how inferior I was to those people, solely because of my age. “What’s going on with you and Trent? He always struck me as mysterious and quiet, but also kind of dangerous.” Rosie wiggled her brows.
“Does Emilia know him well?” I asked, partly to evade the question, but mostly because I was eager to find out more about him. Rosie shook her head, shooting me a look that told me that I was not off the hook.
“I doubt anyone knows him well, his best friends included.”
“Knows who?” Emilia sat next to me, squeezing my shoulder and smiling at me. “Thank you for joining us today, Edie. Luna really loves you, and I enjoy seeing her shine.”
God, she was perfect, even in her vintage baby blue Alice in Wonderland dress and yellow cardigan. No wonder Vicious was so infatuated with her.
“We were talking about Trent. Surprising, right?” Rosie kissed her son’s blond head, and he stirred awake, immediately reaching for her breasts.
“Like father, like son.” Rosie rolled her eyes, popping one boob out by lifting most of her shirt. I looked the other way, knowing it was perfectly normal—a mother feeding her infant like nature intended—but I still felt like a stupid, immature teenager.
“What about Trent?” Mel chimed in, sitting
at the table with us. Luna was on the other side of the garden with him, and suddenly, this felt a lot like suburbia’s answer to Sex and the City. Mel cracked open a bottle of wine and poured two glasses, one for her, and one for Millie.
“Bitch, you’re breastfeeding.” Rosie frowned, and when Millie arched an eyebrow, she added, “What? Lev doesn’t understand a word yet. I’ll get rid of my bad mouth by the time he hits one.”
“As if.” Mel rolled her eyes, taking a generous sip of wine. She, too, had little Bailey, who was even younger than Lev. “I’m pumping and throwing it away. Bailey is mostly on formula. The nurse said she doesn’t know how to latch well, which is weird, considering her daddy has no problem in that department.”
“Thanks, Gross Central.” Rosie smirked.
“So what about Trent?” Mel repeated. “I tried to fix him up with a friend of mine. He is hopeless. He screwed the date up on purpose.”
Flutters. Butterflies. Smile fighting to sneak in. I knew it.
“He didn’t want to go on that date,” Emilia said in his defense. “I think it’s because of Val. He’s never been in a relationship before, and I think what happened with her made him give up on the idea. Which is sad.”
Mel arched an eyebrow, topping off her glass of wine and shrugging. “She could always come back.”
“Fat chance.” Rosie snorted.
“I hope she does. Luna needs a mother,” Emilia muttered.
“If she does, I bet he will never let her go. He should have given her a fair chance when she told him she was pregnant. Jaime said he still beats himself up about it sometimes. While he’s always been a good dad, Trent never gave Val a chance to be more than Luna’s mother. I’m not saying I understand her, or sympathize with what she did, but if she does come back, I think he might actually try to make it work with her. Does that make sense?” Melody explained in her no-nonsense, approachable tone.
“No,” Rosie deadpanned, rearranging Lev’s head on her arms as he sucked on her tit hungrily.
“I second that, my sister.” Emilia took a small sip of wine. “Trent is rightfully angry.”
“And hurt,” Rosie added.
“More reason to wait for the woman who rocked his world to come back and collect the pieces with her.” Mel poured herself a third glass of wine.
I tried to tell myself that she was drunk, and wrong, and absolutely out of line. But deep down, she touched on my biggest fears. She was his teacher in high school. She knew him. Probably more than anyone at that table, myself included.
I spent the rest of my time wishing I was far away, with Theo, where boys were never an issue. My lips were still burning with mine and Trent’s kiss so I picked an ice cube from my virgin lemonade and pressed it against them, trying to think clearly.
Trent Rexroth wasn’t a crush. He was the very thing that’d end up crushing me if I wasn’t careful.
People often have flairs for dramatics. That’s why I never believe it when someone tells me they knew something bad was about to happen even before it did. I stood corrected the minute I opened the door to my house on Saturday night, because the bad feeling gripped me by the bones. Calamity, as it turned out, had a scent. It smelled of faint, expensive alcohol, a stale cigarette, and Chanel No. 5.
I watched the floor like I was walking death row. Every step I took toward the kitchen filled me with more dread, and I didn’t understand why. Everything looked the same. The walls were still the same contemporary shade of light gray, the French furniture was still fair and heavy, the silk crème couches were still a hundred grand a piece, and the paintings on the wall still cost more than anyone could ever dream of having in their bank account.
A gurgling sound came from the kitchen and I tensed up.
It’s nothing. You heard nothing. Move on.
Another step, and then another. I wanted to be a coward. I wanted to go up to my room and not deal with it. Not again. It could not happen again. How bad was it that I suspected my mother’s life was in danger, and all I wanted to do was bury my face in a pillow and replay the last day, especially the part where Trent broke all of his rules and sucked my mouth like I was the most delicious thing on the menu? I knew the answer to that one. It was very bad. Inexcusable, actually.
“Khhstttt, ehhss, pppfff…” The gurgling continued. This was not a drill. It was not my sick imagination. I threw my backpack down and ran to the kitchen. My hair covered my face, as if to protect me, and I blew it away, chanting breathlessly, “No, no, no.”
My mother was lying on the floor—why did she always do it in the kitchen? Why not in her bathroom? Why did she always need an audience?—foam trickling from her mouth. On the table above her were dozens of empty pill bottles, with a rainbow assortment of pills scattered like sad, blown dandelion fluff. A pile of separation papers sat atop the table, already signed by my father. “Shit.” I sucked in a breath, running over toward her.
Jesus Christ, he was here. He told her.
I rolled her onto her side and cupped her cheeks, staring into her vacant eyes.
“How many did you take?”
She shook her head, not answering. I was pretty sure the main reason for her lack of response was that she was halfway gone. I plucked my phone from my back pocket, my hands shaking.
I forgot about the cute girl who’d handed me her heart, and her dad who’d rewarded me with hidden kisses. I forgot about laughing with Rosie and Emilia and scowling at a drunken, albeit harmless Mel. This, right here, was my real life, and I shouldn’t have allowed myself to forget it even for a moment.
My mother lurched forward, retching. The only thing to come out of her mouth was more foam.
“Throw it up, throw it up, throw it up,” I repeated sullenly. Last time I’d stuck a finger down her throat when I was only twelve. I was really hoping to keep that incident a one-time thing. My mother’s eyes rolled in their sockets. I hated the world once again. I pushed my mother onto her knees with the phone pressed between my ear and shoulder and shoved a finger down her throat, but nothing came out.
“How long ago?” I asked, even though it was futile. She couldn’t answer. She wasn’t even all the way conscious. Not like last time. Jesus, Mom.
“Please, Mom, please. Just…throw it all up. Please.” I didn’t know what shook harder, my voice or my hands. Both were out of control, and I felt myself slipping beyond. Beyond the control I’d held over myself.
Did she not love me?
Did she not care?
I pushed and shoved, but she just quivered like a leaf, going through some kind of seizure. Finally, the call went live.
“Nine-one-one, what’s the emergency?”
I broke down in tears, giving her our address. The operator took our details and sent in help. Even nine-one-freaking-one couldn’t wait to get rid of her.
“MY MOM TRIED TO KILL herself.”
The words haunted me as I sped through the streets of Todos Santos toward Saint John’s hospital. I wasn’t an idiot. I knew exactly what I was doing by rushing to her side. Her dad was probably there—he fucking better be—I thought angrily. I was the first person she’d called, and I wasn’t going to put a time limit on my stay there. The minute I’d received the call, I dropped Luna at Camila’s—I didn’t want them in the penthouse in case Edie wanted to crash there—and told her I’d need at least a few hours to sort through some personal shit and let her know when I’d be back.
Poor Edie.
Poor, poor Edie.
While my child’s mother was avoiding responsibilities at all costs, Edie tried to take care of everyone in her world while watching her youth slip between her fingers. I loathed myself for having assumed the worst about her. That she was a spoiled-ass kid who tried to steal money for the thrill of it, or just to be a cunt. Edie wasn’t a brat. She was dealing with a very ill mother and, apparently, was being blackmailed by her father, too.
I parked in a hurry and called Edie’s cell. She picked up on the third ring, making my fucki
ng heart almost detonate inside my chest. And it was ironic, the way I’d thrived on her weaknesses when we first met, and now how desperately I wanted for her to cling onto her strength to survive this.
“Fourth floor, I’ll be outside room 412,” she whispered, like she didn’t want to disturb anyone. The journey to her was the longest I’d ever taken. The pale blue walls and tired, reassuring eyes of the hospital staff haunted me, slamming me with memories I’d wanted to forget.
“Your leg is broken. Your college scholarship is, well, not going to materialize, Trent.”
“Congratulations. It’s a girl. The mother will sign the birth certificate shortly. Here’s hoping she’ll give the kid your last name, eh?”
“She is fine. There is nothing wrong with her voice. She is just…well, anyway, I have the name of a really good child psychologist.”
I stopped by door 412, pressing my palm onto the cool wood and closing my eyes. I was past caring about Jordan at this stage. If he was there, asking questions, like why the fuck Edie had called me, I’d be frank. I rapped on the door three times, as softly as I could, turned around and paced the hallway.
Ten seconds later, Edie walked out. She was still wearing the same flowery #SunChaser tank top and tiny burgundy shorts that had made all the men at the party salivate. Only she no longer looked like Edie. She looked like someone ten years her senior. Ironically, someone I wouldn’t feel so horrified about sleeping with.
“Hey.” My voice came out soft, and I wasn’t sure what to do with my hands, my face, my fucking being, so I approached her for an awkward hug, which she—thank fuck—returned. We stood there in a loose embrace outside her mother’s hospital room. I stared at the plain door; she stared at some banal painting behind me probably donated to the hospital by some rich asshole. Her shoulders were frail and so was her mind, I was sure. Time seemed to stand still just like we did, for a while, before she disconnected from me and looked down.
