Grace looks at me over the top of her sunglasses and laughs. "Sure you're not, Adds," she says. "What have you done lately -- or ever -- that makes you a bad girl?"
"I -- " I pause, trying to come up with something. I'm only fifteen. It's not like there have been a million opportunities to be a bad girl, even when I was on tour last summer. "I drank beer with Sam Crawford in his room while we were on tour."
Grace gives me a long look. "You were hanging out in Sam Crawford's room?" she asks. "And he gave you beer?"
My heart catches in my throat. Crap. I don't want to get him in trouble or anything. Sam is a few years older than me – nineteen -- and he's totally cute. I thought he was going to try to kiss me, but he didn't, and honestly, I was disappointed. "Yeah. It was no big deal."
Grace laughs. "No big deal because you drink beer all the time, you lush?"
I can feel the heat of embarrassment on my face. Sometimes I totally hate Grace. I can't tell when she's teasing me for being too much of a goody-goody or lecturing me for doing something wrong. "I've had beer before, you know."
"Sam Crawford shouldn't be giving you beer," she says, her tone clipped. "Did he try anything with you?"
"No," I say.
"Good."
"But I totally would have if he did," I spit out. "He's cute and he's nice and I thought he was going to, but he didn't."
"Sam Crawford shouldn't be making a move on you," she says. "He's too old for you. And he's a dick, anyway."
"How do you know?" I ask. "And he's not too old. He's nineteen. That's four years older."
"That's a big difference," she says. It's barely more than the difference between our ages. And she's sitting here hanging out with me. I don't push my luck with her by pointing those things out, because Grace hanging out with me doesn't happen very often enough anymore. She's busy running around with her friends and boyfriends. She used to bring her friends back home to meet me, back when her friends cared who I was. It used to annoy me when she'd show me off to her friends like some kind of trophy, but now she's hanging out with a new group that doesn't think I'm cool enough. And now I kind of miss it.
"Well, nothing happened, anyway," I tell her.
"Good," she says. "Keep it that way. You haven't -- you know -- with anyone, have you?"
"Yeah, right," I say, catching the meaning of her words. "I've barely been on a date. Who would I – you know -- with?"
"That's good," she says. "It's not all it's cracked up to be anyway."
I don't believe her. Sex is obviously all it's cracked up to be, since she's doing it with lots of different guys. I don't say that, even though I want to. It would hurt her feelings, and I don't want to hurt her. Still, I've wondered about sex. A lot. And I want her to tell me about it, but I don't dare ask. She'd totally blow me off as being too young, and I hate that. "Anyway," I say. "Have you even talked to Hendrix?"
I've wondered about Hendrix too. Hendrix makes me think about sex, a lot more than I care to admit, ever since I saw him standing in the foyer the day his father brought him here. He was tattooed and pierced and he looked at his father with anger in his eyes, the kind of anger that sent a secret thrill through me.
Then he turned and looked at me, dark and brooding, his eyes traveling down the length of my body... Something about that look made me shiver. It stayed with me, and I thought about it later that night, when I slid my finger inside my panties.
Grace shrugs. "He doesn't run in the same circles I do," she says. Which is weird because I'd think they'd hang out with similar people, since she's into tattoos and piercings and all that. I don't know. Sometimes I don't understand Grace at all.
I understand my new stepbrother even less.
*
I don't understand why I smell bacon. The smell wakes me up, and I open my eyes, expecting sunlight streaming through the windows, but it's dark.
And I'm still wearing my clothes.
I sit up, groggy, and blink my eyes a few times, trying to register what the hell time it is. The clock reads 5:45. In the freaking morning?
Then I realize I must have laid down on the bed and passed out when Hendrix brought me back yesterday from the diner. Holy shit.
Hendrix.
Pulling open the bedroom door, I pad into the kitchen, where I see Hendrix, his back toward me. Hendrix is shirtless in my kitchen, wearing a pair of olive green sweatpants, slung low on his hips. A sleeve of tattoos runs up the length of his arm, covering his shoulder and side, but I can't tell what the tattoos are from where I stand.
He turns and looks at me over his shoulder, then glances back to the stove, where he's turning pieces of bacon over. "Morning, sweet-cheeks."
"What are you doing here?" The words come out of my mouth before I think. I'm still groggy, even though I've apparently just slept longer than I have since I was a toddler. But seriously, what the hell is Hendrix still doing in my apartment?