Chapter Twenty-Five
“Avery”
A harsh knock on my door causes me to jump. “Yes?”
“Open the door.”
Damn. After two days of hiding in my bedroom from Ethan after the humiliation of waiting on the beach for a guy that didn’t show, Khloe has decided it’s time to poke her nose in my playground. Frankly, I’m surprised it took her two days. She doesn’t seem to be a wait-around–to-see type of person.
“Can we talk later? I’m in the middle of something.”
Which isn’t a lie, because I’ve been rummaging Craigslist for cheap rooms in the area to rent. As nice as it is in this house, I need to get out of here and to find someplace better than Emmy’s to bounce. Living with her after the colossal mess I’ve made with Ethan would only be a shade better than moving home with my dads.
Khloe rattles my doorknob. “No. We’re talking now. Unlock the door, Avery. We’re going to the spa for a little girl time, and you’re going to tell me why you haven’t been out of your room in two days and why my supersweet, always cool brother’s being a dickwad.”
I grimace, since her bluntness is something I’m still getting used to. Even my sister isn’t that direct—or pushy. “I’m not a spa kind of girl, Khloe. Thank you for the invite, though, but I’ve got work to do.”
“Nice try. Not taking no for an answer. Avery, you’re coming with me. A girl doesn’t leave another girl drowning when she can stop it.”
Drowning? That’s a bit extreme. Is that what she thinks? Jeez, runaway imagination must be a family trait. I’ve kept a distance from the family to work on my book, to make some good come from being here. It’s certainly not benefiting my love life.
“Even if you’re not into the mani-pedi therapy—and how your nails look tells me you’re not, without you saying it—it will make you feel better. So will telling someone what my brother did to upset you. I’m a very good listener.”
Fuck. That she’s connected the dots that my staying out of sight with the family has something to do with Ethan isn’t a revelation I want.
Christ, have I grown that obvious?
The memory of rejoining them in the game room at The Cove makes me cringe. First realizing they discovered I’d slipped out in mid-game. Second, no doubt, what they saw on my face when I discovered Ethan had gone while leaving me hanging on the beach.
Awkward silence all around from the entire family, followed by people I barely know trying to make it better for me.
Yes, I’d been obvious.
Openly a Gigi for the entire world to see. No way I’m leaving this room any time soon.
“We’re going, or I’m going to sit in this hallway and talk to you through the door where anyone can hear.”
Something lands with a thump against my door, and I can tell that’s Khloe setting up shop to meddle in my life while sitting on the hallway carpet and shouting at me.
“Which isn’t a bad idea because if Ethan’s stepped out of line with you, you should shout it from the rooftop and shove it in his face. If you haven’t noticed, treating a girl bad doesn’t go well in this house and I’m sure my sisters—”
“Fine. Stop. I’ll open the door.” Wowza, that girl has nerve. I have no doubt she’d do it and drag her sisters into the fray. And no way is being sucked into chick world something I’m going to let happen.
Such an anti-feminist thing, the girl posse of dating groupthink. Spas are anti-feminist, too—the mistaken belief that being pretty helps anything. Yes, Avery, but so is hiding in your bedroom from a guy for going cold after screwing you.
Crap, time to pick a poison and move on.
Spa it is.
Groaning, I click send on the e-mail I just finished and close my laptop. I swing the door wide. “I’ve gotta change. I really was working.”
Khloe looks up at me, smiling, from where she’s sitting against the wall. “Don’t have to change. Not for us. And never for the spa. See, I’m in my pj’s, too. I want to be comfy because we’re not leaving until you explain what the hell is going on with you and Ethan.”
It’s not worth pointing out that even in her cheetah-print shorty bottoms and tank top jammie set, no makeup, and hair in a knot on her head, Khloe still looks supermodel stunning. That look, any look, works for her. Some girls have it and some don’t. I fall in the latter category.
“I’m not going anywhere dressed like this.”
She springs to her feet and, against my protests, grabs my hand and tugs me down the hallway behind her.
We stop at a set of doors. “What’s this?”
“The elevator. Hasn’t anyone shown you where they are? There’s a dozen of them. Go down, it’s the garage. Go up and it’s the girl wing of the house, the gym, the theater, and the spa. If you go to the east wing of the first floor there’s my parents’ bedroom and the recording studio. Some other rooms, too. But they’re boring. I’ll show you that later, if you want to—the record studio, that is. You’ve already been in the master suite your first night here.”
I gawk at her. “You mean the spa is in the house?”
Her eyelids flutter wide in a graceful, dramatic duh. “We have everything. Mom never has to leave the house if she doesn’t want to. Which she doesn’t. Not very often.”
I’m frowning as we step into the metal box. Interesting comment, and one worth following up on later for the chapter about Chrissie in my book. The woman’s a mystery for sure; brilliant songwriter who can barely get coherent sentences out of her mouth when she talks, with a happy marriage following tragic years of steamy relationships, and a woman I’m nowhere near understanding.
As the elevator moves upward in silent smoothness, I lean against the wall, staring at our reflections in the mirror. Damn, this is about the nicest elevator I’ve ever been in. Clean as a pin, smells great. Smooth ride.
“It must have been pretty amazing growing up with all this.”
Khloe shrugs. “It’s just home. Not any different to me than what yours is to you. Things don’t change people. You are what you are anywhere, in spite of what you have, so you better learn who you are so you can be that person anywhere. Everything other than knowing who you are doesn’t matter.”
My eyes go wide. That’s a surprisingly insightful comment given Khloe seems more like a Kardashian than a Manzone.
“Do you mind if I use that in my book?”
Khloe’s features come alive. “You would use that in your book when you’ve got my mom and dad to write about?”
I nod. “Yeah. I think a variation of that would make a great chapter heading. There’s something about it that resonates. It has the vibe of millennial with a splash of the down-to-earth truth of the sixties.”
Her lips push together with the corners downward. “Yeah, I can see how you’d think that.”
Ding, and the doors open with Khloe stepping out in front of me. I follow her down the hall, through an arched doorway, and holy fuck, there is a spa here. As in a full spa that has everything. Stations to get hair done, massage chairs for pedicures, wall displays filled with polish.
She waves a hand carelessly at a cabinet. “If you need any girl stuff, look here first before you send someone out to the drugstore. There are buckets of everything: makeup, shampoos, hairspray. Whatever you need from tampons to pregnancy tests to the giant box of family condoms. My mom never did girl talk well, but she’s prepared. My teen sex talk was her showing me where the supply cabinet is, followed by her pointing at the condoms and sputtering out, don’t ask, just take if you need.”
I choke on my laughter. “No. Not really?”
Khloe nods as she starts rummaging through colors. “Yes, that’s how it went. Only slightly better than it went for my other sisters. I guess that ‘practice makes perfect’ garbage doesn’t apply to Mom. Chrissie could hardly say supply cabinet and I didn’t even get to hear her say condom. Which Kaley assures me is priceless.”
Laughing, I crouch down to a shelf of never-opened summer-bright orange tint polishes. They’re kind of cute. This might not be an awful way to kill an afternoon.
“That’s pretty much how it went for me, but I credit that to having two dads and really dreading that one of them might decide to explain how to use a tampon or, worse, a condom.”
Khloe’s husky cackles fill the room. “See, doesn’t matter what you have, where you’re from, every girl has some kind of story about her this is your body talk from her parents and how it wasn’t what it should be.”
I make a face. “I’m still waiting for mine. It was my sister that took me to the gyno for birth control.”
“Me, too. Kaley, not Krystal.” She moves her arm to show me the polish in her hand. “I think this would look great on you. Not loud, but sassy. Not brash but sensual. Not stylish, more hip.”
My smiles come with ease I haven’t felt in days. “That sounds like something for me.”
Khloe nods and drops it in my hand. She grabs another bottle from the shelf. An intense blue you’d be able to see from a city block away. “And this is me. Glitter and pow.”
She reaches up to push a button on the wall, then turns to the row of pedicure stations. “Pick a chair. Any chair.”
“I should warn you. If we’re doing each other’s polish, I’m not very good.”
She rolls her eyes. “Pfft. Why would we do that?”
A half hour later, our feet are soaking in warm sudsy water as our shoulders are being rubbed by gentle hands in time with the motion of the massage chairs. I’m not sure where the two manicurists came from, but they showed up so fast that maybe they live here.
My eyes drift close. “OK. I’m going to say something. Don’t ever tell anyone I said it. Especially not my sister. This is fantastic. Is this why girls do this shit?”
“No. It’s because it’s the one place we can usually avoid guys and have someone be nice to us.”
“Great invention, girlfriend. I could kiss right now whoever dreamed it up.”
Khloe’s smile is beaming. “I’m glad you’re starting to think of us as friends.”
I tilt my face to look at her. “You’d be a pretty cool friend.”
“So would you.” She reaches for her sparkling water. “Is that bonding thing going well enough for you to tell me what fucked-up thing my brother did?”
The languidness leaves my flesh in a jolt. Oh, she’s devious. Trick me out of my isolation zone, get me relaxed and defenseless, and go on attack. I like Khloe, but it doesn’t mean I want to talk about Ethan to her. “Which brother?”
Her eyes damn near glow at the prospect she might get two salacious stories, and inwardly I groan. Her expression tells me I’m not getting out of this without telling her what she wants to know.
“Time to spill. I’m listening.”
Her blue eyes are enticing enough with kindness and willingness to help that I just can’t keep myself from going there. And what starts as vague details of how frustrating it’s been the last six years, trying to figure out Ethan and get him interested, to our date that got ruined by Eric, ends with an unlike me graphic info dump of having slept with E. I’m pretty sure I could have left that part out, but it would have left vague the part about why him ditching me at The Cove got me so butt-hurt, and I kind of want her to know why I was such an idiot over that.
“And since then, he hasn’t texted me, talked to me, or anything,” I finish woefully. “I can’t even get close enough to him to find out what’s going on. We have this hot night, and then it’s like he doesn’t know me. Worse, he does mean things, and he’s never done that before. It’s driving me insane, wondering what I did to cause him to treat me this way, and I can’t stand it anymore.”
Her face is a blend of sympathy and disgust. “Fuck, if I didn’t know better I’d think you were talking about Eric and not Ethan. I’d have never expected to find out the rabbit is Mad Max in bed and douchebag in the morning.”
My face colors, and it’s a struggle not to shut down this discussion after the Mad Max comment. Crap, I was too graphic. But darn it, I’m never sure how far in detail to go when talking about guys this way.
I manage to hold her intense stare. “It’s like he’s not even him since his brother left, but I’m not sure if that’s Eric being gone or if it’s me. If I’ve done this to him. All I know is I hate it and I want it to stop, and for things to go back the way they were with us.”
“Don’t do this,” Khloe orders. “I hate when girls do this. You’re a bright, pretty, successful woman. Any guy would be lucky if you wanted to be with him. You didn’t turn Ethan into a douche-canoe. He had to have it in him before you.”
“What are you two talking about?”
We both jump. Her two sisters are crossing the room. “What an idiot your brother is, Kaley,” Khloe shouts, her voice echoing and bouncing between the wood floors and ceiling. “That’s what we’re talking about.”
Kaley sets down the tray of coffees she’s carrying. “Ethan or Eric? And since when are they only my brothers.”
Khloe lifts her chin. “Since I decided I don’t like either of them anymore. Eric creates all this yuck we have to live with and now Ethan is nothing but yuck to Avery.”
“Wait. Wait, wait,” I inject quickly, not wanting this to blow up further. “Don’t make me an issue with your brother. I thought this was going to be private between you and me, Khloe.”
Krystal drops heavily into the chair beside me. “Private and Khloe. That’s an oxymoron. If you didn’t want the family to know, you shouldn’t have told her.”
I glare at Khloe, wishing my glass was filled with something stronger than sparkling water. And sure enough, she tells her sisters everything.