The entire thing just confuses me. I don’t know why, but my life in Santa Monica has felt completely separate to my summer in New York. The two were never meant to collide. Now that they have, I’m endlessly feeling nauseous. For the past month, New York has felt like a safe haven. It’s like I’ve been able to completely shut off my life back home. Forget about our parents, forget about our friends, forget about Dean. The best part of it all is that New York has made me forget that Tyler’s my stepbrother, right up until now. Reality has hit us at full force. And, God, it hurts.
“Bloody hell,” Emily murmurs under her breath as she pads across the carpet to me, folding her arms across her chest. She stands by my side and nods to Tiffani. “She’s exactly how I pictured her. Walking in here like she’s all this and all that.”
“You shot her down pretty quickly,” I say. I glance sideways at Emily, studying the way she’s glaring at Tiffani from afar. I keep my voice low. “What was all of that about?”
Emily shrugs and shifts her stare to me, her eyes softening a little. “Tyler told me all about her,” she says. By the windows, Tyler’s pointing out stores and cafés on Third Avenue, all the while continuing to ignore Tiffani’s persistence as she pushes herself closer against him. “What she did was awful,” Emily adds. “I can’t stand girls like her. Besides, I stick up for my mates.”
“Watch yourself,” I murmur quietly, my eyes never leaving Tiffani. She’s got one hand on the back of Tyler’s shoulder blade, the other on her hip. “Her wrath isn’t something you wanna suffer.”
Emily steps forward and turns around slightly so that she’s directly facing me. She laughs and asks, “Speaking from experience?”
“Indeed.” Dealing with Tiffani was hell. It’s hard to be around her now because of it all. She carries with her a sense of power, both in the way that she smiles and in the way that she talks. It’s terrifying.
Speaking of Tiffani, she must have decided to give up her efforts at trying to weasel her way into Tyler and Dean’s conversation, because she spins around and waltzes toward Emily and me instead. She sighs as she approaches, her eyes set solely on me. She smiles and, as always, it’s fake and bitter. “Eden. Outside. Right now.”
I don’t even flinch, only remain where I am. “No, I’m good.”
Tiffani doesn’t take no for an answer, because she promptly grasps my wrist and roughly yanks me toward the door. I throw Emily a glance over my shoulder and she shrugs back at me with wide eyes. I’m unwillingly pulled out into the lobby, and as Tiffani clicks the door shut behind us, she finally lets go.
“What do you want?” I fold my arms across my chest, taking a step back as she spins around to face me.
Further along the lobby, a guy is leaving his apartment. Tiffani waits in silence as he brushes past us, heading for the elevator. Once he’s gone, her smile turns devious and her eyes grow narrower. “The short answer? I’m starting to miss Tyler.”
It’s so ridiculous that I laugh. I can’t suppress it, and before I even realize it, I’m smiling at how unbelievable she sounds. Maybe it wouldn’t sound so hilarious if their relationship had been honest and real. It wasn’t. She can’t miss someone she never loved. Still laughing, I ask, “And what’s the long answer?”
“I’m starting to miss Tyler and you’re gonna help me get him back,” she shoots back at me without missing a beat. Folding her arms across her chest, her smile turns into a thin line.
I stop laughing. Now it’s just pitiful. She really is deluded. “You know that’s never going to happen, right?”
“Why won’t it? He’s coming back to California, we’re both single, and is it just me or has your brother gotten so much hotter?” She blows out a breath and dramatically fans her face, cheeks tinted with a rose hue.
“Go to hell, Tiffani.”
“God, why are you so snappy?” She gasps and moves her hand to her heart, as though I’ve wounded her, but I only roll my eyes. She’s always so dramatic. “Wait,” she says. For a second, she seems to drop the act she’s putting on, because she looks at me with a perplexed expression that is nothing but sincere. I can see the expression in her eyes shifting as she studies me, and the moment she’s done thinking, she parts her lips and exhales. “You’re not still hooking up with him, are you?”
I’m so taken by surprise by the question that I don’t reply. Even if I tried to deny it, she’d see straight through me. She always does. Blinking at her, I swallow the lump in my throat and then drop my eyes to the floor. Tiffani makes it sound so casual. We’ve never just been “hooking up.” It’s always been more than that.
“Oh my God,” Tiffani says quietly. The shock is evident in her tone. For once, she’s neither taunting nor sneering. “You are?”
I glance back up at her, but I quickly squeeze my eyes shut and press my hand to my face. My cheeks feel rather flushed and all I can murmur through my hand is, “It’s not that big of a deal.” I know I’m lying to myself. I know it’s a big deal. It always will be.