“Um, do you know that guy?”
I spin around to see Dawson standing on the sidewalk a few feet from the Jeep. He’s peering into the passenger-side window with a vague expression of alarm, like he’s wondering if I’m in the middle of being kidnapped. Damn it. I forgot that I’m driving him home.
“Oh. Yeah, that’s Dawson.”
Cheeks blazing, I get out of the Jeep and shoot Dawson a be nice look. His crosses his arms, affecting a slightly threatening vibe as he eyes up Eli. But it’s hard to look threatening when you’re clutching a grease-stained bag of fries in your hand and sporting a giant red button that says We Put the SWEET! in Sweet Chili Burger!
“Dawson, this is Eli,” I say.
Dawson’s wary expression clears and they shake hands through the open window.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Eli tells him, which isn’t really true seeing as I’ve only mentioned my friends to him maybe three times total.
“Same here,” Dawson says. Also not really true. I’ve talked about Eli to Alyssa and Sophie, snippets of which he may have overheard, but generally he and Zach don’t concern themselves with my dating habits.
Eli nods at Dawson’s shirt. “The NuttyButter Burger is awesome.”
Dawson grins, pleased to have finally found someone who thinks peanut butter on a hamburger is a sound idea, and I could kiss Eli for bringing it up. But there’s no way I’m doing that in front of Dawson again.
“See you later,” Eli says to me, then waves to us both before pulling away from the curb and driving off. Once he’s no longer in sight, I turn to scowl at Dawson.
“How long were you standing there?”
“Too long.” He shudders and then looks me up and down, frowning. “Hey, where’s my smoothie?”
“You don’t get one today.” I snatch the bag out of his hand and start walking toward my car, my face still prickling. Naturally, he’s going to tell all our friends that he caught me making out on a public street and they’ll never let me live it down.
“Damn.” Dawson laughs as we climb into my sweltering car. “Get any redder and your head might pop off.”
“Shut up.” I shove a handful of fries into my mouth to hide my embarrassment.
Chapter Sixteen
ELI’S SORT-OF FRIEND ZANDER ALSO LIVES IN Birch Grove, in a large two-level house situated on an expansive, landscaped lawn. On the way to the front door, Eli pauses at one of the fat shrubs planted along the pebble pathway.
“Hydrangeas,” he exclaims happily, and I can’t believe I’m dating a guy who gets that excited about flowers. Still, I let him tug me along as he moves in for a closer look. “Smell,” he tells me.
I lean in and sniff one of the round white blossoms, hoping I’m not about to be attacked by jumping spiders. The subtle floral fragrance makes my nose itch, but that’s okay. I’m nervous about going inside, where I won’t know a soul except for Eli, so I’d willingly smell every flower in the yard if it meant postponing the inevitable.
“Nice,” I state.
Eli nods approvingly and we continue up to the door. He mentioned last night that he’s not close with Zander and has never been to his house before, so he rings the doorbell instead of barging right in, like I do at my friends’ houses. When no one answers after a minute or so, he opens the door and we step into the airy, high-ceilinged entryway.
The handful of small, quiet, alcohol-free parties I’ve been to over the years has not prepared me for the chaotic scene inside. The main floor is crammed with people—circled together in groups, spilling over onto the living room furniture, sitting on the stairs leading to the top floor, dancing to the loud, thumping music. Red cups and beer cans occupy every available surface, including the small table in the entryway that we still haven’t left.
Eli takes my hand and gives me a small, fleeting smile. “Ready?” he asks, and it hits me then that he’s nervous and unsure too.
I nod, and before I can even brace myself, we’re sucked into a whirlwind of heat, cologne, and sweat. Eli squeezes my hand as we shoulder our way through the massive crowd. Every few seconds, someone says hi to him or slaps his back, but we manage to make it to the kitchen without being intercepted.
We find a vacant pocket of space in front of what I assume is the door to a pantry. This room is no better. People file like ants toward a tapped keg in the corner, and every inch of counter space is covered with empty bottles and packages and another dozen or so red cups.
“You want a drink?” Eli says in my ear. He has to bend to reach me. Even though the shoes I’m wearing tonight give me an extra two inches, I still barely clear the top of his shoulder.
“Oh, I don’t drink,” I tell him. I tried wine a couple of years ago, at the wedding of one of Alyssa’s cousins, but all it did was make me nauseated and headachy.
“Me either. Not anymore, anyway. I might be able to find us something nonalcoholic.”
As I’m contemplating this, Eli is accosted by a guy with shaggy brown hair and a stubbly beard. They do that one-armed, back-thumping guy hug thing and then Eli turns to me. “My friend Matt,” he says, gesturing to the guy. “And this is Morgan.”
We nod to each other in greeting. Eli’s mentioned Matt a few times. His best friend since elementary school and one of the handful who stuck with him during the slow, boring process of recuperation. Matt is to Eli what Alyssa is to me—someone who’s been there through the worst.
“So you’re Morgan,” Matt says, grinning. He’s not as tall as Eli, or as cute, but he’s appealing in a different kind of way. “The girl who sneaks a bagful of food into the movies.”
I shoot Eli a glare, and they both crack up. I can tell just by the way they interact with each other that they’ve probably gotten into some trouble together over the years.
Matt gazes into his red cup. “Gotta get in line for more beer. I’ll catch up with you guys later.” He claps Eli on the shoulder and, with a quick glance at me, leans in to him and says, “You weren’t kidding.”
He smiles at me again and then turns away, immediately getting swallowed up by the crowd. I raise one eyebrow at Eli, who’s looking at me with wide, innocent eyes. I take advantage of the lack of space around us and step closer to him, stopping an inch or two from his chest. My heels make me about eye level with his neck.
“You weren’t kidding about what?” I ask, blinking up at him.
“Oh . . .” He shrugs and places his hands on my hips. “I might’ve told him that you were the perfect combination of cute and sexy.”
“Really.”
“That’s the PG-rated version, yeah.”
I laugh and twist out of his grasp. “I’m gonna go hunt for a bathroom. Don’t go too far, okay? I’ll never find you in this mob.”
“I’ll stay here and try to dig us up some bottles of water or something.”
I nod and head right, past the kitchen. A house this size must have at least one bathroom per floor. I weave between bodies until I reach the hallway, where there’s a line so long that I’m not sure where it begins or ends. My bladder aching, I stand on my tiptoes and peer between limbs. There are people coming and going from a doorway next to the living room. I’m guessing it leads to a basement, and where there’s a finished basement, there’s likely a bathroom. I start in that direction.
As I pass the kitchen again, the crowd clears for a moment and I spot Eli, standing right where I left him a few minutes ago. And he’s not alone. I catch a glimpse of shiny black hair and smooth, tan arms. The girl turns her head and my suspicions are confirmed. Ruby Liao, the star of many of Eli’s Facebook pictures. She’s even more beautiful in real life.
I swallow back the sourness in my mouth and keep moving, slowly this time, my gaze pinging from them to the sunburned neck of the guy in front of me. Just like when I’m scoping out shoppers in a store, my eyes catalogue every detail, from facial expression to posture to body language. The girl—Ruby—is talking to him, and every few seconds she reaches down to straighten her
already straight skirt. She’s nervous . . . or maybe contrite. As for Eli, his stance screams defensive—arms crossed, shoulders tensed, expression flat and closed off.
Still, even though he clearly doesn’t want to be talking to her, I can’t help wondering if he knew she was going to be here tonight. If that’s the reason he invited me. Not as an excuse to cut out early, but to parade me in front of his ex so she’ll know that he’s completely over her.
Or maybe he does want to be talking to her, and he’s just tense because he knows I might come back any minute. Well, I’m not about to interrupt them, or act as some kind of prop to make his gorgeous ex-girlfriend jealous. I have some dignity.
I turn away and continue to the doorway, which, as it turns out, does indeed lead to a basement. Several people clog the stairs, and I hang on to the railing to avoid being trampled. Finally, the congestion clears and I pop out into a large living area with leather furniture, a giant-screen TV, and a foosball table. It’s not as crowded down here—probably because there’s no keg—and I have a straight shot to the bathroom door.
But when I flick on the light, I realize I’m not in a bathroom at all. I’m in some sort of office, with a dark wood desk and built-in shelves to match. Jesus. Why are there so many rooms in this house? As I reach up to flick the light off, something on one of the shelves catches my eye. A tiny metal statue of a penguin, no bigger than a tube of lipstick.
I love penguins.
After a quick glance behind me, I step farther into the room. Sometimes I’m able to forget about my hunger to steal, or at least stifle it. But other times, when I’m stressed or mad or even mildly hurt—like now—all I want is to feel that rush, that calming sense of balance and control.
Without pausing to think, I scoop the penguin off the shelf and tuck it into my purse.
The effect is immediate. Something inside me shifts, falling into place. I feel my heartbeat in my ears, strong and rhythmic and overriding everything else. Well, everything except my need to pee.
I flick the light off as I leave the room, then try the door opposite. This time it’s a bathroom. When I’m done, I head back upstairs to find Eli, my emotions and face and every other part of me back in total control.
I find him standing outside the kitchen, leaning against a wall with two cans in his hand. Ruby is nowhere to be seen.
“Oh, good, you survived,” he says when I finally get to him. He hands me one of the cans. “A Sprite for my sprite. Sorry, it was either this or tomato juice.”
“This is fine.” I pop it open, my stomach fluttering over the fact that he just called me his. A good sign. Maybe beautiful Ruby is ancient history, after all.
“Want to go outside? I need some air.”
I nod and he takes my hand, veering into the dining room area. I stick close to him, dodging elbows and spills until we reach the glass doors to the deck. We step out into a haze of damp night air and cigarette smoke.
“Eli! Hey, man.”
We turn toward the right side of the deck, where a half dozen people are sitting around a stone fire pit, roasting marshmallows. As we approach, a wiry guy with a buzz cut—the one who called out a second ago, I assume—stands up and thwacks Eli on the shoulder. His skin must be red from all the greeting slaps he’s gotten tonight.
The buzz-cut guy turns out to be Zander, the host of the party. He invites us to grab a seat and a marshmallow, both of which are in short supply. Eli waves me toward the one vacant patio chair and sits next to me on a closed cooler. I’m introduced to the rest of the circle, but I’m bad with retaining a bunch of names at once and forget most of them a minute later.
“Dude, you’re getting fucking huge.” Zander gestures with his cup toward Eli’s arms, which are slightly flexed and resting on his knees. “You training to play this season?”
The entire group focuses on Eli, who drops his gaze and stares intently into the fire. “Uh, nope. Not this season. Still waiting to be cleared by the doctor.”
“Sucks, man,” says the guy across from us—Brendon? Brandon?—as he skewers a marshmallow and holds it above the flame. “You heard about Colton Latimer, right?”
The girl on my other side offers me the last marshmallow in the bag. “No, thanks,” I tell her, distracted by the weird look on Eli’s face.
“No,” he says flatly.
Brendon/Brandon lifts up his partially charred marshmallow and blows on it. “He’ll be playing for the Bobcats in the fall.”
“Full athletic scholarship,” Zander adds with a smirk. “Coach Rudd must have an in or something at Burleson, because Latimer isn’t even that fucking talented. Not like you were, man.”
Eli’s jaw twitches, a movement so subtle that only someone sitting close to him would probably catch it.
“Well,” he says with a smile that even I can’t tell is real or fake. “Good for him. Burleson’s a great school.”
Zander opens his mouth like he’s about to say something but is interrupted by a girl who needs to get something out of the cooler. Eli stands up and moves behind my chair, out of her way. As the girl fishes a vodka cooler out of the ice, he bends down close to my ear and says, “Do you want to get out of here?”
“Oh, um, sure,” I say, flustered. Last night, we’d joked about devising a signal, something one of us could do or say to alert the other that it was time to go. Every idea we came up with was ridiculous, of course—”pretend to fall down the stairs” is one example—but I was kind of expecting something more than Do you want to get out of here?
We say our good-byes to everyone, ignoring protests that it’s too early to leave and the party’s just getting started. Instead of going back inside the house and leaving through the same door we arrived at, Eli leads me down the deck stairs to the yard. We loop around the side of the house and come out on the pebble pathway again. This time, he doesn’t pause at the hydrangeas.
“What now?” I ask as we walk down the long driveway. I met him here earlier, so we both have our cars.
Eli looks at me, and the rigid set of his jaw makes my stomach tighten. Usually, he’s either smiling or on the verge of smiling. Cheerful and joking and light. I don’t know what to do with dark, broody Eli.
“We could go to my house,” he suggests, his first words since we left the deck. “It’s just a few streets away.”
I slow my pace. “Your house?”
“Yeah. My parents are out and my sister’s away at camp, so you won’t have to go through the third degree tonight.”
His house. His empty house. It hits me then how little I actually know him. A few kisses and hundreds of texts don’t mean we’re soul mates, or even boyfriend and girlfriend. Oh God. Does he think we’ve moved on to serious-relationship territory already? Does he expect me to sleep with him? I’m not sure how I feel about that.
He seems to sense my hesitation. “I thought we could watch a movie or something. That’s all. Jeez,” he adds, his features lightening. “I love how your mind goes straight to the gutter. Must be all that erotica.”
Relieved to see him smiling again, I sock him playfully in the arm. We’re almost to my car, parked in a line with several others across the street. I reach into my purse for my keys, and my fingers brush against the metal penguin. I yank my hand out like I touched something hot.
“Fine,” I say, covering up with a smile. “Lead the way.”
Chapter Seventeen
IT’S HARD NOT TO BE IMPRESSED BY ELI’S HOUSE, a sprawling slate-gray bungalow with a two-car garage. As he unlocks the front door, I breathe in the sharp scent of the trees that surround the entire property. Birch Grove is so different from the city, and my cluttered apartment building community, that it might as well be in another country.
“How long have you lived here?” I ask when we step into the cool, quiet house.
“Since I was four or five.” Eli leads me past the foyer and into the kitchen, flicking on lights as he goes. “Meredith was just a baby, I remember that.”
&
nbsp; I look around. The kitchen is all shiny white cupboards and dark granite and stainless steel. Directly across from it is a cozy-looking living room with light gray furniture and a flat-screen TV mounted above a stone fireplace. Like my apartment, the layout is open concept, but that’s where the similarities end. My apartment could fit three times over into this place.
“Do you want a drink or a snack or something?” Eli asks, yanking open the fridge door and then slamming it closed again. He’s still acting off.
“No, thanks.” I’m too keyed up to eat or drink anything. The realization that I stole something out of a stranger’s house has finally caught up with me, and I feel like my purse is made of glass, the contents inside on full display for anyone who cares to look. What the hell is wrong with me? Why didn’t I just leave the damn penguin where it was and walk out of the room? Why can’t I deal with negative feelings like a normal person?
We sit on the living room couch, which is velvety and plush, and Eli turns on the TV. I double-check that my purse is securely closed and then place it on the floor by my feet. When I straighten back up, I notice a framed family picture on the end table, taken on a white sand beach. Dr. Randall Jamison looks more relaxed here than he did in the head shot I saw when I Googled him. Eli’s mom is tall and pretty, with chestnut-brown hair and an infectious smile. His sister is a younger version of her, but with longer, wavier hair and a mouthful of braces. Eli looks the same as he does now, only more tanned. They’re like a postcard version of a family, exuding health and good fortune.
I look away, forcing down an unexpected surge of envy. It’s been a long time since my family went on vacation, or posed for a picture together. It’s been a long time since we did anything together, including existing in the same room.
I shift my focus back to Eli. “So your sister’s away at camp?”
“Performing arts camp.” He settles back on the couch with the remote, stretching his left leg out in front of him. “Acting is her thing. Aunt Rita’s influence, I think, from taking us to all those plays.”
The Girl You Thought I Was Page 12
