“Can I bum a cig?” he asks.
He hasn’t smoked since I was in diapers, at least not that I’ve seen. I pass one to him and he lights it like a pro, cupping the flame against the wind.
“I don’t think I really know you at all,” I say, watching him.
He nods as his eyes study me. “Same.”
I’m suddenly overwhelmingly tired. “What do you want from me?”
He takes a long drag, his brows knitting together as if he’s thinking hard. “I have a proposition for you,” he says, leaning over the balcony and staring off into the horizon. “I’ve been talking to Sebastian about something, and I think I have a plan, one that will work out well for everyone involved.”
I pause. “Including Rose?”
He nods. “Especially Rose.”
I nod. He tells me his idea, and before he’s even finished, I know it’s the right thing to do.
Rose
“YOUR BEHAVIOR IS COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE,” Anne says from the counter in the kitchen as she pours herself a glass of iced tea. “I won’t let you throw yourself away on some thug.” Even though she’s clearly rattled, her words are spoken without drama. That’s just her.
Don’t respond, I tell myself. You’ll only make it worse. She’s a judgmental person; you can’t change her mind.
I sit at the breakfast table, my hands clenched under the table, holding myself together. We’ve been sitting here for half an hour and my head throbs. Apparently, Anne used an app on my phone to track where I went after I left her house and saw that I was at the penthouse. She and Robert came over to see why.
“You were in bed with him.” She inhales a sharp breath.
Shame colors my face and I stare down at the table. “We didn’t have sex.”
I flick my eyes over to check my phone to see if he’s texted me.
“Put your phone away, Rose.”
I turn it facedown. “Sorry.”
She sits down across from me, her face pale. “You will not see him again.” Her words are little bells that can’t be un-rung . . . clear, cold, and final.
“That’s going to be hard since you’re married to his dad. I will see him,” I say, gripping the edge of my seat.
She shakes her head. “I didn’t want to tell you this, but the housekeeper found drugs in his room from the night he was here.”
I’m surprised but not shocked. “I don’t care,” I say. He and I will figure it out.
Her lips part. “You don’t know what you’re saying. If you get caught up with him . . . well, you’ll get messed up too . . . like your mother.”
I am nothing like my mother.
I’m almost damn perfect considering where I came from.
“I’m not like her. I’m like Granny.”
“You can’t act like anyone from Tin Town, even your Granny,” she says sharply.
I can’t let her put Granny in her category of people from Tin Town.
I stand, the storm that’s been whipping in me sweeping to the surface. “It doesn’t matter where I’m from. All that matters is where I’m going.”
I snatch my phone off the table and text him. My heart is racing. I need to get out of here.
Please come get me. I need you. I’m at the house.
Anne sighs and stands to take her glass to the sink, where she washes it out then sets it on the drying rack. A sad grimace is on her face when she looks at me. “He isn’t going to reply.”
My head snaps toward her. “How do you know? What’s going on?”
She stares at her nails. “Robert texted me a while ago. Spider is leaving for LA. He doesn’t want you.”
I sit down. No, that can’t be right. He asked me to come to LA with him. He wants me as much as I want him.
“When?”
She shrugs. “Soon.”
An incoming text vibrates my phone and I pick it up, my heart soaring when I see it’s from him.
I read it, and my heart drops.
I can’t. Goodbye.
Rose
BY MONDAY, IT’S BEEN THREE days, and I haven’t heard from Spider again. Somehow I’ve managed to keep myself from texting him or going by the penthouse. I’m angry with him for the cryptic goodbye and I’m still livid over Anne’s interference. She’s called me and texted me numerous times, but I refuse to answer.
I trudge along at Claremont Prep, pushing them both out of my head.
But I can’t focus.
My head goes to Spider in each class, my brain and heart drunk with thoughts of his edgy, dangerous looks. The way his eyes follow me wherever I go. The way his body feels pressed against my naked skin. I want that. I want him.
He’s on drugs.
He uses girls.
I play back all the things Anne has told me.
My heart doesn’t care.
Where is he?
Why hasn’t he texted me?
What did I do wrong?
As soon as the bell rings for us to head to our last period, I dodge past the onslaught of students and walk out the double front doors like I have every right to. No one notices, and I heave out a sigh of relief.
I hop in my car and drive out of Highland Park, headed toward the penthouse. I’ve done my best to pretend like everything is fine, like I’m not thinking about him every second, but it’s a lie.
After a twenty-minute drive where I jam out to his music, I find a place to park on Bandera Avenue, a few blocks from his building. Still wearing my blue and green plaid school skirt, navy knee-high socks, and a white Peter Pan collared shirt, I jog to the park across from his place.
It’s a sunny day, but a dark cloud shadows the sun and dread pools in my gut.
The air feels ominous.
I look up at the top of the building and my eyes land on the balcony. I stand there, feeling stupid and second-guessing coming all this way, half-expecting him to just know I’m here and waltz out.
But he doesn’t. No one comes out to the balcony and waves at me.
If he wanted you here, he would have said so, a part of my brain reminds me, but I ignore it. He told you goodbye.
But I don’t care.
Life is about taking chances, about saying how you feel, fuck the consequences. I mean, how will you know it’s the wrong decision if you never make it in the first place?
I text him, my hands nervous and wet from sweat.
Are you still here? It feels like you are.
No response as I pace around a park bench.
Half an hour goes by and the sky darkens.
Just walk in there, I tell myself. Ask the bellman to announce you.
But, I don’t have the nerve to go inside . . . so I wait.
If he wants to tell me goodbye, it’s going to be to my face.
I type, I’m outside your apartment and I’m not leaving until you see me.
I groan at how needy I sound, but I think it’s too late to care. I’m too far gone to care how I sound to him.
Just then a black limo pulls up to the curb and a pretty girl in her early twenties gets out wearing a pale pink mini skirt, white stiletto heels, and a soft white sweater that clings to every curve. Her brown hair is up in a ponytail and tied with a polka-dot bow.
I wonder who she is as a ping hits my phone.
Go home, Rose. I can’t do this with you right now.
He is here. I knew it.
You feel something for me, I reply.
There’s a twenty-second delay before he responds. I know because I’m counting, my heart racing.