Page 23 of I Would Stay Forever (Parkhurst Prep #2)

fifteen

The front porch lights were still on when Paige’s sister, our designated driver for the night, dropped me off at my house.

My siblings and I didn’t have curfews, aside from a general sense of getting home before dawn and not being allowed to complain to our parents that we were tired the next day, so Mum always left the lights on for us when we were out.

She always joked that she worried we would accidentally try to walk into the wrong house in the dark otherwise.

I wasn’t sure if Sebastian was still out, so I left the lights on when I walked in, but closed the door as quietly as I could behind me, not wanting to disturb him or Mum if they were already asleep.

I kicked off my trainers in the general direction of where the others were piled in the front entryway and was ready to head straight upstairs when I heard the murmur of voices coming from the living room.

I frowned and crept forward to poke my head in.

Mum was sitting on the couch with her legs stretched out across it and the blue light from the TV screen lighting up her face. She was sipping from her glass of wine when she noticed me, but she used her spare hand to wave me in.

“Sorry,” I whispered. “I hope you weren’t staying up on my account.”

Mum usually fell asleep pretty closely after her shifts, especially when she had late-night ones. And she’d been working so much lately trying to make up for Dad’s absence that she often crashed after coming home.

“Don’t worry, your brother’s still out anyway,” she said, waving off my concern. She tucked her legs under her and patted the couch. “Come sit.”

Even though I was dead tired coming off the party, I walked to the closer end of the couch and curled up.

I hadn’t seen much of Mum lately, between her extra shifts at the hospital, me hiding in my room for most of August, and now school.

Even when we did see each other, it was with Sebastian, Imogen, and Ainsley here too.

Time alone with her was hard to come by at the best of times, let alone now.

I glanced at the TV, where some Lifetime film was playing.

Mum was addicted to them and I’d spent enough time watching them alongside her, even if I wasn’t paying too much attention, that I had a pretty good sense of the plot within two minutes: a woman with a big city job goes to a small town and reluctantly needs the help of a small-town man, but they misunderstand each other at first. I was positive they would be in love in the next hour, but I wasn’t sure if I would be awake for that long.

When the film flipped to commercial, Mum looked at me again. “How was the party? That’s where you were, right?”

I nodded, then pulled my knees up to my chest and rested my head against the back cushions of the couch. Now that I was away from the crowds of people and music blasting, exhaustion was hitting me hard.

“Yeah, over on Meadow Street. It was fun.”

“Good, I’m…” Mum trailed off as a small frown crossed her face. I waited for her to finish what she was saying, but when she was silent for a full minute, I couldn’t take it anymore.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Oh, I just...” She pursed her lips together and shook her head, then cleared her throat. “Well, I… I just want to make sure you’re being safe, honey.”

I frowned, not following her at all. “Safe? You mean getting home from the party? Because I wasn’t the one driving. I mean, I did drink a little bit, but...”

“No, no,” she interrupted. “I mean, um, with...” She looked a little like she’d swallowed a lemon. But she patted a hand on my knee and said, “Are you on birth control? Do we need to maybe make a doctor’s?—”

“Excuse me?” My voice came out shrill. “What do you mean? Why would I— What?” My words were stumbling out quicker than I could keep up with them. I wasn’t really sure how to even begin to approach it. “What are you talking about?”

She didn’t say anything, but her eyes drifted down to my chest and then back up. I frowned and looked down, then flushed bright red when I realized what assumptions she had made.

“No, no, no,” I said, waving my hands around. “It’s not like that, it’s not…” I trailed off and let out a deep sigh as Mum smiled in a placating way, clearly not believing me.

“I know it’s an awkward thing to talk about with your mum, but I just want to make sure that you’re okay and know your opt?—”

“Mum,” I said, cutting her off with a nervous laugh, “it’s Dean’s shirt. He just lent it to me because I spilled a drink on mine. Mine’s still out in his car. Totally innocent, nothing like… that .”

“Oh!” Mum flushed now and laughed, looking relieved. “Oh, I’m sorry, honey. You kids are just getting older and you never know.”

I was sure my face was still bright red and I couldn’t look her in the eyes, but I tried to laugh it off as well. At least she actually believed me, instead of assuming I was lying and pushing forward anyway.

“Trust me, I’m nowhere near doing… that .” I couldn’t bring myself to say the word sex in front of my mum, even if it was just to reassure her I wasn’t having it. “That’s not happening anytime soon.”

The TV switched back from the commercial to the film and I let out a sigh of relief at the save. I turned to face the TV better and within minutes got sucked into the story, the premise of which I’d guessed correctly.

It was an hour later—when the Big City Woman’s horrible Stick-Up-His-Butt Fiancé showed up in the small town to “save” her and she realized she didn’t love him anymore—when the front door opened again.

A moment later, Sebastian walked into the room, looking as dead tired as I was.

He didn’t even say anything in greeting as he walked in and dropped onto the couch between Mum and me.

He had a to-go cup clutched in his hand and I stole it from him to take a sip, the taste of a semi-melted chocolate milkshake coating my tongue.

“How was the team building?” I asked him when the film switched to commercial again. He just groaned and I laughed. “That bad?”

“Freshmen,” was all he responded with. Mum and I both laughed. Sebastian slouched back into the couch and frowned at the TV. “What are you watching?”

“Right now?” I asked, glancing at the commercial. “A commercial for a bar of soap. It’s really riveting stuff, don’t you think?”

He chuckled softly but didn’t respond. The film started back up again a second later and we all fell silent to watch the end of it.

I was half-expecting Sebastian to yell about love being a lie again since it had only been a day since the break-up, but he must have been truly exhausted because he didn’t say anything.

By the end of the night, Sebastian’s head had fallen onto my mo Mum’s shoulder and I was slumped half on him and half against the couch cushions, similar to how we’d ended the night yesterday after the break-up party.

It had been so long since I’d spent time with my family like this that the shift to it happening two nights in a row was a little jarring, even if I did love it.

I wasn’t expecting it to feel so sudden, the move from the broken family to this new one.

It felt like we were finding a new normal, a new balance.

I wondered if maybe I could find the new Lavender in me too.

Heal myself the way my family healed, and stop being the version of myself that was just continually reacting based on what happened in July.

Maybe I could become a new version of myself—happy Lavender.

Somebody just enjoying her senior year of high school, without any other cares in the world.

And then, when the time came at the end of the school year, I would leave—but this way, with happy memories of the place I’d lived in for the last five years.

The bathroom was filled with so much steam that I could barely see as I stepped out of the shower.

Day one of being New Happy Lavender was off to a spectacular start so far.

Today was supposed to be one of the last hot days of the year, so Mum was getting us takeout from our favorite brunch place while Sebastian was picking up Imogen and Ainsley from their slumber party, and then we were all going to the beach as a family.

I wrapped my towel around myself and put on my favourite pair of fuzzy slippers before stepping out in the hall, mentally debating which swimsuit I wanted to wear.

I’d left the radio on in my room, so as I came down the hallway, I could hear the opening chords of that song I was currently obsessed with—you know, the one I kept saying I was tired of but had played approximately forty-seven times this week alone.

I smiled to myself and picked up the pace, still slightly damp and fully feeling like a glowing, citrus-scented version of the girl I was trying to become this year.

New Happy Lavender. The kind of girl who actually used her expensive body lotion instead of saving it for some vague, mythical “special occasion.”

I turned the corner, halfway through a mental debate between the coral bikini or the navy one with the little daisies, and slammed into something solid.

Not something. Someone.

I screamed at the top of my lungs. He yelled something that I couldn’t make out.

I stumbled backwards, clutching my towel and begging it not to fall.

The only thing worse than somebody breaking into your house had to be somebody breaking into your house and seeing you naked .

What the hell was I supposed to do now? Lock myself back in the bathroom until Sebastian got home? Or?—

“I’m not looking! I swear, I’m not looking!”

I froze, the scream dying in my throat as I realized what I was looking at. A boy with dark, messy hair, his eyes squeezed shut, and his hands were held up as if he were surrendering to the police.

My entire soul left my body.

“Dean?” I squeaked. “What—why—how are you here?”