Page 51 of Wright Kind of Trouble

She huffed. “You’re always secretly smiling at your phone.”

“I am not.”

“Fine,” she said, holding her hands up. “I give up. Have your secret girlfriend. I don’t need to know.”

I rolled my eyes. “You have needed to know every detail of everyone’s lives since you were born.”

“Then, tell me!” she gasped. “Is it my friend Bee?”

I blinked at her. “Good-bye, Ashleigh. I’ll see you at the party later.”

She sighed heavily. “You’re no fun.”

I waited for her to leave before responding to Harley’s message.

Try not to die of alcohol poisoning.

Don’t spoil my fun, Sinclair.

Birthdays aren’t as much fun at the hospital.

It’s my 21st. I’m allowed to go OTT.

I shook my head at the picture she’d sent of her with a bottle of tequila tipped to her mouth with the words got salt? under it.

She was going to be the death of me.

All those months earlier, Harley was the only person I’d let near me about my parents’ divorce. Things had changed with us. I knew how I felt, but also that we couldn’t be together, not when things were so precarious in my new position. But I couldn’t stay away again.

So, we’d begun texting. She’d been in Seattle all summer, and in some ways, it was easier to message her, knowing she was thousands of miles away and I couldn’t rush straight to her. She’d come back at the end of August for school, and I’d managed to maintain distance. Though our texts were becoming more and more frequent.

Make sure you have a DD.

What do you think you are?

I laughed. Yeah, sure. I could imagine me showing up at a college party for her twenty-first birthday. This was what I’d meant from the beginning. Our lives were too different.

She was going to go twenty-one shots for her twenty-first, and I was being dragged to some fancy charity Halloween party. I was certain we couldn’t be further apart than tonight.

Still, I couldn’t keep myself from replying.

If you need me, Wright, I’ll be there.

I waited for her response, but it didn’t come. I sighed and shoved my phone into my pocket. I’d deal with that later. After this stupid party.

There were Wrights at the party.

Ashleigh had not warned me that there would be Wrights at the party.

I crossed my arms over my chest in the brown leather jacket that my sister had sent over, along with a brown Stetson fedora to complete my Indiana Jones costume. Luckily, it wasn’t Jordan and Julian, but I’d had enough run-ins with the other side of the family that I wasn’t particularly happy to see any of them either.

“Chase,” Ashleigh said with a smile as she approached me in her Barbie holiday ball gown. Her elbow-length-gloved arm was linked with a girl in a skintight black leather cat costume.

“You didn’t tell me Wrights would be here.”

Ashleigh widened her eyes and tilted her head at the cat. “Chase, this is my friend Layla.”

“Hi,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes at me. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

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