Homewrecker

55 - 𝓼𝓶𝓪𝓵𝓵

[A/N: Just in case you haven't heard, but Homewrecker is going to be published through Wattpad Books in May 2021! Not only have they purchased this book but they have literally wanted it from the beginning and even convinced me to write it, so I am so thrilled that I can finally share this news after almost a year! And to celebrate, this is my FAVORITE chapter of the whole book. Truthfully. I hope you enjoy!]

The sky was beginning to darken as I pierced my marshmallow through the roaster sticks Jason had brought out of the shed, along with the portable firepit, a couple of hours after dinner was finished and Amy started to cover the leftovers out on the patio, putting the Tupperware lids back on the cold salads and dumping the watermelon flies had been swarming into the trash.

I glanced across the flames in the firepit at Kingston in one of the lawn chairs the Denvers brought over that afternoon, leaned forward with his sweating can of Pepsi in his hand. I knew it wasn't entirely fair, but I hadn't spoken much to him since getting into a heated battle of horseshoes with Danny. I knew I was the whole reason he was here, making awkward conversation with David or Amy, occasionally speaking with Ryan or Izzie before he seemed to visibly lose interest in whatever they were talking about.

It bothered me, and it bothered me that it bothered me because he was right. Summer homes by the lakeshore, private educations, and the phones they used, the clothes they wore, it was all extravagant for me. Gawdy and suffocating. I lived in the trailer across from his, huddled in blankets in the winter and sweating with electric fans pointed for me in the summer. My phone screen was cracked, and the clothes I wore before were someone else's before they were mine.

It seemed like everything that happened, everything that someone did that night—going out onto the lake with the kayaks, arguing over croquet arrangements, the ice cream selections and sundae toppings Amy brought out for dessert—it made my eyes drift over to him and wonder what he was thinking. How much everything was, and I felt like it was something I was becoming numb to.

I was wearing expensive sandals on my feet, a scrunchie around my wrist like the VSCO girls we used to make fun of, and Andi had even started sharing her PR makeup with me.

I felt different around him, like I was becoming someone else, and to him, that was worse. We were fine before, the us we used to be.

But I didn't know how to be that girl anymore, the one sitting sunburnt on cinderblock steps and listening to the classic rock blaring from his trailer like it was a soundtrack I wanted to always replay.

Now I had expensive Birkenstocks and highlighter palettes that cost almost just as much, a lake house instead of a trailer. It was something I didn't feel a part of until I noticed that Kingston was beginning to look at me like he looked at them.

I still didn't feel like it was something I was a part of, like maybe he might have been judging me for trying to blend in somewhere I shouldn't, the piece that didn't belong. But I was starting to feel as if I was tethered to it, to those who did belong, and how he felt about them changed how I felt about him.

He was supposed to like my friends, make the effort to get to know them and get along with them, but he didn't. He was sitting next to Taylor-Elise right across the firepit, and instead of talking to her about how she kept dominating cornhole or something, he was trying not to stare at me. I was his whole focal point, and I realized then that I didn't want to be.

I wanted him to talk more about how he used applesauce in his vegan brownies to Amy, to offer to be Ethan's partner in the next round of ladder golf, to take Monroe when Indie told him to.

I wanted them to say that they really liked him. I wanted them to like the boy I brought over for barbeques and asked to hang out in ice cream parlor parking lots. I wanted them to not just act nice because they knew I liked him, but because they liked him too on his own.