Addy gives me a long hard look across the table. I recognize that look. It's the you'd-better-not-do-anything look. I take a sip of water and wink at her. Challenge accepted.
I'm silent while our parents make small introductions and small talk. I learn that the Bensons finance independent films. There's the Wicked Bitch's angle.
"I didn't know you were even interested in acting, Addy," I say pointedly.
Her mother interrupts before she can. "Addy would be a brilliant actress, and she's always been motivated to expand her career and her brand into as many different avenues as possible, which is exactly why we're doing the clothing line and the perfume. It's going to be carried in all the major department stores, you know."
"That's impressive," Tustin says. "For someone so young."
Addy laughs and sips her water. "You're my age, aren't you?" she asks. "My parents said you have an MBA. What, are you some kind of child prodigy?"
"I've been very fortunate," Tustin says, shrugging with obviously false modesty, and I roll my eyes. Addy isn't falling for this guy's bullshit. He's so...fucking smarmy, with his carefully disheveled hair and chiseled jawline and manicured nails. He's wearing a suit I'm certain cost more than my piece-of-shit car.
"You're being modest." Addy smiles and wipes her mouth with her napkin. Then she tucks her hair behind her ear. That gesture almost makes me lose my fucking mind.
"No, I'd say he's pretty fucking fortunate," I say.
"Hendrix," the Colonel cautions. "This is not the time nor the place."
"Your parents tell me you're Addy's bodyguard," Tustin says, lifting a forkful of fish to his mouth. "So I'd say you're much more fortunate than I am."
Addy laughs nervously. "I'm not sure Hendrix would agree with you," she says. "He didn't exactly ask to be stuck with me."
"He didn't have many other options," the Colonel says, half under his breath.
The Wicked Bitch is chatting with Tustin's parents, and Tustin seems too distracted by the fact that he's sitting beside Addy to give a shit, but I watch Addy's face go chalk white when she hears my father speak. She clears her throat. "That's not true," she says. "Hendrix was a Marine."
"I see," Tustin says, wrinkling his nose like the word itself is distasteful. "An officer, at least?"
"No," I say sarcastically. "Not a officer. Just a Sergeant."
"Oh, I would have expected you'd be an Army officer, like your father." Tustin's father leans around his wife to make sure I can hear his stupid southern drawl.
"Sorry to disappoint," I say, not bothering to hide the bitterness in my tone.
"So what did you do in the Marines, Hendrix?" Tustin is suddenly interested in my job. I think he's intentionally trying to provoke me. If he isn't, he's just idiotically bumbling onto the wrong subject.
"I killed people," I say, my voice flat. "And I watched my friends die. And I tried to come back from Afghanistan in one fucking piece. So I guess since I didn't get blown to fucking hell, I'm one of the most fortunate people you'd meet. The guys that didn't – my friends – they weren't so lucky. And I get to think about just how goddamn lucky I am every single day for the rest of my life."
Tustin's mother chokes on her food, downing a sip of water and finally standing to excuse herself.
"Hendrix," Addy's mother cautions. Addy is staring at me, her eyes big, shaking her head almost imperceptibly. "This is not appropriate dinner conversation."
"Hendrix." Addy looks at me, her expression pained.
"Well," Tustin says. "I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to turn the subject to a slightly more cheerful topic of conversation."
I don't look at Addy, or any of them, when I leave.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ADDY
FIVE YEARS, THREE WEEKS AGO
I pull at the dress I'm wearing, this little black dress my mother said was completely inappropriate but that I bought anyway. I'm practically an adult, at least in music industry terms. And screw her, anyway. She's attempting to control me, trying to dictate which boys I date or don't date. Mostly don't date.
Not since the kiss.
The kiss, the one that changed everything. The kiss that made Hendrix pull himself away from me like he was in the worst kind of physical pain, then turn and walk away. He's barely spoken to me since it happened, nothing more than a handful of sentences, and even though he doesn't parade a string of slutty high school girls through the house the way he did once upon a time, I know he's still screwing his way through a slew of girls. He has to be.
It shouldn't bother me. He's leaving for boot camp in three weeks and tonight is his graduation party.
He should never have kissed me. I should have never kissed him back.