Getting Played - Emma Chase Page 0,8
myself by looking back.
~ ~ ~
My Uber driver is a fan of Bob Dylan. I close my eyes and rest my head against the window as “It Ain’t Me Babe” plays on repeat during the drive home to my parents’ house in Bayonne.
The house is silent as I ease open the front door, knowing just where to stop before it creaks. I walk up the mauve carpeted stairs to my son’s room—to check on him.
Rationally, I know Jason’s fine and sleeping—and any time you open a fourteen-year-old boy’s bedroom door without knocking, you’re risking seeing things that can never be unseen. But it’s a habit, a mom-compulsion I can’t seem to shake.
He’s on his side, wrapped in a cylinder cocoon of blankets with just his head sticking out, the way he’s slept since he was two. He’s got my honey-blond hair and delicate features. He’s long and lanky right now, but he’ll fill out.
I named him Jason after my dad. Because his father is an idiot, and a jackass, and not one of my better choices. He didn’t want anything to do with us—when Jay was born or in any of the years since. But it’s for the best—I don’t want someone so stupid around my kid anyway.
I close the door softly and go to my room, changing into an oversized sweatshirt and worn yoga pants. Then I pad down to the kitchen.
A few years ago, my mom went through a cock phase.
She redecorated the kitchen in barnyard-red and white with rooster accents. It’s not my taste, but that’s a big part of my excitement about doing Life with Lainey. The hook of the web series is I’ll be living in a house—an old house—while decorating it on a low budget, room by room, with my unique style and sparkling personality.
Jason and I will be moving at the end of the summer. It’s an amazing perk—the first time I’ll have my own place, even if only just for the year.
I lift the tail of the cookie-jar rooster that I found at a yard sale in Hunterdon County, and take out a tea bag. Then Erin walks into the kitchen in gray polka dot pajamas and fuzzy purple slippers.
“What are you doing here?” I yawn.
“There was an accident in the tunnel and Jack didn’t want to deal with the traffic. Plus, he gets a cheap thrill out of doing it in my old bedroom with my cheerleading trophies watching us from the shelves.”
“That’s one twisted puppy you’ve got there. You should definitely marry him.”
“Is he paying you to say that?”
I nod. “Five bucks for every mention.”
Erin looks me up and down as she sits at the table. “Someone looks like she got some last night. Did you just get home?”
I sigh in blissful satisfaction, the orgasmic endorphins still flooding my brain.
“I didn’t just get some—I got it all. I had all the sex. The sweaty quick kind, the dirty rough kind, the slow lazy kind. It was ah-maz-ing.”
“Good for you. Are you going to see him again?”
“Nah.” I shake my head. “I didn’t offer and he didn’t ask.”
And for just a second, I let myself feel the sadness of that. The regret and disappointment. Then I shake it off, breathe it out, banish it away.
“I’ve got too much going on anyway—with the move and the show and all.”
“That’s true.”
Erin goes to the counter and starts to make her own cup of tea. “Hey—where’s the house you and Jay are moving to again?”
Like I said before, life can be bitchy and she’s never boring. Every once in a while—she also has a wicked sense of humor.
“It’s a small town, south of here.” I blow on the steam wafting from my teacup. “It’s called Lakeside.”
Chapter Two
Dean
August
Most high school kids are good at one thing—sports, art, academics, being a smartass, getting high, the smooth-talking baby-politics bullshit of student government. They figure out whatever their “thing” is and congregate with other students who have the same talent. And then you have a clique.
“Dig, Rockstetter! Tuck your chin—move your feet!”
When I was a student here at Lakeside High School, I was good at a lot of things. I moved through cliques as easily as that X-Men mutant guy passes through walls.
“Why the hell are you looking behind you?! Keep your eyes on your target! That safety is gonna be right on your ass, you don’t have to look back to check!”
I played the drums, taught myself when I was seven, so I was cool with the