Page 32 of My Turn

My eyes narrowed a little as I pushed open the door to go outside. “No. He’s my best friend. Are you scoping out the competition?”

“Can you blame me?”

I stopped and turned toward him. He stared at me with a soft expression that made me never want to hurt him. I suddenly felt pissed off that my stalker wanted to get in the middle of my relationships. If he’d leave me alone, I thought me and Mike could have something together. He had a kid, which I wasn’t sure about, but I’d figure it out if I decided to keep seeing him.

“Me and Jayce are just friends. After Jake, I can’t…”

“I can understand that.”

“Look, Mike, there’s a lot going on with me right now.”

“Ah.” He looked down at his feet and nodded. “No worries. I get it.”

“I’m not saying that I don’t want to explore this, but we might need to slow it down. Like,waydown.”

The smile returned to his face. “No kissing on porches. I can manage that.”

“Okay, cool. Thank you. Really.”

His arms came around me and I hugged him back. It was a simple gesture between friends who could someday become more than that. Besides, we were at the school. There were security guards here and if they saw a man in a mask, they’d get rid of him immediately. It was safe here.

Yeah, right. A safe school in America. That almost made me laugh out loud.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, walking backward toward the other side of the lot. “Lunch in my classroom. Just food. No funny business.”

With a playful eyeroll, I turned around. Once I was inside my car, I pulled down the visor to look in the mirror. Something silver fell into my lap and made my heart speed up.

A Hershey’s kiss.

The bastard could get into my car now? I didn’t know how that was possible. This was full of a thousand computer components and the alarm would sound on my key fob if anyone messed with it.

Rolling down the window, I tossed the chocolate outside. I’d do a good deed later to make up for littering.

My phone buzzed, making me tense. I swallowed hard as I unlocked it to check the text.

Jayce:Don’t forget about dinner.

Oh, god damnit. I did forget. It was better than being home alone, so I headed toward his place, not caring that I was going to be early. He’d never complained about me barging in before.

Chapter 13

Jayce

“And then,” Mom wheezed, curling forward and almost spilling her wine. “Charlie told him that he was just mad because he didn’t even have one hole to stick it in.”

Alana was trying to rein in her own laughter. She shot me a look and I shook my head with a smile. This was how things always were with my family. It was fun to be around now that I was older, but they were exactly the same when we were teens, which could sometimes be mortifying.

We didn’t have the nuclear family. When me and Jake were five, my mom and dad met Charlie. She was a junior in college and applied to be our babysitter since my mom was going back to work. Mom told her she couldn’t have the job because she would end up having an affair with the babysitter.

Long story short, she wasn’t kidding. Instead of hiring her, Mom and Dad asked her out. They’d always been polyamorous but had only been with each other since a few years before they had us. Six months later, Charlie moved in with us and they’d been together ever since. She was a mom to us and when I was a teenager, I sometimes confided in her more than my parents.

In school, people tried to give us shit for it, but we always let it roll off of us. I was never bothered by the dynamic in my house. It did lead to gossip about me, Jake, and Alana, which annoyed me more.

When I looked up, I found Charlie watching me. I raised a brow and she moved her gaze to Alana. I narrowed my eyes at her. Charlie was the only one who knew how I felt. I had no idea how she’d figured it out, but she told me about it during my freshman year of college. After I made her swear not to ever say anything about it, she only occasionally brought it up when we were alone.

“This wine is amazing,” Dad commended, swirling it around in his glass. “You’ve become a vintner in your old age.”

“Fuck off,” I laughed. “It’s just wine.”