5. Naomi

CHAPTER 5

Naomi

" N aomi, you—"

Whatever Priya was about to say gets cut off by Shal's yelp from behind her as the two of them come barreling into the entryway, a few grocery bags clutched in their hands.

"Sorry," Shal says. "It's just those cats really are terrifying when you're not expecting to see them."

I look over my shoulder and see Bijoux and Aurora Rose trotting into the entryway to greet our guests, their skin looking particularly wrinkly in the afternoon sun streaming through the windows.

The light also brings out the thin film of grease that has started to collect on the bottoms of their bellies, which means I'm due to give them their first bath without Sandy's help. Considering the fact that we had to put on protective gloves that went all the way up to our armpits just to get them in the water without our skin being shredded, I'm not exactly looking forward to it.

The cats seem blissfully unaware of the less than warm reaction from my friends and pad straight over to them, twining around their legs to demand body heat in exchange for snuggles. It only takes a couple seconds before both Priya and Shal have set their bags down to hunch over and give them scratches.

Once you get over the whole shapeless folds of flesh thing, they're actually very sweet cats.

"So what exactly is this crazy news we need to hear?" Priya asks while she strokes her thumb over the top of Bijoux's head.

"Yeah, Priya said your texts sounded like there was some kind of national emergency," Shal adds.

I wouldn't call it national, but the fact that there's an extremely attractive girl in this house who I almost clobbered to death with a table lamp last night and who may or may not hate me after I broke some unspoken code about not telling her dad she's here definitely feels like an emergency.

I still can't think about what an idiot I was last night without my stomach tying itself in knots, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm supposed to do now. This is not a social interaction I have ever handled before.

I don't know if this is a social interaction anyone has ever handled before, but maybe together, the three of us can decide if I should follow through with my urge to flee the house and never face the beautiful yet terrifying Andrea King again.

"Yeah, about that. Um, I don't really know where to start."

Shal straightens up and reaches for her bags again. "Sounds like I should get this ice cream in the freezer before we begin this conversation."

"Ice cream?"

For the first time since they walked in, I realize just how much stuff they have: two grocery bags each, all of them filled to the brim.

"What's with all the food?" I ask.

"For the munchies, duh," Shal answers before stepping past me to head for the kitchen.

I give Priya a look to ask if she's as confused as me, but she responds with a pointed tilt of her head.

"You know, for the… weed ," she says, dropping her voice on the last word like the police might have wired the whole house to pick up on any admissions of illegal teen mischief.

I start whispering too.

"Ohhhh, right."

We're getting high today—or at least, that's the plan. Some guy who was a year ahead of us in high school is supposed to meet us outside a dispensary in a couple hours. Shal went out on a couple dates with him before he graduated, and I'm pretty sure she's dangling the possibility of another one over his head as motivation for being our weed supplier.

I guess she could also pull a two birds one stone if she really does go out with him some more and knocks the ‘summer fling' item off the bucket list.

Priya and I haven't even taken a full step into the kitchen before Shal lets out a gasp. Her grocery bags land with a thunk on the tiled floor, and she sprints straight over to the sliding doors that open onto the deck.

"Naomi," she says in a breathless voice, her nose literally pressed to the glass, "there is a girl out there."

My face heats up. My tongue already feels thick in my mouth, like Andrea is standing right in front of me instead of lying in a pool chair halfway across the yard.

She's been out there for almost two hours, headphones in her ears and huge sunglasses shading her eyes while she lounges in a striped black and pink bikini—a very tiny striped black and pink bikini that literally made me tuck and roll away from my bedroom window after I realized how long I'd been staring when I first noticed she was out by the pool.

"Don't let her see you," I hiss. "Come on. Let's go to the living room before she notices us."

Shal doesn't listen. If anything, she presses the tip of her nose even harder against the door. Her breath has started to fog up the glass.

"Oh my god, Naomi, did you hook up with that girl?" she demands.

Priya lets out a choked squeaking sound. Her eyes are wide, her mouth hanging open.

I start to splutter a reply that doesn't turn into actual words, which makes Priya squeak again and drop her own bags before running over to slam up against the door beside her sister.

"We did not hook up," I choke out.

Shal snorts and doesn't bother turning around to answer me. "What? A girl just randomly appeared in the backyard in a bikini? Damn, Naomi, I must say, I was not expecting you to make the fastest progress on the list, but I'm impressed."

I groan and then speed-walk over to the other side of the kitchen, sparing a glance at Andrea on the way. As far as I can tell, she hasn't moved or looked up to notice my friends giving her creepy pervert stares.

Or maybe I'm the only one doing the creepy pervert thing.

My burning face flames even hotter.

"Get over here," I squawk at Shal and Priya. "Quick."

Shal lets out a peal of delighted laughter tinged with pure evil as she takes her sweet time joining me in the living room—or sitting room, or whatever this one of several rooms filled with couches and sculptures worth more than my college tuition is called.

Priya trails behind her, her face stricken like she's witnessed a gruesome murder scene and not a living, breathing woman chilling out by the pool. I can't blame her. I'd be just as shocked if I walked into her house and saw some random shirtless man she'd never even mentioned before lounging around like he'd just spent the night in her bedroom.

"We did not hook up," I repeat as Shal sprawls on one of the couches while Priya gingerly takes a seat on the edge of the cushion beside her. "She broke into the house last night."

At least now they both look horrified.

" What? " they demand, in one of the rare instances when they fulfill the twin stereotype of looking and sounding exactly the same while speaking in perfect unison.

"I mean, she didn't break in ," I add, still on my feet as I face them like I'm giving a boardroom presentation. I wish I had some charts and diagrams to back me up; it's hard to remember last night when most of my brain is still on high alert, wondering if Andrea caught us staring and is about to burst into the room and confront me. "She's my dad's boss's daughter, so she has all the door codes and stuff. I thought I heard something in the kitchen, so I grabbed a lamp and—"

"Wait, hold up." Shal lifts a hand. "You grabbed a lamp? To, what, confront a robber?"

"I mean, I was pretty sure it was just the cats, but I didn't want to take any chances."

I decide to leave out the fact that I also grabbed a miniature Venus de Milo. They still have enough interruptions that a good ten minutes pass before I've got everyone up to speed on how Andrea King came to be sitting by the pool this afternoon.

I collapse onto the couch across from theirs as soon as I'm done, groaning as I drag my hands down my face.

"I can't believe she saw my pickle pajamas."

Shal chuckles until Priya smacks her arm.

"It's not that bad," Priya says in a soothing tone. She gets up and comes over to sit down beside me, slinging an arm around my shoulders. "Anyone would have felt awkward after meeting somebody for the first time under those…very specific circumstances, and I'm sure she's not actually mad you mentioned her to her dad. How were you supposed to know it was a secret?"

I shake my head and slump against her. "Maybe I was supposed to know. I'm pretty bad at subtlety sometimes. Maybe it was obvious. She hasn't talked to me since, so she must be mad."

Priya strokes my hair with her free hand, but Shal goes for a more blunt approach.

"She hasn't talked to you because you've been hiding from her all day. You literally just ran past the kitchen door so she wouldn't see you."

She might have a point.

"Okay, yeah, I haven't been in the same room as her since she came down for breakfast, but that doesn't prove she's not mad."

Shal shakes her head and then gets to her feet. "I'm gonna give you two a few minutes to do your whole introvert thing while I put the snacks away."

As soon as she's gone, Priya removes her arm from my shoulders to clasp both my hands in hers instead, giving them a squeeze.

"You okay?"

She doesn't make a big deal out of it when I can't meet her gaze. Even with someone I trust as much as Priya, sometimes eye contact feels way too overwhelming, especially when my anxiety is already bad enough I'm fighting to breathe.

"What do I do?" I ask, my voice wheezy. "Am I supposed to just share the house with her now? Does she want me in the house? Do I leave? Is she the house sitter now? Is that supposed to be obvious to me?"

"Hey, listen." She gives my hands another squeeze. "Everything is fine. She said she's only staying for a few days, right? You definitely still have a house sitting job. She'll be out of here soon, and then you can go back to having a nice, quiet mansion to yourself. Well, except for when Shal and I come bug you."

I let out a half-hearted laugh and then suck in a long, shaky breath. I concentrate on the texture of the couch cushion underneath my bare legs, imagining I can feel each thread pressing into my skin as I ground down into the sensation.

It gets a little easier to breathe.

"It's bad again, huh?" Priya asks, her voice heavy with concern.

I know what it means: it is my anxiety, and she's right. It's getting worse. Ever since graduation, it's like my body has turned into a box full of firecrackers and life is just one big box of matches ready to set them off and turn me into a shell-shocked mess.

"It's just a…weird time in life," I answer. "It's like we're in limbo this summer, you know?"

She nods and slips her hands out of mine to cross her arms over her chest. "I get that. It's kind of like we're stuck between who we were and who we're going to be, like there's this whole new Priya I have to wait around until September to meet, when really I just want to be her now."

A fresh round of firecrackers goes off in my stomach, and I clench my jaw to keep from telling her that's not what I meant at all. What I meant is that my whole life is going to change in September, and I don't feel ready to change at all. I'm not even sure I want to change, and the fact that our friendship was supposed to be the one steady thing we could count on to get us through all the upheaval feels a lot less comforting when she's talking about how much she can't wait to be someone new.

"Priya, do you—"

We're interrupted by the sound of Shal swearing in the kitchen before she comes stomping back into the living room, her phone clutched in one of her hands.

"He cancelled."

She rolls her eyes when neither of us knows what she's talking about.

"The guy who was supposed to buy the joints for us. He can't make it."

When we still don't react, she narrows her eyes and squints at us.

"Am I interrupting some kind of dramatic conversation here?"

I can feel the tension between me and Priya still hanging in the air, like the acrid threat of lightning you can sniff on the breeze just before a summer storm rolls in.

"Um, no," Priya answers. "We're just introverting, like you put it."

Shal props her hand on her hip. "Well, do you introverts know anyone else who could buy us weed?"

Smoking a joint for the first time in my life now sounds way beyond my capacity for stepping outside my comfort zone today. I'm about to admit that when the squeak of the kitchen door sliding open makes us all go quiet. My breath freezes in my lungs as I listen to the sound of bare feet padding across the kitchen, getting closer to the living room with each step.

Shal turns to greet Andrea as she strides into the room. She's got a towel wrapped around herself like a dress, and her hair is hanging loose, so long the strands almost reach the middle of her back.

The kitchen was too dark for me to notice last night, but in the daylight, the slight purple tinge to her chocolate brown hair is hard to miss. Other than the dye, everything about her looks the same as her graduation photo: eyes so deep brown they're almost black, sharp features softened by the thick spray of freckles over her nose, and a mouth that always looks like it's on the verge of twisting into a smirk that could set a whole city on fire.

Everything about Andrea King screams danger, like a blinking, ten-foot sign blocking off a crazy cliffside highway you know you shouldn't drive down if you value your life but can't help steering your car towards anyway.

"Uh, hey," she says, coming to a halt beside Shal.

Shal lifts her hand in a wave. "Hey! I'm Shal."

If I ever needed proof Shal is straight, I just got it. There's no way anyone—even anyone as confident as Shal—could be attracted to women and not have some kind of stun gun reaction to seeing Andrea up close for the first time.

"Andrea," she answers with a nod before looking over at me.

My throat starts closing up, like just a half second of eye contact with her has sent me into anaphylactic shock.

I think Priya introduces herself, but I don't hear her speak. The stun gun effect is wearing off now, and my brain has started to whir with reasons why Andrea probably hates me or at least doesn't want me in the house.

"Sandy said I could have friends over," I blurt, the words all jumbled together in a heap of a sentence. I clear my throat and add, "Just, like, a couple people. Just so you know. She said it's fine."

Andrea blinks and then nods. "Uh, yeah, cool. Honestly, I'm not gonna rat you out for whatever you want to do in their house. I wasn't even supposed to be here myself."

She huffs a laugh, and sweat breaks out on the back of my neck as I wonder if that was meant to be a sarcastic jab at me telling her dad she's here. Before I can stammer an apology, she heads off in the direction of the nearest staircase.

"So get up to any mischief you want," she calls over her shoulder, "as long as you invite me."

Despite my major social malfunctioning, something about that sentence and her borderline flirty tone still makes goose bumps rise on my thighs.

She's that powerful.

"Wait a minute," Shal says into the silence of the room once Andrea's gone. I watch as her expression shifts from pensive to diabolical.

"Shal…" Priya warns.

Shal dashes after Andrea before either of us can tell her to stop.

"Hey, wait!" I hear her calling. "Andrea!"

There's a pause, and then Andrea's voice calls back, "Yeah?"

"Two questions: how old are you, and do you smoke weed?"