Tyler shrugs. “Man, I must have forgotten,” he says, and then diverts his eyes back to me. They’re soft now. Gentle. “Sorry, Eden. My bad.”
There’s a long silence. Dad looks completely puzzled, Tyler appears nonchalant, and I’m still trying to figure out what just happened. If I witnessed it properly, Tyler just helped me out. Helped me. Remarkable.
I find it hard to believe that one day he might make sense to me. I think that right now, he’s almost impossible to understand. One minute he seemed delighted at the idea of me getting caught, the next he jumped in and covered for me. Why? It’s giving me a headache, the way he switches between hating me and getting along with me. Honestly, I wish he’d just decide already. It’d save me the hassle of trying to figure it out.
“Next time, don’t leave in the first place without telling me,” Dad says. He seems irritated, but just when I think he’s about to walk away, he says, “By the way, we’re going out for a late lunch. All of us. That means you too, Tyler. Dress nicely.”
The thought of a “family” meal doesn’t particularly bother me anymore. However, Tyler’s intense stare does. And so when Dad heads off to the kitchen, presumably to find Ella, I seize the opportunity to make sense of the past five minutes.
“You get off the hook so easily,” Tyler murmurs, but I ignore him.
Instead, I ask, “Why did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Lie for me.” He seemed quite content with watching me get busted; then his attitude miraculously changed and he decided to step in and save the day. And I have no idea why. “I don’t get it.”
He shrugs, his eyes still calm again. His mood swings confuse me. “I owed you one,” he tells me. “For taking you to that party last night. I didn’t think it through. Sorry.” His apology is sincere, which I find surprising, and he’s not yelling at me for once, which is even more surprising.
“Why did you even invite me along in the first place?” I ask, my voice riddled with contempt. “Did you honestly think I’d want to be around that stuff?”
“I’m sorry,” he says again, this time even quieter, and for a second, I consider accepting his apology, but then he ruins the entire thing when he decides to mutter, “So you were with Jake, huh?”
I guess he saw the car. “What does it matter to you if I was? You have your opinion of him and I have mine. I don’t want to talk about it again, because it’s got nothing to do with you.”
“I need to take a shower,” he says, bypassing the matter even though he was the one to bring it up. He narrows his eyes again, but with delicacy. “We’ll talk about this later. After this bullshit meal that we’ve gotta sit through.”
“We’ll talk about it later?” I repeat. Until now, I never took Tyler for a conversationalist. Especially when it’s a conversation about the guy I was locking lips with last night.
“Yeah,” he says. He turns around, and as he makes his way up the stairs, he throws a glance over his shoulder. He’s smiling. “And remember what your dad said. Wear something nice.”
Chapter 13
We arrive twenty minutes late for lunch. The first ten minutes can be blamed on Ella, because she ended up changing her outfit twice before deeming herself appropriately dressed. The second half can be blamed on Tyler. He held us up over the simple fact that he wasn’t getting to take his car. Dad and Ella planned on taking the Lexus and the Range Rover, saying there was no need for Tyler to take a third car. After all, he’s grounded. And eventually he gave up the fight and dragged his slumped body into his mom’s car. The entire time, I wondered how being forced to sit in a Range Rover could be considered a punishment.
“Here you are, Mr. Munro,” the classy waitress at the classy restaurant says in a classy accent as she leads us to a classy table with classy cutlery. Classy, classy, classy. Five years ago, Dad would have taken Mom and me to a greasy burger joint.
He thanks the waitress and we all sit ourselves down. Dad, Ella, and Chase are across the table; Tyler and Jamie are on either side of me. The restaurant is large, yet there are only a small number of tables, which are extremely well presented and spaced out. Nothing is worse than being in a restaurant surrounded by other tables all within inches of each other.
“This is nice, having us all together,” Ella comments once we finish ordering our drinks. I go for water and Tyler unsuccessfully tries for a beer. “We should do this every Sunday.”
Dad nods, glancing sideways at her with a familiar expression in his eyes. Once upon a time, he used to look at my mom that way. “Agreed.”