“Through Laney.”
“Of course.” My mother had a way of using her tone to make sure someone knew just how unwelcome they were. I didn’t get it. She didn’t know anything about Porter to make any kind of judgement. She gave him another hard look then turned her attention back to me, where it should’ve been in the first place. “Aldrich has asked if your phone number changed.”
I fought with everything I had not to roll my eyes. She was like a dog with a bone with this guy. Why she wanted me to go on a date with him so badly, I didn’t want to think about. “It hasn’t.”
“Why haven’t you answered his calls?” my dad asked.
“Oh… ” I tapped my chin, as if I were trying to recall some far distant memory. “Is that the unknown number that kept calling me? I blocked it.”
Mom’s eyes widened. Thankfully, I had an audience. She’d keep up appearances at least. “Rhian. That’s incredibly rude.”
“So is giving a man my phone number when I’m not interested in him. We all have our faults.” I moved over to the others.
My mother sighed. I knew that sound. She was boiling beneath the surface. How dare I want my own life? How dare I not think Aldrich Webber hung the moon? How dare I bring these people—Zac and Porter—who were so clearly beneath us into our house?
“Rhian,” she snapped. “How long are you going to play this game when you know you’d be more comfortable here in a job your dad can ensure for you? In a nice, safe neighborhood?”
I froze and turned slowly with my eyes so wide, I thought they might pop right out of their sockets. “Safe neighborhood?” I asked. “I haven’t been mugged or raped in East Branch yet. So I’m probably fine there.”
“You can’t seriously be comfortable living in such an… environment when you were raised with more opportunity than you know what to do with.”
If I didn’t know better, I’d swear my mother wanted to stomp her foot.
Not believing what she’d just said, or the underlying meaning to it all, my only reply was, “We’ve got to get back to Michigan.”
I turned on my heel and headed directly for the door, not stopping at their protests or at Mom’s insistence that I stay for lunch. If Zac, Laney, and Porter knew what was good for them, they’d follow.
I kept up my pace until we got to the car. Porter put the suitcase in the trunk and I climbed back into the passenger seat.
“Damn,” Porter said quietly. “They really hate my ass. I didn’t even have a chance to do something to make them hate me.”
“That’s my parents,” I said.
“Sorry, Rhian.” Laney reached up and rubbed my shoulder as Porter backed us out of our driveway.
“And you wonder why I don’t want to go into teaching. How can I do anything that makes them even a little bit happy? That was my whole life growing up.”
“Well, I know one thing.” Zac finally spoke up. He’d been incredibly quiet in my parents’ house. “They really do hate Porter. Like they think you’re together level hate.”
Laney snorted. “Maybe Porter should’ve explained that he doesn’t do together.”
“I don’t think it would’ve mattered,” Zac countered. “I’ll be honest, Rhian. I kind of wanted to punch your dad in the face. Which is weird because he didn’t really say much.”
Now I laughed even though tears had been forming behind my eyes since I’d stepped outside my house. This was how I knew I’d made the right decision in moving to East Branch. These were my people. “It’s a common feeling,” I told him. “You can’t put your finger on why, but underneath his daily suit is something that needs punching.”
Porter had been noticeably quiet. I’d hated how my parents had been so cold. I knew they would’ve been which was why I didn’t tell them I was coming. We’d been cutting it close but I’d hoped luck was on my side. She wasn’t. “Sorry, Porter. You were the one who got the most passive aggressiveness.”
He waved his hand, brushing off what I’d said. “Doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me,” I muttered.
Chapter Nine
The visit to my parents’ house stayed with me for days. Every time I thought about it, I became even more angry. Those people who’d raised my brother and me weren’t warm people, sure. I’d known that. But the way they’d acted that day had gone above and beyond.
Zac, Laney, and Porter had seemed to roll with it and didn’t mention it again. But I avoided the guys due to the embarrassment my parents had brought on. Even when they had a cookout at the pond on Memorial Day. The store was closed so they were all gone the entire day. No matter how much Laney tried to coax me to go with her, I remain steadfast.
I should’ve done more when we were at my parent’s house. Should’ve stood up for my friends more than I had.
More than that, I couldn’t stop thinking about the way Porter had kissed me in the pool and then again on the bed in the motel room. Everything about the way he’d moved and the way he’d felt against me had me wondering what sex with him would’ve been like. Had we gotten that far.
Now my stupid parents might’ve made that totally impossible.
I needed to have a conversation with my brother.
Laney was at the school doing some paperwork for the fall and I wasn’t sure when her orientation was. She was out getting her life together while I obsessed over the people who’d given birth to me.
“What’d you do?” Tegan asked on the second ring.
I sunk back into the bench on the back porch, using the shade to get some relief from the heat. It was only the very end of May and it’d get hotter.
“I did nothing.”
“Mom’s been on the warpath all week.”
I sighed. “Are you with patients? Do you have a minute?”
“I always have a minute for you,” he said. A door closed in the background and I could imagine my “super-hot” brother, as Laney had called him, closing himself off into his office to talk to me. An office I hadn’t ever seen.
“I went home.”
“I know. It was your first mistake.”
“Tegan… I know. Let me tell you.”
He chuckled quietly. “Sorry.” He wasn’t at all.
“I went home to get my clothes and a few things that I actually wanted. We almost made it out of there before the parental units came home and they were so… cold. Mom was. Dad was silent.”
“He’s still pissed at you for not taking the job at Hargrove.”
“I know. What I don’t understand is why they care so much. Yes, anyone would want their kids to be settled and steady. But why does it have to be his school?”
“Rhian,” he said, as if chastising me. “You know why.”
“I don’t.” Or I didn’t think I did.
“You do. It’s about the image. The family all working at his school shows a level of commitment that brings in donations. Donations that get Mom and Dad what they want. Donations that mean they get to leave the legacy they want.”
I slapped my hand over my forehead. This shouldn’t have been news to me. I’d grown up with this game. “That’s why Mom is so insistent that I take Aldrich’s calls.”
“Aldrich?”
“Aldrich Webber. Mom gave him my phone number and I didn’t answer. She’s been hyper focused on he and I going out. But… just no.”
“Yeah. That guy is a dick.” A moment passed. “Well, he’s nice enough on the surface, but his daddy’s money is what he thinks impresses people. You’d kill him.”
“Thank you! That’s what I’ve tried to tell Mom.”
“Yeah, she won’t get that.” Something scraped against the phone and Tegan’s voice became muffled. This happened often when I called him during the day. “Sorry about that. I have a guy with bad gallbladder, the nurse needed my orders for surgery.”
“Sounds painful.”
“It is. But back to you. Who went to the house with you?” he asked.
“Laney and her boyfriend, Zac. And Port
er.” I almost didn’t add the last one.
“Ah. So you were all paired up and Mother was clutching her pearls at an unacceptable boy.”
“Pretty much.”
He chuckled again. “I’m kind of glad it’s your turn.”
“Tegan!” I chastised him. “They never hated any of your girlfriends and Porter and I aren’t together.”
“Ah, first, they did. They hated Alana junior year.”
“Only because they thought you two were having sex.”
“We were. But that’s not the point. She had piercings and bright blue streaks in her hair. Made her unacceptable.”
“Of course.”
“When in reality,” he said, continuing as if I hadn’t spoken, “what made her unacceptable was that she was crazy as hell and would do literally anything in bed. That’s what should’ve scared them.”
I scrunched my face up in disgust. “I didn’t need to know that.”
He laughed at my reaction. “What I’m saying is that they’re always focused on the wrong thing and they hate that we went out into the world and figured that out.”
He’d done his job by making me feel better about how they’d treated my friends. I’d apologized to them and they’d told me not to worry about it, but I had.
“Now tell me about Porter.”
“Why?”
“Rhian.”
“What?” I threw my hands up, even though he couldn’t see it. “He’s Zac’s best friend. He was Laney’s friend when she lived here, so we all hang out.”
“Is that all?” he asked, as if he could hear everything I wasn’t telling him.
I swallowed hard. “He kissed me. Twice. And it’s basically all I think about other than our parents.”
“Maybe don’t mix those two together,” he advised, to which I laughed loudly. He was so gross. “So you are together?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Porter doesn’t do together, but he kissed me twice and I’m kind of wondering what a ride on the Porter train might be like.”
“I don’t want to know that, Rhian.”
“That was payback for the Alana shit.”
He chuckled into the phone. “All right. I have to get back to it, but if Mom and Dad don’t like the guy, he’s probably a keeper.”
“Goodbye, Tegan.”
I ended the call and sat there wondering what I was going to with my day when the best thought ever came to mind.
Do you care if I put a firepit in the backyard? I wrote out in a text. It’d be so nice to have small fires out here at night. Please, please, please, please.
I hit send and waited for Laney to respond. It took a minute, but she sent a simple, I don’t care. That was all I needed.
After quickly throwing on some shorts and a tank top, I left her house, hit the donut shop up the street, then headed over to the parts store where Zac and Porter worked. I couldn’t do a decent firepit myself, but I’d found one online that I loved. A simple floor of brick surrounded by some large rocks. I didn’t think there was anything more to it.
I swallowed hard before going inside. I’d been avoiding these guys for three days.
“Hey, Rhian.” Zac greeted me first. Porter’s head snapped up at the sound of my name, a blue T-shirt stretching across his broad chest. “What’s up?”
“Something wrong with your car?” Porter asked.
I gave him a small grin.
“No, but I have a bribe here,” I said as I pointed at the box of donuts.
Zac reached out, grabbed the box, and flung the top open. “Fuck, I’m hungry.”
Porter snorted but didn’t take one. “What’s the bribe for?” he asked instead.
It didn’t escape my notice that Zac grabbed a second one then headed into the back. As if he somehow knew that I was here to ask Porter and not him.
“I was thinking we should put a firepit in the backyard.”
“Of the shop? I don’t think we should do that. Could be dangerous.”
“No,” I said, rolling my eyes. “At Laney’s. I already cleared it with her, but I need help. Can’t do it alone. Or possibly at all because I am not handy and might just get in the way. But Zac took two donuts, so he kind of already owes me.”
“Stop.” He held up a hand and leaned halfway across the counter. So close to me that just reaching up onto my toes would allow our lips to meet. The smell of metal and oil filled the air around me. He wasn’t dirty from work so it must’ve just been the odor of the shop on him. “I’ll help you but stop the rambling.”
I smiled widely. “Sorry. I ramble when I get nervous.”
“I make you nervous?”
The door to the store opened, so I now knew we weren’t alone and I was keeping him from customers.
“Well, asking for help makes me nervous.”
“You’re a hard one to find,” a woman whose voice that I didn’t recognize said behind me. I turned just enough to look over my shoulder and found a very pretty, tall, thin woman with brown hair and big boobs behind me. Her shorts were two sizes too small and her shirt was baggy but very low cut. I took a breath. This woman would get whatever attention she wanted.
“I’m really not,” Porter said, standing up straight. “What do you want?”
“How do you know I’m not a customer?” She stepped forward, which pretty much forced me to move aside. Porter glanced over at me and I knew he didn’t like that she’d done that.
“What do you need, Nicole?” he asked again.
I searched through every memory I had trying to find a Nicole and there wasn’t one. Or at least not this one. If I’d met her last summer, I didn’t remember her.
She reached out and ran a finger over his skin near the neck of his shirt. “I’ve given you a lot of time and think that maybe we should talk.”
“No thanks,” he said quickly. “Anything else?”
“Porter!” She stomped her foot. Like actually stomped her foot to punctuate his name.
“Go away,” he said rather harshly. I remained silent. I didn’t want to chance them taking this somewhere else. Somewhere I wouldn’t be able to overhear.
“Come on, baby… ” She reached out to touch him, but he moved away. The face of a woman scorned isn’t something anyone could mistake. Her jaw tensed and her face tinged with pink anger.
“Either buy something or leave.”
She growled. Like actually growled. That was when she noticed I was still standing there. “Well.” She turned to me and I swallowed hard. I’d wanted to stay out of this whole thing. “We all know Porter is excellent at everything he can do to you. What do they call it? A toxic man with a good dick? Yeah. I think that sums him up just about right.” She leaned in closer. “We’ll be hooking up again in no time. Don’t get too comfortable. He doesn’t stay with anyone, no matter how good you might think it is.”
I pinched my lips between my teeth to keep from responding. In my experience, nothing good would come from me saying a word. Ex-hookups were rarely thinking clearly.
“Leave her alone and get the fuck out of here.” Porter came around the corner and grabbed her arm then basically dragged her to the door. “This is where I work. Don’t bring this shit here.” Then he turned to me. “I’ll help with the firepit. Whenever you want. My time is yours.”
That was the last thing she needed to hear. Her nostrils flared, but she left as he’d requested. I took a breath and quickly ran my tongue over my lips. That wasn’t something I’d planned to ever witness. But maybe her showing up here meant that things weren’t as over as he’d said. Actually, Laney had insisted he hadn’t had a girlfriend ever, so why was Nicole acting like a jilted one?
“Sorry about that.” He ran his hand roughly over the back of his head.
“Not your fault, but what was that about?”
Porter groaned and went back behind the counter. “Old hookup.”
“Didn’t sound like that.”
He shrugged. “That’s all it was. Ended last year… �
�� He paused and gave me a look that said he wasn’t sure he could keep going. “Well, maybe once this year, but we’ve only ever hooked up. She’s never been my girlfriend. This is her problem.”
“Is it?” I asked. “Her fault, I mean? Guys can be unclear or lead—”
“No.” He shook his head at the same time. “I’m a hundred percent sure Laney has filled you in on exactly how I am. That means you know as fucking well as Nicole that I don’t do the girlfriend thing.” If I didn’t know better, I would’ve said this conversation was making him angry. I’d never seen him angry.
“Right,” I snapped. “Got it.”
He didn’t do the girlfriend thing. I knew this. Which meant that I needed to get him out of my head altogether because I didn’t do the hookup thing anymore. So there was no me and him.
“I’ll pick you up after work to go get supplies?” he asked in a much softer tone.
I nodded then left the shop without saying goodbye to Zac.
After my hellish visit to the shop, I went to do a little shopping in the city. Alone. Any store I passed I went into. Except the men’s clothing stores. I had no interest there. I didn’t end up buying anything because shopping alone is boring. I really needed to find something to do with my life. Then I went back to Laney’s. Alone. But not so alone because she was home when I got there.
“Hey, no school stuff today?” I asked.
“No. I got to look around a bit and peek into a few classrooms. They said they’d schedule orientation for later in the summer after they’ve hired their science and math teacher.” She raised an eyebrow at me. I knew what she was insinuating. That I could be that person and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be.
When we were taking our licensure tests before graduation, she went for Michigan’s. At first, I assumed I’d take Ohio’s since that was where we were but then I knew I’d be moving to Michigan so I took that one. Made sense to me just in case.
“Porter is going to help me with the fire pit tonight.”
“Oh, good. I think it’ll be a nice thing to have, but, Rhian, you don’t have to do it.”
“Psh. I’m living here basically rent-free, just kicking in for utilities and groceries. Do you know how much money you’re saving me?”
A Little More Touch Me (The Fallout Series Book 2) Page 8
