I crossed my arms.
“Far as I know, I’m going out with Jenna, not you.”
“Funny. I’m going out with Jenna…and Lion…and Anna.” He put a certain emphasis on that last name.
Dammit, Jenna. Why didn’t she tell me? I felt an explosion of jealousy.
“The plan was just to go out and have fun, so fine by me,” I said, tired of arguing with him, tired of kissing and then getting angry with him. It was exhausting. I needed to find a way for us to get along. “Let’s just party and have a good time,” I said, forcing a completely unconvincing smile. His words hurt me, and the fact that he didn’t want to touch me again hurt even more.
He seemed to be thinking over my offer.
“Are you proposing a truce, little sister?” he asked in an odd tone. I couldn’t help knitting my brows hearing those words, little sister.
“Exactly,” I said, putting on my other shoe.
“Great. We can take the same car then.” Before I could protest, he continued, “Jenna told me she can’t pick you up, and it’s dumb to take two cars if we’re going to the same place.”
“If that’s what’s convenient,” I said, grabbing my purse and walking out the door.
“I would have preferred thanks,” he said, catching up with me as I jogged down the stairs.
I looked at his T-shirt, which was tight across his upper arms and back. Why did he have to be so hot? Why?
As we walked past the vestibule, I realized I didn’t have any cash. I stopped, not sure what to do.
“What are you doing?” he asked me, annoyed.
In desperation, I made up a lie.
“I think I lost my wallet.” I pretended to look through my purse. I hated putting on a show, and if I hadn’t known he was loaded, I’d have just stayed at home, but at that second, the idea of doing so seemed dreadful.
“Why are you making me waste my time?” he asked.
“What I mean is, I don’t have any money,” I said, making sure he understood.
He rolled his eyes.
“You already made me lose two hundred thousand dollars. Buying you a taco now won’t make any difference. Come on, go get in the car.” He jumped into the driver’s side and threw it into gear.
For a brief moment, I felt guilty, but as soon as I remembered what a jerk he was, the sensation vanished.
The restaurant was twenty minutes away. I watched him in silence as he shifted gears and fooled with the radio. I hadn’t been alone with him since that day in the kitchen, and the feeling was strange.
The station he chose played the worst rap songs in history, but since he seemed to know all the words, I opted not to complain. I looked out the window at all the huge houses we were leaving behind and was surprised when, instead of pulling onto the freeway, he turned north, toward a development next to ours.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I’ve got to pick Anna up,” he said without looking over. I tried as hard as I could to ignore the horrible feeling those words inspired.
He could tell that had affected me. The tension and discomfort were palpable, and my thoughts turned to all that had happened between us.
“Look, as far as the way things have been lately,” he said in a calm but cool tone. Great. The very thing I didn’t want to talk about.
“I propose we try to get along better, like brother and sister, and forget everything else that’s happened.”
I turned to him, one eyebrow raised.
“You think you’re going to treat me like a sister after feeling me up all those times?”
He clenched his jaw, and his veins danced beneath his skin.
“Like a friend, then, goddammit,” he said. “You’re impossible. I’m just trying for us to get along better.”
“By treating me like a sister,” I said, getting more and more pissed off with each minute that passed.
He glared at me, and I glared back. That burning emotion in our eyes when they met was too dangerous to express in words.
“I told you: we’re friends,” he barked, and the contrast between his tone and what he was saying made me laugh. Thankfully he turned back to the road.
“Fine,” I agreed after a few seconds. I guessed pretending to be Nicholas’s friend was better than us attacking each other twenty-four hours a day, even if I couldn’t trust myself not to lust after him every time I laid eyes on him. I didn’t think friends was the right word, though. Relatives obliged to tolerate each other. I said this to him, and I was happy with the term because friends implied too many things. To be friends meant being together through thick and thin. I wasn’t even there with Jenna yet, and getting to know her had been wonderful.
An impossible-to-interpret smile crossed Nicholas’s lips.
“I’m not so sure about relatives… How about distant pseudo-relatives obliged to tolerate each other and hook up once in a while?” Oh, so he was making fun of me.
I slapped him playfully, and his smile just got bigger. It was strange how comfortable I felt after that, in the few minutes remaining until our arrival. It had even been fun, in some weird, twisted way.
Nicholas stopped the car in front of a big house—not as big as ours, but big enough to make a person like me gawk and stare. Nick picked up his phone and dialed.
“I’m here. Come on out,” he said coldly, especially compared with the past few minutes, when he’d been more relaxed than I’d ever seen him.
“You really are a gentleman. You know that, right?”
“I don’t go for that bullshit,” he said, putting away his phone and shifting into first as he saw the door crack open. “A girl is perfectly capable of leaving her house without an escort.”
Nicholas’s date wasn’t too tall—I had a good five inches on her—and her expression was so stiff and snobby that I’d put her straight on my list of enemies. I could still remember her comment about my ex, and it made me livid.
It was funny how her eyes got bigger as she saw who was in the car. First her lips pursed, then she scowled, and by the time she got here, she was actually ugly.
She stopped in front of my window, clearly intending to say something. Too bad I didn’t feel like rolling it down so I could hear her. Nicholas groaned and touched the button on his side, lowering it against my will.
“What is this?” Anna asked, looking at us incredulously.
“A car,” I answered, laughing at her.
I felt a pinch on my thigh, and I was about to slap Nick’s hand away, but then I saw he’d appreciated my remark. He was trying to look serious, but his eyes were shining as he held back a giggle.
“Get in, Anna,” he said, and rolled my window back up.
She stared daggers into me one more time before opening the back door and getting in. She wasn’t used to being back there, and it entertained me to watch her in the rearview acting like a spoiled little girl.
Once we left the development, we finally turned onto the interstate. I was starving, and I wanted to get there as soon as possible.
No one said anything; there was just the noise of the motor and the road, and this time I was the one who turned on the radio. Then I leaned back, crossed my arms, and looked out the window. Anna seemed to have run out of her dumb, supposedly witty remarks, and Nicholas was lost in thought, apparently unconcerned with how hard it was for me to sit in the same car with the bimbo he was having sex with. I didn’t know anything about their relationship, but it couldn’t have been too serious if he’d hooked up with me all those times.
I was grateful when we reached the restaurant on the outskirts of the city on a road full of bars with noisy people milling around. I saw Jenna and Lion by the door, and when Nicholas parked, I ran off toward them.
Jenna hugged me. Lion’s response was cooler, but still, he was friendlier than Nick. I was surprised to see Mario was with him. He’d come to see me and talk at the bar where I worked several times, and I’d gotten used to that smile and those pearly-white teeth.
“If it isn’t my favorite waitress!” he said. But his smile vanished when he saw Nick and Anna come over.