Exploring the Rules: The Dating Playbook, Book: 4

by Dietz, Mariah

  “We’ll be okay,” Nessie says, and though her voice is verging on condescending, Dad barely blinks. He’s still debating what to fill the cooler with. Stubbornness is a Robinson traitm written into our DNA.

  Mom hugs me again. “Have fun before getting to California, okay?” Mom is our free spirit, a trait she shares with Vanessa and one I envy furiously because I don’t possess a single ounce of it. She holds my hands, giving me a reassuring smile that serves like a balm on my growing nerves.

  I assumed freshman year would be the hardest—pulling off the Band-Aid and moving across the country to attend Brighton, where our parents are both alma maters. However, this year feels harder, like I’m nearing the end of summers to have the excuse to return home.

  Nessie wraps her arm around Mom and me, holding us—binding us. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure she has fun.”

  Mom sniggers, the planes of her cheeks creasing with laugh lines that she always points out with dismay in each photo that’s ever taken of her. I love those laugh lines. They feel like a map of our childhood—blanket forts and makeovers and drinking too much pink lemonade that we always have in our fridge. “Look out for each other.” She kisses Vanessa’s forehead and then mine. “Be safe and be smart, my beautiful girls.”

  My throat is tight with emotions that I don’t know how to articulate. Vanessa weaves her fingers with mine, extending a sense of comfort and strength, and reminding me how as hard as it is to leave—I’m beyond grateful that I always have her.

  Dad sidles up beside Mom, his arms extending along her shoulders and mine, security to her like Nessie is to me. “You guys are going to have your own rooms at each hotel, right?” he asks, his voice lowered as his brows knit with unease and doubt.

  “Definitely,” Nessie assures him, but her voice is all bravado and lacks the sincerity I wanted to hear.

  “And I’m serious about the beads,” he adds.

  The rest of my emotions ease as laughter bubbles out of my throat.

  “I’m serious,” he says.

  Vanessa’s objections wash away as she looks at me, and then she too starts to laugh, our hands still linked as we slowly back toward the car. Dad’s grip on Mom’s shoulders tightens as they remain by where our luggage had been.

  “You sure you don’t want the cooler?” he asks.

  “Positive. But we love you for offering. I promise, no one will get dehydrated.” I smile.

  He sighs, resigning over the decision though I can see he wants to argue his point, likely thinking of how we might need it in case we get lost, the car breaks down, or a dozen other possibilities that my mind races through like I’m on the same telepathic loop.

  “We’ll let you know when we hit New Orleans,” Nessie says, taking another step back so the barrier between us and home grows.

  Cooper grins as we near the hood of the Tesla then moves to open the rear passenger door, which slides up instead of outward.

  Vanessa’s jaw drops. “This car is insane.”

  I climb into the SUV that smells like it was driven off the lot this morning and wave goodbye to our parents.

  “This is going to be so much fun,” Vanessa says, running her hands over the tops of her thighs.

  I suck in a breath as our house falls out of sight, hoping beyond hope that my sister’s right.

  2

  Tyler

  I don’t know how Cooper talked me into this nightmare.

  Driving across the country with him will be a stretch of my patience—adding Chloe and Vanessa Robinson is guaranteed to be a train wreck. For starters, Chloe looks at me like she’d rather claw my eyes out than acknowledge my presence.

  Apparently, her regret for kissing me freshman year is a level red alert.

  I’ve tried to recall the details of that night numerous times to understand what happened that has her always making excuses to leave whenever I show up; to see if I’d done something that warrants her reaction. But our kiss was two minutes and hardly anything to get worked up over. Likely, it’s because she was expecting a call or promises to spend every waking hour with her like some freshman couples do as they explore their new freedoms and get their first taste of an adult relationship.

  I’d been at a party with Cooper, and he’d gotten hammered with only three shots, a perpetual lightweight. Chloe had been outside, nursing a beer and staring up at the sky. I’d formally met her an hour before that when Coop had introduced her and Vanessa.

  I’d made a joke about the beer being flat. She’d smiled, and when I’d asked what she was doing, she pointed at the inky sky and told me she’d found Camelopardalis, and thanks to years of learning Latin, I laughed, positive she was trying to blow me off or sound like a genius because I knew Camelopardalis translated to giraffe. When I laughed, so did she. And I no longer cared if she was trying to sound smart or telling me to get lost, I closed the distance between us and stared blankly up at the sky.

  “It’s one of the hardest constellations for me to see, but I think the beer helped,” she told me. “The giraffe was fairly unknown and exotic in the seventeenth century, so its species name refers to it having a body similar to a camel but the colors of a leopard, so they called them camel-leopard. That cluster of faint stars is supposed to be the spots on the giraffe.”

  She’d had too many details for it to be a lie, and still, it seemed implausible and strangely fascinating as my buzz waned with another drink of water, my attention focused on her rather than the sky. And when she glanced back at me, her light brown hair blew in the breeze and seemed to charge something inside of her that made her green eyes brighter and fuller, and then she leaned forward and kissed me. It had been a gentle kiss—a question that I answered ardently with a swipe of my tongue across the seal of her lips. But before I could taste her, a group of guys stumbled outside, laughing as they lit a joint, and Chloe straightened, her smile and that spark both gone. She disappeared inside like Cinderella, only when I saw her again, she wasn’t eager or relieved that I’d found her. No, instead she ignored me like she had no idea who I was.

  That was fine with me.

  I didn’t want drama or a relationship. I was finally out from under my father’s thumb, and I wanted to relax and have fun and not have to worry about who was watching me or what anyone thought.

  So, how did I get here? Driving across the country like a fucking chauffeur for a girl I kissed once who avidly avoids me, her sister who I am only kind of friends with, and my teammate?

  That, my friends, is the ugly side of giving a shit.

  Not about the twins, or my insignificant kiss with Chloe, or caring about the daggers she shoots my way—no, this is about friendship. My friendship with Cooper—lightweight, in bed by ten, all-around nice guy—Sutton, who is the closest thing I’ve ever known to a sibling. We met freshman year through football. He was serious, focused, and determined while I was pissing away my time and dodging calls from my parents about my missed classes, and when Coach Harris told me I had to either focus or ride the pine, it took everything in me not to tell him to shove it up his arsehole. I was tired of expectations and was about to quit when Cooper made some bullshit excuse for me and started picking me up every day to ensure I’d be at practice on time. That escalated to going to the gym and tutoring me when I fell dangerously close to failing a mathematics class I should have been acing.

  Cooper dug me out of the crater I’d made with not giving a shit. I was trying to skate by on my looks and name, and he helped me rebuild a semblance of balance with football, school, and my sanity that the fans and hype that comes with being a football player at Brighton hacks at nearly as often and hard as the paparazzi when I’m in London. And because Cooper has had a crush on Vanessa Robinson since before his balls dropped, I couldn’t tell him no when he proposed the plan to go across the country with them to allow him to get closer to her.

  Call me motherfucking Cupid.

  “Which stop are you most excited for, Chloe?” Cooper asks, twisting arou
nd in his seat so he can see her. “Vegas?”

  She scoffs.

  I glance up into my rearview mirror to catch her reaction, surprised to find a contradicting smile. “You know me so well.”

  Cooper chuckles, but the joke is lost on me. While Cooper is like a brother to me, Chloe is still his best friend. The two of them are close, which makes her actively avoiding me that much more apparent.

  “She’s been looking at all the best places to eat in each city,” Vanessa says. “She has a list of dessert shops she wants to stop at.”

  Cooper’s laughter grows. In the rearview mirror, I catch the gentle lift of Chloe’s shoulders. “And coffee. Don’t forget coffee.”

  “Cooper already knows you’re an addict. I’m sure he assumed.” Vanessa moves her feet, the shine of her sandal catching in my peripheral vision. I consider how much they’re going to talk and request to stop. How Cooper and I will be responsible for them in the cities we stay over in, and how my car’s going to smell like a girl’s perfume by the time we reach Seattle. The mounting warnings have me considering driving through the night and trying to shorten this trip and tell my dad that the hotels were all fine. I’d take his wrath and disappointment, accept his look of condemnation at the dinner table over Christmas break if it meant I wouldn’t be stuck in a car for two and a half weeks with shrill giggles and social media updates and selfies.

  Then I consider how the dominoes might fall if I were to do that, how my dad is grooming Scott Lewis at this very moment to know everything about the Banks Resort and Luxury Hotel chain from the ground up. They’re currently in London, visiting our original hotel that was opened over a hundred years ago by my great-grandpa. They’re going to be traveling across England and up into Scotland, then over to Ireland before going through much of Western Europe. Our American hotels represent nearly seventy percent of our company’s revenue, but Dad insisted on taking Lewis abroad to teach him the history of the company as well as understand where the mission statement for Banks Resorts and Luxury Hotels was born and how it became the world-renowned chain it is today. Lewis wasn’t a bad choice. He’s worked for our family for ten years and has an impressive resume packed with awards and accomplishments that will take me, at minimum, a decade to achieve. In addition to being smart, he’s savvy, well-liked, and he delivers one hell of an interview—something I can’t do even with a written and rehearsed speech in my grasp.

  Dad claims Lewis is the backup plan. However, I’ve seen the writing on the wall since I was a kid, when I preferred tossing the football around with my uncle Kip to sampling which flavor of coffee or what thread count of sheets should be used. It wasn’t that I didn’t care, it’s just I had two loves—the hotel chain that’s been in our family for three generations and football—and my father never understood how I could love anything more than money.

  During these next two and a half weeks, I will be stopping at several of our hotel sites, checking in with a few of our poorest performers, and some of our best. My goal is to reconcile the differences between them, learn what our top performers are doing right, and leverage that with ones that are struggling. I’ll report my findings and ideas for improvement to my dad on August twenty-eighth when he and Lewis fly to Seattle to discuss how their European tour went. And I plan to be prepared because while Lewis has me beat in practically everything except for his last name not being the one on the buildings and letterhead, ingenuity and innovation are where I strive. This was why when I was twelve, I made a thousand bucks one summer while staying with my parents in Miami by recognizing the need for our neighborhood to have a drink stand outside of the fitness and pool center. To me, it seemed like a no-brainer—Miami is hot as hell. People were working out and sweating. Boom. Not only did I make a thousand bucks, I only worked for the first week, and then neighborhood kids worked for me, and I paid them while I lounged by the pool. My mum found this opportunistic and made me give the kids I’d employed more money when she’d found out. Dad, however, tripled my profits and invested the money for me, telling me I had a keen eye for business.

  “What about you, Tyler? How was your summer?” I have to look in my rearview mirror to see which of the sisters spoke. Vanessa smiles at me. She’s pretty, beautiful even, with long brown hair highlighted around her face, wide green eyes, and a mouth that could make any man have wet dreams.

  I glance at Chloe, expecting to find the mirrored version of Vanessa like I had when Cooper first introduced us. At the time, I’d seen every guy’s teenage dream flash before me as the two laughed at something, my lack of familiarity drawing an identical image of the two. Now, it’s easy for me to tell them apart. Chloe has the same hair color, the same eyes, the same erotic mouth, even the same jawline—but their voices are different, Chloe’s a bit grittier, and she’s a little taller, her lips slightly rounder.

  It’s their similarities that had the football team making so many threesome jokes when a rumor circulated about our kiss after one of the potheads shared the news.

  “Life in Miami is basically living the dream,” I tell her as I sit back in my seat, one hand gripping the wheel as I fall into the role I created—the role my family created. “Sun, beaches, parties. I can’t complain.”

  “Ty spent half his summer on a yacht and the other half at poker tables.” Cooper glances at me, envy shining in his eyes.

  I smirk in response, knowing my tanned skin and the different photos of me people shared over the summer fit this narrative perfectly, regardless of the truth.

  In the rearview mirror, I catch Chloe watching me, her brows pinched before she notices my gaze and quickly looks away.

  “You guys didn’t pack as much as I expected,” Cooper says.

  “We left most of our stuff in storage over the summer, remember?” Vanessa asks him.

  “Oh, I remember. We talked about how if you do it again, you won’t pack all your books together in the same boxes.” Cooper shakes his head at the memory.

  Vanessa laughs. “I’m bummed summer’s over, but at the same time, I’m really glad to be returning to Seattle. I have a feeling this is going to be the best year yet.”

  “Did you guys decide on an apartment?” Cooper asks.

  “We did.” Vanessa’s tone isn’t nearly as confident as Chloe glances at her.

  Cooper laughs. “I take it you won the coin toss?” he asks, looking at Vanessa.

  “I just made the executive decision. It’s a little smaller, but we’ll be downtown. We can walk to get coffee, and to the library, fisand to pick up dinner…”

  I could kick myself for watching their expressions and trying to read between the lines because I don’t care—yet, I recognize the annoyance that flashes across Chloe’s face and the nervous energy from Vanessa.

  “It’s going to be an epic year,” Vanessa continues. “And this is the perfect way to kick it off.” She sits back in her seat as I return my focus to the road to keep myself from comparing the sisters.

  My thoughts move to Cooper and how he’d reacted when he’d heard about my micro kiss with Chloe. He’d been ready to go fisticuffs with me, and that was when I learned not only was my friend a possessive wanker, but he liked one of the sisters. I’m pretty sure like is an understatement considering he chose Brighton over a handful of more prestigious schools because this is where Vanessa is going. He works his arse off and loves football, but he doesn’t live for it, and he doesn’t feel like a piece of him dies when we have a bad game. No, Cooper’s smart and ambitious and wants to start his own programming company and stay in Seattle, far from the hot and humid summers of Florida.

  Cooper avoided me for a full week after confronting me about the kiss and then was defensive and cagey when he finally demanded to know what had happened. Relief practically poured out of him when I told him I’d kissed Chloe—not Vanessa.

  We drive mostly in silence until Chloe and Vanessa both fall asleep.

  “What do you think we should do tonight?” Cooper asks.

&nbs
p; I shake my head, my thoughts converging on what information I need to focus on once we arrive and how the meeting I’ve ordered will go. Are they going to stare at me like some uppity little shit who had everything served on a silver platter? Will they try to work with me? My thoughts have been so consumed with the hotel that I haven’t given a second of thought to what we’ll do in The Big Easy.

  “It sounds like your tour guides already have everything planned out. Desserts and coffee, didn’t you hear?”

  Coop sniggers. “Come on, man. We’re going to be in New Orleans—we have to do something fun.”

  “Does that translate to getting Vanessa drunk enough that she might end up in your room tonight?”

  Cooper’s gaze flashes to the backseat, and then to me, a warning clear in his eyes, worried she overheard.

  I chuckle. Guy’s got it bad. “What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know. What do people do in New Orleans?”

  “Now I’m the tour guide?”

  His lips thin with annoyance, but his gaze turns desperate.

  “We’re staying in the Garden District, so we’ll be a short ride to the French District where there’ll be all kinds of tourist shit. We can go down Bourbon Street tonight, and if the girls like to dress up and go clubbing, there’s a masquerade club that’s big with the tourists.” Because a simple mask that barely covers one’s forehead and nose somehow manages to conceal all inhibitions. “Drinks, beads, dancing.”

  “You can get us in?”

  I glance at him, surprised he’s asking until I remember how few and far between Cooper’s requests go. It’s one of the reasons I trust him and why our friendship has become a brotherhood—he doesn’t ask for things and expects even less. I reach for my phone and hit a couple of buttons to reach Anika, our family’s primary contact for social events, travel, and nearly anything that’s requested of her.