Page 2 of His Temptation
He grinned and cranked up the volume on the radio. A new song from his favorite band, Sick Beat,blasted in the small space of the car. With the windows rolled down and the end-of-spring air ruffling my hair, I shoved aside the disappointment about my mom and joined Ryan in singing the song. More like screeching. The band combined dubstep and metalcore, which shouldn’t work but somehow did.
A car sped past us, the guys in the back seat sticking their heads out the window and shouting at us. Ryan flipped them off, which made them laugh and get even rowdier.
I had such a crazy group of friends. On a normal day, they were all crazy. But today, after having just graduated high school? Yeah, they were living it up.
“So we’re stopping at your dad’s house first?” I asked.
“Yeah. I wanna change clothes, and he’ll want to grill me. You know how he is.”
I wouldn’t exactly call itgrilling.Emery just wasn’t as laid-back as Amber and didn’t let Ryan do whatever he wanted.
In the year and a half Ryan and I had been friends, Emery had been nice to me but not exactly warm and friendly. It was hard to explain. He was stern but not mean. Quiet but not timid. He was a bit strict on Ryan, which wasn’t a bad thing seeing as to how Ryan would’ve gone off the rails long ago without the structure.
“You gonna tell him the truth about the party?” I asked as I pulled into the driveway. “I need to know the story you’re using so I don’t fuck it up.”
“Yeah, I’ll mention we’re going to Trev’s,” Ryan answered, getting out of the car. “Just don’t mention any details, and we’ll be fine.”
The “details” included all of the alcohol Trevor’s older brother, Ken, had purchased.
“Dad?” Ryan asked as we walked through the front door.
The house was spotless, everything in its place. The pillows on the couch were carefully positioned, the rug was vacuumed, and as we entered the kitchen, I saw the sink was empty and the dishwasher was running. Nothing, not even a drop of water, was on the counters.
Emery Cross liked cleanliness and order, and that preference was obvious right when you stepped inside his house.
Ryan dashed to his bedroom with me close behind. The change in scenery was drastic. Clothes were strewn all over the floor, empty soda cans and crumpled-up chip bags covered the desk beside his bed, and a strange odor filled the air, like sweaty socks and something floral, as if there’d been an attempt to cover the smell but only ended up clashing with it.
“Do you ever clean?” I asked, staring at a bowl on the floor that held a questionable substance. Maybe old, soggy cereal?
“It’s clean compared to what it was,” he answered, shrugging. “Dad fucking hates it, which just makes me more motivated to keep it as it is, you know?”
I didn’t understand Ryan’s attitude toward his dad. Yeah, Emery was stern, but at least he gave a shit. Ryan didn’t know how good he had it.
After pulling off his dress shirt, Ryan slipped on a clean tee before changing his pants and shoes. I looked at my own dress clothes.
“Here,” Ryan said, tossing me a shirt and jeans. “Put those on. You look like my grandpa in the shit you’re wearing.”
We were roughly the same height and build and weren’t strangers to wearing each other’s clothes—given the amount of times I’d stayed over at his place unexpectedly and needed shit to wear. I unbuckled my belt before sliding down my slacks and taking off my shirt. After changing in front of each other in the locker room, it didn’t faze me to be half-naked in front of my best friend.
His dad, however, was another story. The bedroom door was wide open.
Emery came around the corner, rolling up the sleeves on his crisp, white button-up shirt. His medium-length black hair hung a little in his face, and his blue eyes were piercing.
My blood heated and my stomach fluttered as I caught sight of him. It was like Emery had a magnetic force field around him, drawing me in against my will. The strange feeling hit me full force.
I was too much of a chickenshit to put a name to the feeling.
Standing in just my boxers, I momentarily froze.
“Oh, sorry,” Emery said, averting his eyes.
I quickly put on the jeans, my face hot with embarrassment.
“We’re all dudes here,” Ryan said to me. “Nothing he hasn’t seen before.”
That didn’t exactly help calm my racing heart as I finished dressing. The way Ryan said it, though, made me curious. There’d been an unexpected bitterness to his voice.
“Congratulations,” Emery said after clearing his throat, placing a hand on Ryan’s shoulder. “I’m sorry for not talking to you after the ceremony, but I was damn proud watching you walk across that stage.”
