Now I most definitely am, I think. I don’t move an inch. My eyes just rest on my dull wall as I listen to the muffled sound of Tyler’s footsteps shuffling across my carpet. “Yeah,” I murmur. “What time is it?”
“Three,” Tyler says, his voice still hushed, like we shouldn’t dare make a sound. I hear him exhale from behind me just as the mattress shifts beneath my body, my comforter lifted up as he slips into my bed. “Can I sleep with you?”
I’m still pretty much half asleep as my eyelids flutter closed again, but the corners of my lips pull up into a small, tired smile. When I don’t reply straight away, Tyler starts to babble.
“I mean, not like hook up with you, just fall asleep, you know, like, rest,” he blurts quickly, his breath tickling the back of my neck, his body never touching mine.
“I know what you meant,” I say.
There’s a long silence. The only thing I can hear is our breathing, completely out of sync. Whenever I inhale, he exhales, and it almost begins to sound like a rhythm until his breathing slows. That’s when I feel his warm, bare skin press against my back, his chest hard yet somehow comfortable, his long fingers moving to touch my arm. The sensation makes my body shiver.
“I’m sorry about Tiffani,” he whispers against my ear as he runs his other hand through my hair.
“You should be.”
“Just let me figure it out,” he almost pleads, his voice laced with something that I can’t quite understand, and, quieter, he adds, “I’m trying to figure everything out.”
I’m still staring at the wall. “Like what?”
“Eden,” he says, “in case you haven’t noticed, I’m pretty fucked up.” He draws his body away from mine and rolls over to face the other way, so I finally tear my eyes away from the wall and switch onto my other side.
I stare at his back now, my gaze resting on his tattoo on the back of his shoulder blade. I lift my hand and press a finger to the ink. “I wouldn’t say that. More like lost.”
“Lost?”
“Yeah,” I say. My voice is barely audible. “I think you’re lost.”
“What makes you think that?”
I trace a line from his tattoo down to the bottom of his spine and back up to his other shoulder, edging my body closer into him, craving the heat from his skin. I wrap my arm around him and close my eyes, whispering, “Because you have no idea what you’re doing or where you’re going,” only moments before I fall back asleep once more.
And by 7:00 a.m., he’s gone.
Chapter 26
“I am so excited!” Rachael squeals from her closet early Saturday evening. I hear the screeching of hangers right before she twirls back into the room in her strapless bra, a collection of tops in her hand. “Okay, which one?”
I prop myself up onto my elbows on her bed and cock my head, studying the pieces of clothing as she lifts each one up individually and hooks them over the top of her door. “The white tube top.”
Rachael ponders over it before she agrees with me. “You’re totally right!” All at once, she scoops up the rest of the clothes and tosses them into a pile in the corner of her room and then pulls on the white tube. It works well with the cerise maxi skirt that she spent twenty minutes contemplating.
“Are you sure this looks okay?” I frown at her and glance down at my own outfit, a mint skater skirt and a white bustier, which, admittedly, does make my chest look slightly more impressive than usual. I’ve stacked a bunch of bracelets on my wrist, but I still feel too casual.
“It’s a beach party,” Rachael says slowly, as though I’m a toddler who’s still learning how to comprehend words. She drops down onto her floor to pull on a pair of tan sandals, too focused on her footwear to even glance up at me. “You look hot. I really like that top.”
“You’re only saying that because it’s yours,” I remark, but I’m smiling. Maybe I do look hot for once and maybe I do like the feeling of satisfaction that stems from this. It makes me feel like I fit in.
Rachael rolls her eyes and then gets to her feet, carefully angling herself in front of her full-length mirror to ensure she looks good. I tell her she looks incredible, but she brushes my comment away as her cheeks flush with color, and we say nothing more in relation to our outfits.
“We’re so gonna be the last ones to get to Dean’s,” she says a few minutes later, once she’s finished applying a third coat of lip gloss. She pouts at the mirror. “You ready?”
“Rachael,” I say as I sit up, “I’ve been ready for thirty minutes.”