“Meg, what are you even laughing at?” Tiffani questions, sounding peeved.
“I’m sorry,” Meghan splutters again as she tries her hardest to control herself. “I’m texting Jared. He’s hilarious.”
“Who the fuck is Jared?” Rachael asks.
“The guy from Pasadena! The one from the beach,” she says. She smiles at Tiffani and adds, “He and his friends are coming on Saturday.”
“Oh my God, you and Eden are ridiculous!” Rachael folds her arms across her chest and rolls her eyes. “You’re both talking to guys and neither of you thought to tell us?”
“You never told us about Trevor,” Tiffani says with a playful grin. “We only found out because Meg walked in on the two of you at Jason’s party last year.”
“Let it go,” she huffs, but she’s cracking a smile.
The guys show up five minutes later. I’m thankful because we’ve been sitting listening to Meghan tell us everything she finds hilarious about Jared, and she’s beginning to repeat herself.
There’s Tyler, Dean, and Jake, and I notice that Dean has positioned himself between the other two. I still don’t understand how Tyler and Jake are friends, yet they hate each other. Somehow they can force themselves into acting civil. The three of them wander over to us and pull over chairs from another table. I notice how Tyler settles himself next to Tiffani, but not too close. His eyes never meet mine.
“So we’ve decided,” Jake starts, once we’ve gotten past the greetings, “that we’ll go to Dean’s before the party on Saturday.”
“A party before a party,” Dean says. He grins as he quickly glances around the six of us, as though he’s trying to gauge if we’re game or not. “We’ll take care of the booze.”
“You guys just take care of looking good,” Jake finishes. He pulls a face and shrugs, leaning back in his seat and folding his arms across his chest.
Rachael flings her spoon across the table at him, and he dodges it by a centimeter. “Prick,” she mutters, and he offers her a crooked smile.
“You know I’m kidding, Rachy baby,” he says innocently. He cocks his head as though he’s challenging her to a rap battle or something.
“Don’t call me that!”
While they bicker, I don’t say anything. I’m mostly too embarrassed at the thought of the girls thinking I had sex with Jake two days ago, but I’m also trying my hardest to act as nonchalant around Tyler as possible. Too much eye contact could be suspicious, but none at all could also raise questions. After all, he’s my stepbrother. It would be weird if we didn’t acknowledge each other. So occasionally I glance over at him, hoping each time that he’ll look up at the same moment, but somehow I never seem to be able to catch his eye. He’s too busy staring at the table while Tiffani runs her fingers up and down his arm, and he looks like he’s frozen stiff. She doesn’t seem to notice. Her hands reach up to grasp his jaw as she draws his lips toward hers, but he jerks his head to the side and she ends up planting a kiss on his cheek. After that, he stares at the ground, never looking back up.
I angle my body slightly away from them and turn to Meghan for support, but she’s back on her phone again, snorting and giggling at texts from Jared. I glare around the group. All of them are annoying me in one way or another, except Dean. My eyes land on him, sitting at the opposite side of the table and looking as left out as I feel.
“Freaks,” he mouths. He smiles, and I think about the five-dollar bill that he wrote on and I grin back, but then Rachael’s voice distracts me.
“Eden, you and Jake should go for a walk or something,” she says with an edge to her voice, her eyes wide and encouraging as she stares at me. She gives me a curt nod and turns back to Jake. “Off you go, lovebirds.”
Jake raises his eyebrows, looking perplexed, like he wants to ask, “What the hell?” but manages to refrain. He stands and lets his eyes fall to me before he nods to the escalator. “Eden?”
Rachael’s beaming at me, Dean has averted his eyes to the sky, and Tyler has finally glanced up, his attention caught. Tiffani is tracing circles on his neck with her index finger now, but he doesn’t seem to pay attention, only glares at me instead.
Jake’s still waiting, so I quickly get to my feet, murmur, “We won’t be long,” to everyone, and walk around the table until I reach him. I don’t linger to wait for a reply from anyone, so Jake and I head off on our own. We weave our way through the food court and across the dining deck.
Jake stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jeans as we take the escalator down to the second level of the mall. He leans against the handrail. “So what’s up?”
“Not much,” I say. I don’t particularly want to talk to him, especially after I’ve been ignoring his texts for a few weeks now. I was hoping he’d give up. That way, we wouldn’t be in the awkward situation that we are now. “We haven’t talked in a while.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I’ve been busy.”