STRIPPED Read online

  “Most girls can’t stop talking about their boyfriends,” Nikki goes on. “Look at Matisse and how much she talks about Conn—”

  “Maybe she’s obsessed,” I interrupt, burying my face in the stream of hot water again.

  Zoe’s door is shut. Mom wouldn’t like this, but Mom isn’t home. I wonder if she and Evan are having sex. Zoe said they’ve had sex before. In Evan’s car.

  I hear them whispering and I take another step toward my room because I really shouldn’t eavesdrop—

  Oh, what the hell. I tiptoe close to the door and press my ear to the wood.

  “It’s no big deal,” Evan says, his voice calm. “I’ll just help you pay for it before your parents find out.”

  “I should’ve never done this.”

  “We can fix it.”

  “No, we can’t! They’re gonna find out.” She’s crying now.

  “Babe…”

  “I can’t deal with this right now. Just go.”

  “But—”

  “I said go, Evan!”

  Quiet, quiet, quiet.

  “Fine.”

  I’m frozen in place. I should move, head down the hall, but my feet won’t cooperate. I want to know what they’re talking about. Is Zoe having an abortion?

  Impossible. I know she’s not pregnant. Just yesterday there was evidence in the bathroom trash that she was on her period. So what does she need to fix?

  Suddenly, the door swings open and Evan’s lips part.

  “What the…?” It’s only a split second, but I see his eyes move to my mouth. Not like last time, when he was shocked about my kiss. And not curious like a small part of me still wishes he was. But aware.

  My knees start to buckle.

  “God, Quinn,” Zoe spouts from her bed, a variety of colorful shopping bags sprawled out in front of her. I don’t think they were talking about having sex, but—“You’re such a nuisance sometimes!”

  The shower curtain flies open. A gust of cold air hits my backside. Nikki peeks in.

  “Or maybe Connor’s worth talking about,” she says, tossing a towel at me and holding up my ringing phone. “If you get my drift.”

  “Point taken. Derek’s an ass. Can we talk about something else?” I quickly dry off, wrap the towel around me. Nikki glances at the caller ID.

  “Who do you know with a 951 area code?”

  I shrug and take the phone. “Hello?”

  “I won’t ask any more questions.”

  Torrin. Does he ever go away?

  “How’d you get my number?”

  Nikki smashes her cheek against mine, trying to listen. I nudge her shoulder. “Who is it?” she mouths. I wave her off, turning my back to her.

  “First lesson,” Torrin says lightly, “don’t ever give your phone to strangers.” This should irritate me, but instead it makes me smile. One point for him. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  I look down to the puddle forming by my feet. “Depends.”

  “I was wondering if you were busy tomorrow. There’s something I want to show you.”

  “Hm.” I cinch my towel tighter around my chest. “Last time you said that you had me exercising.”

  Nikki flashes me a quizzical look in the mirror, probably at the word exercising which in our half year of friendship I haven’t done once. In my ear, Torrin chuckles.

  “No exercising. A road trip.”

  “Where to?”

  “Details. We athletes tend not to share those.”

  I roll my eyes and ask, “Where do I meet you and when?”

  “Parking Lot A. Ten o’clock.”

  Nikki pokes me. “Where are you going? And with who?”

  I face the wall of shower stalls. “I’ll think about it,” I say and hang up.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “You didn’t stand me up.” Torrin grins as I approach.

  “Now I’m worried. Should I have?”

  He pushes away from his silver Infinity and yanks the door open for me, his hair lifting with the ocean breeze.

  “I told you. No exercise.”

  “That doesn’t mean you don’t have any other tricks up your sleeve.” I climb in. “Maybe you’re into karaoke or live action role play or something else beyond my comfort level.” The door shuts and he laughs as he passes the front of the car.

  “While I enjoy watching people make fools of themselves singing out of tune,” he says as he sits behind the wheel, “you can rest assured I will never make you role play. Do people even do that?”

  I reach back for the seatbelt. “Saw it on TV, some documentary about adults who act out the lives of—”

  Unexpectedly, his long arm reaches past me, pulling the seatbelt loosely against my chest.

  “Seatbelt sticks. Let me get it.” Metal clicks. Everything around me freezes with the sound. Including Torrin, close enough to smell his cologne. And then he’s leaning back in his seat, turning over the engine.

  He looks over at me. “Sorry. Adults who act out the lives of what? Or who?”

  I stare at him for a moment. He taps the navigation screen on the dash, changing the road map to audio controls then finds an alternative rock station.

  “It’s stupid. Forget it. So where are we going?”

  The sun, still working its way to center-sky, filters through the dark windows, tinting half his face a purplish hue.

  He ignores me. “Settle in. The ride’s about an hour.”

  “Really? An hour?”

  “Usually the term road trip implies a lengthy distance.” Just then his head inclines, as if something new occurs to him. He rubs his hand on his leg. “You sure you can spend a few hours with me without bailing?”

  I’m not sure. But isn’t this what friends do…hang out?

  “That’s a question,” I say with a grin and slip out of my jacket. “And I guess that means you’re not telling me where we’re going?”

  Seaside, we cruise down Pacific Coast Highway. The cloudy marine layer burned off early this morning, leaving the sky a bursting blue, brilliant against the dark ocean water. As it’s winter, the beaches are tourist-free, though local dog-walkers and joggers litter the sandy shores below us.

  Once inland, we pass a few generic-looking cities then wind through a canyon of grassy hills. The ride is quiet and uncomfortable and not long after leaving the canyon, we pull alongside the curb, stopping in front of a house up for sale. Without a word, Torrin jumps out and opens my door.

  “Are we visiting someone?”

  “Something. Not someone.” Between two plots of yellowed grass, I follow him up the rutted walkway. He hops up the porch steps and peers into the grimy front window. “The house is vacant,” he says, motioning to the padlock hanging from the door handle.

  “Who does it belong to?”

  With his fingertips, he explores the white, splintered exterior. “C’mon. I’ll show you.”

  Around the side of the house, past a low wrought iron fence, scraggly weeds clutter the small yard and crawl up the trunk of a gigantic oak standing dead-center in the yard. Torrin walks over to the tree, eyeing something on the back of the trunk.

  “You’re not scared of heights, are you?”

  “Um…no?”

  “You sure?” He picks a piece of bark from the tree and tosses it at me. It lands in the crook of my arm. “You sound a little doubtful.”

  I flick the bark to the ground, realizing there’s really no way to go about asking without sounding like a total dumbass. “Are we going somewhere up high? A cliff or something?”

  He doesn’t say anything as his gaze rises up the trunk. I follow it to where, high, high, high up, peeking out from between the thick branches and lobed leaves is a tree house.

  “You want to go first? Or should I?”

  My mouth falls open. “We’re going up there? Is that even safe? Or legal? I mean I think we’re technically trespassing.”

  “I haven’t been in it for years, but I’m sure it’s still solid as an oa
r.” Placing the edges of his shoes on the slivers of wood extending from the trunk, he starts climbing.

  I squint into the sun. “I have no idea if oars are really that solid, you know.”

  Halfway up he stops and peers down at me. “Coming?”

  “Is it too late to tell you I fell out of a tree when I was six and broke my arm?” The wind picks up, blowing my hair into my face and sending a few leaves dancing across the yard. I hold my hair back with my hand. “I sort of have a phobia of tree climbing.”

  “My dad and I built this together. It’d be an insult to not come up here and check it out.”

  I cup my hand across my brow to block the glaring sun. “This is your house?” It doesn’t make sense. His fancy Infinity, expensive camera, tuition at Pacific Rim, and…this? A shabby house?

  “Was. A long time ago. This is where I grew up.” He takes a few more steps, higher. “Now stop stalling and start moving.”

  “Who owns it now?”

  “Stalling…”

  I groan. “Fine.”

  Reluctantly, I take hold of the first reachable thread and pull my weight up onto the lowest. It’s wobbly, and hardly enough room for the side of my shoe. Torrin smiles down at me, completely oblivious to the tremble in my legs or hitch in my breath.

  “Not sure who the owners are,” he says. I take a step up. Then another. “I heard it was for sale and wanted to see it. I tried once a few years ago, but the owners, some older couple from Canada or something, didn’t trust a kid off the street walking through their house.” He’s at the very top now, leaning over the edge of the balcony railing.

  Step by step I climb, attention focused on the square opening in the tree house floor. At the top, I shimmy my way through the hole—which happens to be the balcony—and crawl straight into the covered area, my heartbeat thumping behind my ears.

  “Slow down, Turbo.” Torrin laughs. “I haven’t checked for spiders in there.”

  We’re absurdly high up—I can tell even though I didn’t once look down. Safe inside, I push my back against the wooden wall and let out a breath.

  “I’d take a spider over falling any day.”

  “No one’s going to fall.” Torrin ducks through the doorway and glances around, grinning ear to ear. “What do you think?”

  I take in the room: a wood-planked floor, four walls, a framed window with Torrin’s name carved along the side.

  “I hate to say it, but the tree house looks like it’s in better condition than the house itself.”

  “It is.” He sits against the opposite wall, his legs parallel to mine with a foot of space between. “Exactly the reason I spent every waking moment up here. Staging wars with my G.I. Joes, hiding from Jessie Sharp—the girl down the street—because mud was her best friend.” I lift my brow and he nudges me in the leg with his shoe. “Hell, I was Batman up here.”

  “Batman? I would’ve taken you more for a Superman sort of kid.” I lean forward and poke his rock-hard biceps. “You know, the Man of Steel?”

  Bright sun filtering in the window glints off his white teeth as he laughs. “Remind me never to show you a picture of me from back then. Wouldn’t want to taint this superhero vision you have of me.”

  “I bet you were a cute kid.” I relax against the wood beneath me, not really thinking at all about his leg beside mine. “Who was your Robin? Mud girl?”

  With a jerk of his chin, he motions to the initials beside his name on the window frame. RVH. “Ricky Van Horn. Lived next door and was a year younger than me so, basically, he did whatever I told him.” He looks down, blotches of red dotting his cheeks. “We had the costumes and everything.”

  “Now, that I would love to see.” I laugh. Next door, someone starts up a lawn mower. The high-pitched rumble is the only sound. Torrin lays his hand on the tip of my shoe and wiggles it, his face suddenly more serious.

  “Sometimes I feel like certain things in my life have shaped who I am.”

  A smudge of dirt on my pants holds my attention. I could say something offensive—and am already thinking up several routes to take this conversation—but, I don’t know, the thought that I know exactly what he means stops me. How I wish I could go back to the day Zoe begged me to go to the mall with her in search of a new pair of sandals. That’s when she first talked to Evan, right in front of Jamba Juice. They swapped phone numbers, talked about some class they’d had together the previous year and how they couldn’t believe they went to the same school and had never talked before.

  “Dressing up in those costumes…” Torrin breaks into my thought, tipping his head back. “…pretending to be someone I wasn’t, I don’t know. Maybe doing stuff like that as kids just helps us become better liars as we get older.” His Adam’s apple does a little jump as he swallows.

  “Maybe.” I rub the dirt off my jeans with my thumb. “Or to escape reality.” Just then my finger freezes. I’ve slipped—my time with Derek has been just that. A cover.

  Torrin nods, too distracted by his own thoughts to question me.

  “So who is it you’re lying to?”

  He tugs at my shoelace for a minute, then tucks the tip under the tongue. “I never wanted to row for Pacific Rim.”

  “That’s a lie?”

  He shakes his head. “It’s the truth.”

  “But you told someone you wanted to?”

  “My dad convinced me to.” He crosses one ankle over the other, his faded jeans bunching around his ankles. “I started out on the east coast. Rowing for Brown in Rhode Island. Loved it there. It was the perfect school for me—amazing visual arts department, plus one of the best crew coaches in the world. But after my first semester my dad convinced me to transfer out here, said family business called for it.” He pauses, lips hanging. “And now, a year and a half later, my family’s gone to shit and it’s all because I moved out here. Consequences to my action.”

  “But moving out here was your dad’s idea. Not yours. You can’t blame yourself for whatever happened.”

  “I could’ve said no.”

  “True.” I straighten the gathered denim at his ankles, pulling it down over his shoes. “But then we wouldn’t have become friends.”

  “Friends.” He glances up, meets my stare. “Right.” The lawn mower in the distance sputters and shuts off, leaving the tree house still and silent. Sitting here, just me and him with the smell of wood and freshly cut grass, four tiny walls so large in his life, talking about lies…

  “What happened with your family?” I eventually whisper. “Does it have to do with how you went from living here to being all rich?”

  He sucks in a deep breath. “God, where do I start? When I was born my dad dropped out of college and we moved to California so my mom could follow her ridiculous dream of becoming a movie star. Needless to say, she didn’t make it. She did, like, one stupid commercial. My dad worked delivering bottled water throughout my childhood, and then awhile back, one of his old friends from college got him a job selling commercial real estate. That’s when my parents moved back to Ohio. Some big mortgage firm offered my dad a great job working with redevelopers. He landed some big deals, made a lot of money.”

  “A living rags to riches story. I thought that only happened on TV. They probably live in some big mansion now, huh?”

  He purses his lips, holding up two fingers.

  “Two mansions? Are you kidding?”

  “My parents split up a few months ago.” His face doesn’t react to his words the way I expect. As if he’s numb to the idea. Or used to it already.

  “I’m sorry.” And, I don’t know…I think I might be.

  “It’s still pretty new. We’re all sort of not talking to each other at the moment.” He meets my gaze, blinking slowly.

  “What happened?”

  “It’s kind of a long story.” He winds and unwinds a stray thread from the hem of his shirt around his finger. “Basically my mom didn’t agree with something my dad did and walked out on him.”

&
nbsp; “Must’ve been something bad.” I think of Mom’s reaction to Dad’s stupid stunt. She was upset. Disappointed, even, that he’d throw his career away so carelessly. But she stuck by his side. Even now, as they’re forced to sell everything they’ve worked so hard for, she sucks it up with a smile, serving tofu and shopping at dollar stores.

  “Can’t say I blame her for leaving us,” he says softly. “Keeping his word to a friend was more important to my dad than keeping the one he made to my mom when he married her.”

  Just as I’m about to question his part in the divorce, someone calls from below.

  “Hello?”

  Torrin hops up and leans out the window. “Mr. Slate!” he hollers. “Up here! Thanks for meeting us. We’ll be right down.” Then he turns to me, reaching a hand out to help me up. “Ready?”

  I lift my hand hesitantly. “I don’t know. What are we doing?”

  Once on the ground, we scuff through the dried grass to a blueberry-shaped man standing near the front gate. He adjusts his gold-rimmed glasses.

  “You must be Torrin. Pleasure to meet you.”

  Torrin shakes his hand. “Thanks for coming on such short notice.”

  “Comes with the job, I guess.” The man looks across at me. “And you are…?” A badge that reads West Coast Realty covers the man’s breast pocket, followed by his name Frank Slate and the title Agent below.

  Huh?

  Torrin clears his throat. “This is Quinn.” A leafy shadow cuts across the man’s round face. He extends his hand and I blindly shake it, trying to figure out what’s going on.

  “This is a big step, purchasing your first home. I bet you two are excited.”

  Somehow, I’m the one he’s still speaking to.

  “Thrilled,” I choke out, consciously forcing my shoulders to relax. Torrin—casually, as if this is all expected—gestures to the house.

  “May we see inside?”

  “Certainly.” Frank stalks through the yard, around to the front of the house where he punches in the combination on the padlock and pulls out a key. My stomach knots as we trail slowly behind.