Page 77 of My Fault
“Of course I do.” I didn’t know what I was getting into, but it was better to have her there than not know what she was up to.
She turned and kissed me on the lips, too quickly for me to enjoy it.
“I’ll be there when dinner’s over,” she said.
“What?” I shouted, much louder than necessary, holding her so she couldn’t walk out.
“Nicholas, I’m not going to leave him hanging. I’ll be a little late, that’s all. Anyway, I feel like hanging out with him. He’s cool.”
This girl was going to kill me.
“Do what you want,” I said, picking my keys up off the desk and walking past her to the steps.
If she wouldn’t put me before an idiot like Mario, I wasn’t going to let her waste my time. I was going to have fun that night, and I’d finally get her out of my head.
But not even I believed that.
The party was at the home of Mike, one of my friends from the neighborhood. He was a good guy; I knew him from college, and he almost always let us use his lake house when we needed to go big. Anna had taken care of the décor, including black and red helium balloons and all sorts of other stupid shit. The important stuff was in Lion’s and the guys’ hands: alcohol, food, and more alcohol. When I walked through the door, people shoutedHappy birthdayin unison. I greeted everyone, and five minutes later, they were all dancing, acting silly, taking off for the lake, and drinking anything they could get their hands on.
The good thing about these parties was there were always plenty of girls for me. I grabbed a drink and sidled up to the two dancers they’d hired for me. A part of me kept thinking about when Noah would get there, but another part said it was time to cut loose.
One of the dancers—I forgot her name—wouldn’t keep her hands off me. The other, a pretty young redhead, vanishedas soon as she was done with her number. Nobody with a Y chromosome would have been indifferent to the chick who kept trying to drag me off to the bathroom. But one of my unbreakable rules was no sleeping with strippers or prostitutes or anyone similar, so I ditched her as politely as I could and walked to the back of the house. From there, I could see Toluca Lake and the reflection of the full moon in the water. My friends were all fooling around, splashing each other and dragging girls down to the shoreline.
Just then, Lion came over, leaned on the wooden railing, and looked at me. I remembered the first time I’d ever seen him. He had been way bigger and scarier, but at least I had been tall enough to look him in the eye before he’d split my face open. I hadn’t even known what he was pissed off about—I think I’d hooked up with his girl or something at this party I’d been taken to—but the funny thing was, thanks to my reflexes, I had been able to get away, and he’d wound up hitting the wall behind me.
It had been so ridiculous, I’d burst into laughter while he’d clutched his fist in pain and started sweating. I guess he’d thought it was funny, too, though, and we’d been best friends ever since.
“Thanks for inviting me on the trip, dude. I can never go anywhere with Jenna, and finally we’ll be able to get that alone time we’ve been needing.” He was beaming. I took a sip of my beer. That trip… I couldn’t think of it without thinking of Noah.
“I know she’s your stepsister and all, man, but why’d you invite her?” he asked a second later, intrigued, and I felt like he was reading my thoughts.
I weighed my response before answering. I wasn’t sure myself, but I just knew the idea of spending two whole days without her made me unbearably anxious.
“I don’t want her to stay here while Ronnie’s still mad about the race. He threatened her. I can’t let anything happen to her.” Ileft out the detail that if he even looked at her wrong, I’d kill him with my bare hands.
Lion turned his back to the lake and looked at me sternly.
“I don’t know what you’re really about, bro, but I’ve seen how you look at her. You can’t hook up with her. She’s your stepsister. I’ve been talking with Jenna, and Nicholas, Noah isn’t like other girls. You’re going to scare her.”
I tried to calm down, to keep from telling him to go to hell. He wasn’t wrong. Noah was different: you could see it in her eyes, in the way she was, in how she didn’t even understand the effect she had on people. She was naive and innocent, and I could corrupt her so easily.
“I know what you mean, but nothing’s up,” I said, while my mind shouted back to meLIARin capital letters. “We’re just friends. We need to be—we live together, our parents are married. It would be impossible if we hated each other, so I’ve decided to try to get along.”
Lion seemed to buy the story.
“You know what you’re doing,” he said, and then stripped off his shirt and ran over to where everyone was swimming.
I wouldn’t have minded going with him, but I couldn’t help keeping my eyes on the door, waiting for Noah to return from her stupid date. That was when I saw her come in with Jenna. Their arms were locked, and Noah smiled when she saw me. She was radiant when she smiled that way, and I wanted to grab her and kiss that dimple that had appeared in her left cheek.
“Happy birthday again!” she shouted. Jenna observed us for a moment before turning to the lake, where Lion was shouting for her to come in.
“What about you guys?” he asked, and Noah looked down at her black dress.
“I didn’t bring a swimsuit,” she said, shrugging.
“Don’t be a prude. Just wear your underwear. It’s the same thing,” Jenna said, dragging her off.
Just imagining her in her underwear made me nervous, not to mention the idea of her stripping in front of all those drunk assholes at my party.
