I could try. Maybe.
Throwing myself on my bed, I put my soda on my nightstand and took out my phone. If I was going to do some deep introspection, I needed company for that. I sent a text to my girl Penelope, who happened to be Elena’s much nicer cousin and my best friend Gabe’s girlfriend.
Me: How do I live with Elena without murdering her?
Pen: Hi, babe.
Me: Hey, girlie. Now, advice.
Pen: Elena isn’t so different from you.
Me: What did I do to you to make you hate me this way?
Pen: I’m serious! She’s fiercely loyal, tough as nails, kinda scary, and wicked smart. Like you, Hells.
Me: Ugh.
Pen: Love you, babe, but she’s the other side of your coin.
Me: All right. Done with that line of convo. I need help.
Pen: Anything. BTW, Gabe’s here reading over my shoulder. He’s still dying that you and El are roommates.
Me: Tell Gabe to go fuck himself.
Pen: I would never! (he says to tell you he loves you endlessly)
Me: Ugh, same. Anyway, the help I need is how do I stop fighting?
Pen: Explain.
Me: There’s a guy. Our lips keep touching. And every fucking time, I push him away. I don’t even know if I want to push him away, but I can’t stop doing it.
Pen: This is Gabe. You kissed a boy?!?!?
Me: Give Pen the phone back. Adults are speaking!
Gabe: Nope. You don’t need to be nice, boo. If the dude is a real man, he wants you, he’ll keep coming back. He gets scared by a little bitchy attitude, he’s a pencil dick. My Pen was a bitchy angel to me, but she let me touch her legs, so it didn’t deter me. I liked the abuse.
Laughing, I dropped my phone on my stomach. No one was like Gabriel fucking Fuller. Just then, I was homesick for the days we skinned our knees in the skate park, stole money from our parents to buy popsicles from the ice cream man, and generally wreaked havoc around Savage River together. I was glad he and Pen had gotten out and were living the good life, but I missed the hell out of my boy.
Me: There’s wisdom somewhere in that insanity. I know there is.
Gabe: Damn straight, Hells. Am I gonna meet this boy next weekend?
Me: Next weekend? What?!?
Gabe: Wouldn’t miss my girl’s birthday. Me and Pen, Bash and Grace, Bex and Ash—we’re all coming to SR. Gonna flip the bird to your teen years, boo. Now, I repeat, will I be meeting pencil dick?
Me: Ahhh! What?? I’m so excited. Also, no. No meeting the boy, dick size yet to be determined. I don’t even know how I feel about him. He’s got complications.
Gabe: Aw, you’re no fun.
Pen: I got my phone back. Ignore Gabe. If you think the guy is safe, maybe try to have one conversation without fighting and see how it feels. If he doesn’t make you feel safe, then ditch him, Hells. You’re too rad to waste time with unworthy boys.
Me: K. Sound advice. I’ll try. Thanks for being a real one, Penelope. Kick Gabe’s shins for me.
Pen: Never. Love you, girlie.
Me: Love you too.
I tossed my phone aside and sipped my soda. A whole conversation without fighting? Theo and I hadn’t had one of those. I shouldn’t have been contemplating it. He had a girl who clearly wasn’t over him. A girl who matched his golden-god status.
Complicated.
But I hadn’t kissed anyone in a year and a half. There was something about Theo that had made me break my fast. Something beyond his hotness. It was still up in the air what it was.
Tomorrow, I’d be nice to Theo, then we’d see.
Chapter Nine
Theo
Helen had her bare feet on my dash, sipping coffee, singing softly to the music filling my car. She had a red string tied around her ankle with a tiny bell that made a faint jingle when she moved. Not something I would have noticed normally, but we were a half hour into the drive to L.A. and Helen’s shorts stopped at the tops of her thighs. Tan legs and small, almost dainty feet filled my vision.
Because I kept looking.
Her head turned, catching me looking at her, and I didn’t care.
“What?” Her lips curved. She knew what.
“Your legs, Tiger. Nice.”
Her palm smoothed from her knee to her ankle. “They’re covered in scars, Theodore. Not nice by a stretch, but they get the job done.”
“Scars don’t detract.” Helen’s legs were undeniably sexy. Not long, but long enough. Tan with lean, taut muscles. The kind of legs a man imagined wrapped around him. Hard to look away from. Hard to think about anything else when they were on display.
“Mmm.”
Yeah, time for another topic.
“Did you see Luciana this morning?”
“Mmhmm. No time for breakfast at the T, so we grabbed a donut at the grocery store. She’s easy, so she adapted.”
I clicked my tongue. “I would’ve given you a ride. Next weekend, I’m there.”
“It’s cool, Theodore. We’ve got a system down to get the groceries back to the trailer on our boards. Better to do it that way than rely on help that won’t always be there.”
I didn’t know how to answer that. All I knew was now that I was aware Helen and her little sister rode their skateboards with groceries in their hands every week, it was going to be impossible for me to stand by and do nothing. I felt like a dick for not being there for them this morning.
“You’re probably going to tell me it’s none of my business, but I have to ask: where’s your dad and why isn’t he helping you two?”
She dropped her legs from the dash and tucked them to the side on her seat. “My dad’s in prison for dealing and assault. Probably more, but he’s been in and out of jail so many times, I mix up the charges. If he weren’t in prison, he still wouldn’t be helping. He takes, he doesn’t give. Luc’s dad died last summer. Accident, but can you call it an accident when you’re so high out of your mind, you drive your truck into a tree going full speed?”
Shocked at both her answer and the fact that she’d given me all that of her own free will, it took me a minute to formulate a response. In that time, the heavy silence only filled with an old Sublime song filtering through the speakers. Helen had closed up shop. She twisted her body toward her window, her head on the glass.
She sucked in a shaky, ragged breath.
“Sorry you asked?”
“No. Sorry you were born into that. Luciana too. She’s just a kid, and that, knowing how her dad went out, god, that must’ve been—”
“A relief,” Helena supplied.
“Relief?”
“It was a relief for her. He had custody, but if you can believe it, her living situation with him was worse than our mom. He had money, though, so he got the kid. When her dad died, I got to have her.”
Reaching out, I dug my fingers into the side of her hair, letting that silk slide along my skin. Her head tipped my way a little.
“She’s lucky to have a big sister like you, Tiger. So fucking lucky.”
I kept stroking her hair until I needed my hand on the wheel again. She stayed quiet, leaning into me, letting me soothe her, and that was enough, because with Helen, it was huge.
She sank into her seat and yawned, big and noisy.