“Don’t count on that—there’s always a chance for escape.” I salute her and then, because I know Parrish is watching, blow her a kiss.
“Is it really okay to pretend to be a lesbian now?” he snaps coldly as I join him on his way out the theater doors. I cast a look his direction, hefting my bag up my shoulder.
“Did I say I was a lesbian? I’m bisexual. About a two on the Kinsey scale, you colossal dickhead.”
He grits his teeth and ignores me, but when I reach out to grab hold of his arm—I just want to talk—he reacts like I’ve gut punched him. Parrish tears his arm away from me and stumbles back, breathing so hard he looks like he’s on the tail end of a marathon run.
“Don’t touch me,” he chokes out, dropping his bag to the ground to rub at his arm. You’d think I just backhanded him or something.
“Why not?” I demand, stepping forward. Parrish moves away from me until it’s his back that’s pressed into a bank of lockers. In an echo of what he did to me the night of the sleepover, I slam my palms against the metal on either side of him. Luckily, this part of the school empties quick after classes get out. There’s no one around to see us. “Look at me.”
The words aren’t a suggestion, more of a demand. Instead of following it however, Parrish tries to duck under my arm and escape.
I step in closer, until our bodies are pressed tightly together. Pish. You should see the way this boy shudders, like I’ve dumped a jar of spiders on his head.
“Let go of me.”
Another demand, but from him this time.
“Why should I?” I counter, pressing harder against him. My breasts squish against the front of his chest as I rise up on my tiptoes and try to get him to look me in the eye. “Aren’t you the king of the school? You sure act like you are. Well, tough guy, why do you keep giving me this hot-cold act?”
He turns his beautiful eyes down to mine, and I’m struck once again by the color. Toasted coconut flecked with gold, a swirl of copper and chocolate and espresso. And that hair of his … why does it have to look so soft, like it’s begging to be tousled and touched and tugged on?
“Why?” he echoes, like I am the crazy person here. “Why?” Parrish grabs my arms from the outside, yanking on them and trying to get me to drop them by my sides. Only, he doesn’t have an exceptionally good grip in that position, and I’m much stronger than I look. “Are you insane? Why do you think?”
“Because of the stepbrother thing?” I clarify, and he laughs at me.
“Yeah, because of the stepsister thing.” He gives another last-ditch effort to shove my arms down, and I bend my elbows suddenly. What happens then is that he’s able to push my arms down, but also that we end up violently slamming even closer together.
“Why did you ask me to forget about Chasm?” I whisper, feeling this nauseous twisting in my belly at the mention of Chas’ name. Somehow, someway, I can’t stop thinking about Chasm. Or Parrish. Chasm and Parrish. “Why did you ask me to stop dating Lumen?”
This time, Parrish clenches his jaw and looks away. I have the strongest urge to grab his tie and yank his face down to mine. I can feel my heart thundering—no surprise—but I can also feel his heartbeat through his shirt. It, too, is racing like a herd of galloping horses. See, I told you: we are into each other.
“Are you really into her? Her personality is basically the opposite of yours, but I think you’d be a good match anyway. You should marry Lumen and inherit her empire with her.” Parrish keeps his gaze turned away from me, and I want to just goddamn scream.
“That’s how you feel, huh?” I ask, releasing him and stepping back from the lockers. “Fine then. I’ll keep dating Lumen. Since you don’t give a single fuck anyway. You’re probably right: we make a good pair, an opposites attract sort of thing. I can keep her grounded; she can break me out of my shell.”
I shove off of him and storm down the hallway toward the parking garage. Kimber’s waiting just outside, scowling and tapping her foot.
“Seriously? Mom’s bringing my new phone home today. I need to get back and check my messages.”
I ignore her, storming past and pretending like I don’t know she was on her iPad all night, checking those very same messages. As if she’s missed out on anything by not having a phone for three seconds. I wonder what she told Tess about the last phone? The one that Parrish smashed the same way he seems intent on smashing my heart into pieces …
Anyway, I don’t care. My furniture is here, my clothes, my things. It’ll be a much-needed dose of home.
Even if home was always a lie.
Even if.
My furniture is waiting for me in the space pod that Tess calls my room. My boxes, too. The movers she hired kept everything padded during shipping, and stripped it down for me before I even got home. They stacked my boxes neatly in the walk-in closet that I haven’t yet taken advantage of yet.
It’ll be interesting, seeing all my plain, hand-me-down clothes hanging in it.
“How was school?” a voice asks from behind me. I don’t need to turn to know that it’s Tess.
Tess.
The last person in the world I want to see right now.
She doesn’t seem to know that she should take my silence as a hint, moving into the room to look at the mix of antique and handmade furniture from my grandma. The hideous bed, dresser, and nightstand that were in here before are gone. Thank the fucking universe.
Tess sits down on the edge of my bed, and when I glance back, I see that she’s in her ‘messy author’ uniform, the one that I like so much better than the Prada heels and the Armani suit jackets. She looks human right now, which makes all of her bullshit easier to swallow somehow.
“I know you don’t want to talk to me right now,” she hazards, picking up a picture frame from my wooden nightstand. It’s a family photo from last year, one with Saffron, Maxine, my grandparents, and me in it. Her face twitches, and I can see that it’s taking a real effort on her part not to say anything. “But I wanted to give you your new phone.”
I see a white box sitting on the bed beside her, but how can I get excited about that? A new phone with a new number and all sorts of tracking devices and parent spy software? Gross.
“Thanks.” I notice that the box contains an iPhone. Ugh. Why do pretentious rich people always love Apple products so much? My last phone was a Fairphone, the most ethical and responsibility created smartphone that Maxine could find. Oh well. In the scope of things, it isn’t such a huge deal, is it?
No, the phone isn’t a big deal, but the way Tess trashed it? That was. Incredibly disrespectful and selfish. So, here I am, without a phone or a TV or a PlayStation or a laptop. All I have is my academy-issued iPad which is locked down like San Quentin. I tried to look up a red-footed booby (this is a bird, by the way) to help Benjamin with his science report last night, and it gave me an inappropriate content warning for the word ‘booby’.
“Dakota,” Tess begins, and I pause, holding a stack of clothes in my hands. When I first walked in here after school, I could smell home. And oh my god, oh my god, I can’t even begin to describe how much I missed it. There was the scent of pine mixed with the gardenia laundry detergent that my grandpa likes, a hint of sawdust and just a whiff of Nevaeh’s body spray. I won’t lie: I cried. I went into my bathroom, and I sat on the toilet, and I just cried for about thirty minutes straight.