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“Sure,” I murmured.
“I’m sorry,” Mom said. “I should have told you all this later. Go back to sleep. Call me when you get out of school, and I’ll tell you which hotel I’m in. Maybe we can go see a movie tonight?”
“Sounds good. Bye, Mom.”
“Bye, baby.”
I put my phone back on the nightstand and stretched my arms over my head, stifling a yawn. This bed, with its cushy mattress and expensive sheets, was way too damn comfortable. I’d never had such a hard time getting up in the morning, but I managed to plant my feet on the carpet eventually.
“Where are you going?” Wesley asked in a semi-sleepy voice.
“Home.” I pulled on my jeans. “I’ve gotta take a shower and get ready for school.”
He pushed himself up on one elbow to look at me. His hair was a mess, brown curls falling into his eyes and sticking up in the back. “You can shower here,” he offered. “I might even join you if you’re lucky.”
“No, thanks.” I grabbed my jacket off the floor and slung it over my shoulders. “Will I wake your parents up if I go out the front door?”
“That would be difficult considering they’re not here.”
“They didn’t come home last night?”
“They won’t be home for a week,” Wesley said. “And God knows how long they’ll stay then. A day. Maybe two.”
Now that I thought about it, I’d never seen another car in the almost-mansion’s driveway. Wesley always seemed to be the only one here when I came over—which was pretty freaking often these days. “Where are they?”
“I don’t remember.” He shrugged and rolled onto his back again. “Business trip. Caribbean vacation. I can never keep up with them.”
“What about your sister?”
“Amy stays with our grandmother when my parents are out of town,” he said. “Which is essentially all the time.”
Slowly I moved back to the bed. “So,” I said quietly, sitting on the edge of the mattress. “Why don’t you stay there, too? I bet your sister would like having you around.”
“She might,” Wesley agreed. “My grandmother, however, is a different story. She detests me. She doesn’t approve of my”—he made air quotes—“lifestyle. Apparently I’m a disgrace to the Rush name, and my father ought to be ashamed of me.” His laugh was hollow and cold. “Because he and my mother are the staple of perfection, you know.”
“How does your grandmother know about your, uh, lifestyle?”
“She hears the gossip from her friends. Old hags hear their granddaughters swooning over me—and who can blame them?—and then they tell my grandmother all about it. She might actually like me if I’d date a girl seriously for a while, but part of me just doesn’t want to give her the satisfaction. I shouldn’t have to change my life to suit her or anyone else.”
“I understand what you mean.” And I did. Because I’d had that same thought a million times over the years. Recently, it had even pertained to him. It would be easy to change Wesley’s opinion of me, to hang out with different people or bring another girl into my circle of friends—like that freshman from the basketball game—to avoid being the Duff. But why should I do anything just to fix what he or anyone else thought about me? I shouldn’t have to.
And neither should he.
Somehow, though, his situation felt different. I glanced around the room, feeling stupid for even comparing it to the Duff issue. Then, without meaning to, I found myself asking, “But don’t you get lonely? In this big house by yourself.”
Oh my God. Was I actually feeling sorry for Wesley? Wesley the womanizer? Filthy-rich Wesley? Wesley the jackass? Of all the emotions I’d felt for him, sympathy had never come up. What the hell was going on?
But if there was anything I could relate to, it was family drama. So it seemed like Wesley and I had some stuff in common. Ugh.
“You forget how rarely I’m alone.” He pushed himself into a sitting position and looked at me with a smirk. It didn’t touch his eyes, though. “You aren’t the only one who finds me irresistible, Duffy. I usually have an endless flow of attractive houseguests.”
I bit my lip, not sure if I should say what was on my mind. Finally, I decided I might as well throw it out there. It wouldn’t do any harm, after all. “Listen, Wesley, this may sound weird coming from me, since I hate you and all, but you can tell me stuff if you want.” It sounded like something out of a cheesy G-rated movie. Great. “I mean, I vented all of my shit about Jake to you, so if you want to do the same,… well, I’m cool with that.”
The smirk slipped for a second. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Then he cleared his throat and added stiffly, “Didn’t you say that you needed to go home? You don’t want to be late for school.”
“Right.”
I started to stand, but his warm hand closed around my wrist. I turned around and found him looking at me. He leaned forward and pressed his lips against mine. Before I even realized what was happening, he pulled away and whispered, “Thank you, Bianca.”
“Um… no problem.”
I didn’t know what to make of it. Every other time Wesley and I had kissed, it had been a fierce, warlike make-out. A lead-in to sex. He’d never kissed me in such a gentle, greedless way, and it kind of freaked me out.
But I didn’t have time to think about it as I ran down the stairs and through the foyer. Once I was in my car, I had to speed—which I really, really hate to do—all the way to my house, and I still didn’t get there before six. That gave me only an hour and a half to shower, get dressed, and check on Dad. What a fantastic way to start the morning.
Even better was the fact that I could tell the living room lights were on when I pulled into my driveway. Not a good sign. Dad always—always— turned out every light in the house before bed. He treated it like a ritual. The fact that he’d left them on was definitely a bad omen.
I heard the snoring as soon as I tiptoed inside and instantly knew he’d bought more beer. Even before I saw the bottles on the coffee table or his unconscious form on the couch, I knew.
He’d gotten drunk enough to pass out.
I started to move forward but stopped myself. As much as I might want to, I didn’t have time to clean up Dad’s mess. I needed to go upstairs. I needed to go to school. And as I crept up to my bedroom, I told myself that he would be fine. He was just shocked, it would be fine, and this… episode would pass without incident. I could hardly hold a few drinks against the guy, considering the bombshell Mom dropped on him, could I?
I took a quick shower and blow-dried my hair (which always takes forever; seriously, maybe I should just hack all my hair off like Casey instead of wasting my time) before putting on some fresh clothes. After I brushed my teeth, I headed downstairs again and went into the kitchen to grab a Pop-Tart for the road. Then I took off, out the front door.
By the time I got to school, the student parking lot was almost full. I had to park in the very back row and jog—with my twenty-pound backpack—to the double doors. Of course that left me out of breath by the time I made it into the main hallway. God, I thought miserably as I lugged my fat ass toward Spanish, no wonder I’m the Duff. I’m so fucking out of shape it’s depressing.
Well, at least the halls were pretty much empty. That meant no one had to witness my patheticness.
“Hey, where’d you go yesterday?” Jessica asked when I slumped into my desk only seconds before the bell rang. “You weren’t at lunch or in English. Casey and I were kind of worried.”
“I left school early.”
“I thought the three of us were go
“That’s kind of ironic, don’t you think?” I sighed and shook my head, trying not to look into her big, hurt eyes. God, she was good at making me feel guilty. And I knew I was going to pay for hanging up on Casey last night. “Sorry, Jessica. Something came up yesterday. I’ll tell you about it after school, okay?”