I offer him a quick good night and then roll over to face the wall, burying my head in my comforter as he leaves. People say it’s either very easy to fall asleep in a foreign bed or very, very difficult. And right now, despite the fatigue overcoming every inch of my body, I’m beginning to realize that it’s the latter. I roll back over and press a hand to my forehead. The day’s heat is trapped in my new room, and the AC still hasn’t come on. I can’t decide if it’s broken or if Dad has just completely forgotten about it. Either way, I’ll mention it in the morning.
It takes me a good hour of tossing and turning and testing my will to live before I do finally fall asleep. For exactly forty-seven minutes. Nothing seems to last long in this house before it gets interrupted.
I’d assumed if anything were to wake me it would be the scorching heat in my room, not the sound of drunken wails bouncing through my open window. The moans and groans and occasional curse make my ears prick up and my eyes widen. I creep across the floor on my bare knees, slowly and on high alert. I steal a peek over the window ledge. The cool night air feels great against my face.
“No,” a drunk Tyler tells the air. “No.” His expression is completely solemn. A hand is pressed firmly to the lawn. “What the hell is going on?” As he talks to no one but himself, his voice is hushed. I figure he must have walked home, since his car seems to be nowhere around, which reassures me that he does have some common sense. Driving under the influence is too idiotic even for him. “When did it pass midnight?” A tremendous laugh escapes his lips and into the air.
“Hey,” I whisper-yell out the window as I sit up and push it open a little wider. “Up here.”
It takes Tyler’s rolling eyes a good few seconds to locate my voice, and when he spots me up on the second floor, he blesses me with a glare. “What the hell do you want?”
“Are you okay?” Once the words leave my lips, I realize how pointless the question is. He is clearly not okay.
“Open the door,” he says. His words are slightly slurred as he talks. With a single nod, he advances beneath the slanted roof and out of my view, but not without swaying.
Because I’ve stripped down to nothing but my underwear in an attempt to cool down, I quickly grab the first pieces of clothing that find their way into my hands and pull them on as I jog down the staircase. I’m careful to remain silent. I keep the lights off and my steps quiet. The outline of his figure is sharp through the glass panels of the front door.
“What am I doing?” I whisper as I play around with the lock. The jackass who has done nothing but irk the hell out of me is asking me to let him into the house, and I’m doing it? Yet without hesitating, I pull open the door the second I hear the lock click.
“You took your damn time, huh?” Tyler mutters as he barges past me. He carries with him the charming scent of booze and cigarettes.
I close the door and lock it again. “Are you drunk?”
“No,” he says. His grin is wide, and it soon quickly falters into a smirk. “Is it morning yet?”
“It’s 3:00 a.m.”
He chuckles to himself and then attempts to get upstairs, but it involves a series of stumbles and trips. “When did these get here?” he asks as he pats one of the steps. “They weren’t here before.”
I ignore him. “Do you want water or something?”
“Get me another beer” is his answer. Through the darkness, I see him reach the landing and then disappear into his room, thankfully without slamming the door this time. Surely Ella would have him murdered if she saw him right now, drunk and unable to hold himself up for more than a few seconds.
I swiftly follow suit, creeping upstairs and into my own room, hauling off my clothes again and strewing them carelessly across the floor. The room is still unbelievably hot, so instead of crawling back into bed and dying of heat exhaustion, I sit down by the window. I press my face to the cool glass and breathe in the night air. There’s a crushed beer can by the mailbox.
Jackass.
Chapter 4
When Rachael said she would talk to me in the morning, I hadn’t expected her to turn up at my dad’s front door at 10:04 a.m. Waking up, yet alone socializing, before noon in the summer is an absurd thing to do. It’s against the norms of society for any sane teenager. I shoot Rachael a heavy glare the second I descend the staircase.
Dad holds the door open with one hand, a coffee mug in the other and a grin on his face. “Here she comes now!”
“Bye, Dad,” I say gently and throw in an eye roll too. He continues to beam down at me—it’s like I’m in kindergarten again and I’ve just made my first friend—and then he finally moves to the living room. “He’s so embarrassing.”
Rachael laughs. “So’s mine. It must be a rule that all dads have to be lame.”
“Yeah,” I say. Still half asleep, I’m surprised I’m even able to string words together. “I didn’t realize we’d be leaving so early.”
Rachael’s eyes widen as she smiles in a this-girl-is-so-stupid sort of way. “It’s Saturday; if we’re going to the promenade, we need to go super early, because it’s gonna be packed!”