"She's a total bitch, right?" Jo asks, snapping her gum. "Or she's got some kind of terrible real-life deformity that never shows up on the cameras? Tell me she's not perfect." Jo squeezes out a giant gob of sunscreen and slathers it across the creamy skin on her arms, setting the bottle in between us. I pick it up and do the same. Rose is right; the sun feels warm on my skin, and Jo's presence here lifts my mood.
It's almost enough to erase the sense of impending doom I feel thinking about my father and Ella's arrival tonight. I don't know when Caulter is coming, and I don't want to know -- I didn't even dare to ask my father earlier when he called to relay his travel plans.
I'm already paranoid that my father can smell my lust for Caulter, like I'm some kind of animal in heat.
I sigh, spreading lotion over my legs. "Ella is...okay, I guess."
Jo leans back on the towel laid on top of the boat dock, pulling at the edge of her black-and-white checkered swimsuit, this retro number with straps that come up like a halter at the back of her neck. The tattoo she got this year, cherry blossoms intertwined with Japanese characters, goes down the side of her hip, half under the swimsuit and half out. I don't know why we're laying outside in bathing suits, soaking up rays; we're slathered in enough sunscreen to drown, and wearing floppy hats big enough to practically require their own zip codes. But this is what we do here during the summer, so it's force of habit, I guess.
"Okay?" she asks. "Ella Sterling is just...okay? The Dick is marrying a big celebrity and he only just told you about it -- and that's all you've got for me? Spill it." She looks at me from behind her huge dark sunglasses, but I can't see her eyes. Then she slips them dramatically down to the edge of her nose. "Details. I want absolutely every last detail."
"She's just...okay, I guess," I say, realizing I mean it. "She's not really a bitch, I guess. She's actually kind of...blah?"
"Like, she has no personality blah?"
"Maybe. Or she's just not very assertive," I say. "It's hard to tell. My father is pretty..."
"Fucked up?" she asks.
I laugh. "That's not what I was going to say."
"It's what you were thinking, though." She leans back, arching her back up, displaying her breasts, even though it's just the two of us.
"It's totally not what I was thinking."
"Continue, please," she orders. "You father is an overbearing dickhead who treats her the way he treats you, and -- "
It annoys me that Jo lumps Ella and I together, like we're both some spineless creatures just being trampled underneath my father's will. "I haven't really seen them together much, you know. I mean, there was this photo of them on his desk - from Christmas - and they looked...happy."
Jo grunts her response. "Happy," she says. "That's all you've got for me. You have Ella fucking Sterling in your house and all I get is blah and happy. You know I want the dirt."
I exhale. Of course. Dirt. "She's super...bright."
"Bright," Jo repeats flatly.
"And un-caffeinated," I say. "Like, bright without ever drinking coffee in the morning."
"That's unnatural," Jo says. "I hate her already."
Now I can't help but smile. "Oh, and she drinks these smoothies, like this algae shit that smells so bad. Caulter called them her fish tank shakes."
Jo's ears perk up at the sound of his name, and I immediately regret mentioning him. I'm telling no one what happened with Caulter. He will remain my dirty little secret.
I will take him with me to the grave. Maybe even literally, if he keeps being such a jerk.
I'm aware of Jo's eyes on me, her glasses perched on the end of her nose again as she peers over them, examining me like some kind of specimen. "Caulter?" she asks innocently. She draws out his name, letting it roll off her tongue.
I roll my eyes and huff loudly, turning over onto my stomach, mostly so I can avoid making eye contact with her. I'm afraid if I look at her, she'll be able to read my thoughts, tell what happened with me and Caulter. I force a casualness into my voice I definitely don't feel, although I don't have to fake the disgust that naturally seeps into my tone. "Caulter. Her son."
"That's right," she says. "I almost forgot. She has a son. He's like, a total train wreck, isn't he?"
"He's a disaster. Completely and utterly." There's no way that Jo, with her affinity for tabloid magazines and gossip, almost forgot that Ella Sterling has a son. She's been dying to ask, I know she has. She must have seen the photo of us that got reposted a million times online. But I'm cranky, and I definitely don't want to talk to her about Caulter.
Jo rolls onto her side and rests on her hand, her elbow on the dock. "Tell me everything."
I open my mouth, intending to give her the same dismissive, truncated shit I gave her about Ella, but instead, this torrent of words is unleashed, like something beyond my control. "He's such a....prick," I say. "He think's he's some big rebel, you know? Like with his piercings and tattoos. No offense, I mean..." I look down at Jo's new cherry blossoms and she laughs.
"None taken," she says. "Keep going."
"And his stupid chain-smoking. It's disgusting. He blew it in my fucking face. My mother died of cancer, for shit's sake. You'd think he would have some sense of decency."
"What an ass," she says.
"Exactly. He's just this arrogant, condescending, smartass jerk. He's crude and disgusting and he's pretty much slept with every girl at Brighton. Probably in Manhattan. And Hollywood." I roll my eyes. "They throw themselves at him. Like he's sex on a stick or something."
"Or like he's some kind of celebrity?" Jo's tone is teasing.
"Whatever," I say. "He's not a damn celebrity. He's the child of a celebrity. There's a big difference. He's not famous for anything. It's the equivalent of calling me a Senator."
Jo wrinkles her nose. "Didn't he do some reality show?"
"Did he?" I'm not being coy; I really don't know. Would Caulter do a reality show? It doesn't sound like his kind of gig. I would think he would consider it beneath him. But who the hell knows with Caulter, anyway. He's unpredictable. A loose cannon.
Jo gives a non-committal shrug. "Maybe I'm thinking of that other guy, the one who was followed by the camera crew when he was in rehab. It doesn't matter. So you can't stand him. Obviously."
"Definitely," I say firmly. I definitely can't stand him.
The image of him looking up at me, his face buried between my legs, flashes into my head and I feel warm.
"So you hate your new step-brother," she says.
"Shut your mouth. He's not my step-brother," I say. "We're not twelve."
"Ooh, touchy touchy," she says. "The Dick is marrying his mother. That makes him your step-brother. You know, by definition."
"So?" I ask, my voice rising an octave. I know I'm getting defensive, and I tell myself to calm down, but I can't. "It's not like I know him at all. We're not siblings."
"I didn't say you were," Jo says. "Cranky much? You need to get laid."
I immediately think of Caulter and my face flushes. Please don't let my cheeks be bright red, I silently pray.
"So?" she asks. "Are you getting any at Brighton, or what?"
"Yeah, right," I say. "No one wants to date Senator Harrison's daughter except the ones who want to be you know - "
"The First Daughter's husband?"
"Ugh. Don't even talk about marriage. I'm eighteen, not thirty."
"What about the guy you were seeing?" Jo asks. "Tad, was it?"
I giggle. "It wasn't Tad."
She waves dismissively. "Whatever," she says. "Biff?"
"Chase."
She groans. "Yes. Chase," she says. "I knew it was something that screamed summer in the Hamptons and brunch with his parents."
"Shut up. He was -- yeah, okay, he was pretty much that guy." We dated for three months, even though I realized almost immediately that he was completely obsessed with politics. And my father. My God. It was all about campaigns and Washington internships and whatever was the hot button political issue of the day. He was exhausting.
"He was cute, yeah?" she asked. "In a really buttoned-down kind of way."
I shook my head. "No way. I think he wanted to sleep with my father more than me."
Jo laughed. "So there's been nobody this whole year?"
Nobody. Except for Caulter. My new step-brother. Who's slept with basically everyone. And who I want to strangle every time he looks at me.
So, essentially, I have fucking phenomenal taste in men. "Nobody," I say.
"Is Caulter hot?" she asks, as if she can read my mind.
"Wh -- what?" I stumble over the word and roll over onto my back, sitting up and drawing my knees to my chest.
Jo follows suit, rolling onto her back. "Is he hot?" she repeats. "I mean, yeah, he's a asshole but he's a slutty asshole, right?"
"So?" I ask, my tone high-pitched. "I can't stand him."
"So he's the perfect guy to screw," she says, matter-of-fact. As if she knows every damn thing in the world and is the exact person who should be giving advice. Jo has had a string of shitty boyfriends in the past two years, coupled with dramatic breakups. She's the last person I need to listen to about guys I should screw. I'm immediately irritated by her statement.
"Caulter Sterling is the last guy on earth I'd ever let near my vagina," I lie loudly. Too loudly.
"That's why he's the perfect one to let inside your vagina," she insists, laughing. "I mean, he's slept with a lot of girls, so you know he knows what he's doing. Probably. And you don't like him, so there's no messy breakup before you run off to Harvard."
"Some people wait to lose their virginity to someone they love," I say imperiously.
"Mhmm," she says. "I'm just saying that Caulter would be a perfect one night stand."
"Well, if you think he's a perfect one night stand," I say, "Then you can have him."
She looks over at me, and I can't see her eyes, obscured by the sunglasses. "Well, maybe I will," she says.
My entire body tenses up at her statement, and I swear my heart actually stops. It's just Jo being Jo, I tell myself. And what the hell should I care anyway? Caulter and I had sex once. Well, more than once. We had one night of sex. It was only one night -- completely and utterly meaningless.
Jo should sleep with him. But the thought of her and Caulter together makes me practically enraged. I clear my throat, ready to change the subject, but Jo saves me from that.
"Besides," she says. "You're being smart. It's a very reasonable not to hook-up with him. I'm sure the media would be all over that, if you and your new step-brother were bumping uglies. You know, since the Dick is like the biggest family values guy ever."
I don't respond. But all I can think is that I seem to lose all sense of reason when I'm in close proximity to Caulter.