Homewrecker

54 - 𝓻𝓲𝓬𝓱

"This was going to happen eventually. You knew that."

I glanced over to Ethan from where I was standing in front of the flowerbeds along the side of the lake house with the nozzle of the garden hose clutched in my hand, the cold water dripping from the vibrant and colorful flower petals as I aimed the stream for the roots while he was setting up the cornhole, like Andi had promised last week.

He was wearing his swim trunks again, the same ones from before, except now he had a t-shirt with Jason Voorhees from the Friday the 13thsequel, which I knew because he went into something of a tangent about how he wasn't actually the slasher from the original movie, only the sequels.

"I had hope."

It wasn't like either Amy or David really knew about Kingston before Andi told them after we came back from Shiloh that she had invited the neighbor boy I liked over for a barbeque that weekend, which seemed to launch them into a bit of confusion over whether she actually meant Ethan. After she explained that she meant the one who lived across from my trailer, David resumed his usual silence, but his eyebrows were raised all while Amy talked, raved actually about how great this was.

She excitedly talked about a buffalo chicken dip she wanted to try, how Sunday would be the perfect night to make it, searching through her recipe boxes for one she said made the most splendid punch. She spent most of the weekend before that night going to and from the grocery store, with occasional trips to the farmer's market, asking Jason to get the lawn games out of the shed and dust them off, all while trying to get information out of me about Kingston.

The most I gave her was that she might have see him at the funeral before, shorter but not really that short, blond buzzed hair with glasses. She kept getting this dreamy look in her eyes as she tried to picture him, like this was something whimsical and romantic and dreamy itself. That was normally when I left to go outside and weed.

Ethan stepped back from where he set down the cornhole boards in the grass, eyeing the length between them. "Alright, so here's what I don't get."

"You're supposed to get the beanbag through the hole."

He shot me a look over his shoulder. "You've said that you like him, but whenever we've tried to get to know him or hang out, your face gets all scrunched and you look even more miserable than you do on TV. Whenever I really liked a girl, I wanted all of my friends to meet her, I wanted them to like her too. That's not what you're doing."

"Well, it's not like anyone has ever really liked me and Kingston together. Indie doesn't like him. Andi doesn't. I kind of get the feeling Jason doesn't after that one party, which means Kimberly probably doesn't either. As soon as Amy and David see how old he is, I bet they won't too." I looked over at Ethan, rearranging the cornhole boards. "Do you like him?"

"Not enough to have almost sex with him in a bathroom at a party."

I quickly glanced over to the patio, relieved to see that we were still the only people out in the backyard. "Ethan."

He tossed a beanbag and watched as it bounced off the corner. "I don't know him. I saw him once."

"Do you think he's too old?"

He threw another beanbag and, as it landed in the grass a few inches away from the board, he turned slowly to look at me with a sheepish expression.

"You do! You think he's too old for me."

"He's twenty," he pointed out. "You're sixteen." I was about to inform him that I would only be sixteen for two more months when he rolled his eyes and said, "For another two months, I know. But still. Doesn't it seem kind of weird that he would want to be with a teenager instead of someone around his age?"