Chapter 15 Party mistake
Wade's POV
I sat in the garden watching them.
Mia kept tugging at Lily's gown as Lily worked through the laundry, pulling at the fabric for attention and then dissolving into silent laughter when Lily paused to tickle her in retaliation. The chemistry between them was effortless and completely natural and I sat at the garden table feeling like someone watching a film through a window.
Lily had not spoken to me properly in days. She moved through the house like I was furniture, polite when Mia was watching and invisible to me the rest of the time. I had been on my best behavior. I had made breakfast and tea and kept out of her way and returned her silence with patience and none of it had moved her a single inch.
I watched her laugh at something Mia did, that real unguarded laugh that she rationed so carefully at school, and something ached in my chest that I couldn't express.
I wanted those stupid arguments back. Wanted her to snap at me and steal my remote and lock my fridge. Wanted her to look at me, even with frustration, because frustration was at least something.
The phone call from this morning was still sitting heavily in my mind.
I had not been eavesdropping. I had simply been standing outside her door about to knock when I heard her laugh. The way she laughed with Mia. And she had been talking to someone. Someone whose voice made her laugh like that at seven in the morning.
Lily had no boyfriend. I was certain of that. Which meant she might be about to get one.
Why did that thought bother me so much?
"Why?" The word came out of me louder than I intended, almost a shout, directed at nobody and nothing in particular.
They both turned and looked at me.
The silence that followed was deeply uncomfortable. Mia tilted her head. Lily stared at me with an expression that said she had confirmed something she already suspected about my sanity.
Shame moved through me hot and swift and I stood up and walked inside without explanation.
I sat on my bed and stared at the ceiling.
Lily Johnson was getting into my head and I could not allow it to continue. I could not concentrate in class. I could not sit in my own garden in peace. I could not sleep without my brain producing her face at inconvenient moments. This was not something I had signed up for and it needed to stop immediately.
I picked up my phone and dialled Chris.
"Hey buddy, how are things?" he answered.
"Fine," I said.
A pause. "Come on. What is wrong?"
"I need to get Lily out of my house," I said.
"What has that poor girl done to you now?" he asked, and something in his tone told me his patience for this particular topic was running thin.
"She is doing everything Chris. She is ruining my concentration and I cannot stand being in my own house anymore."
"I genuinely do not understand you."
"Chris." I exhaled. "I am falling for her."
There was a silence. Then he laughed. Not a polite laugh or a short one. A deep, prolonged, thoroughly entertained laugh that went on long enough to be insulting.
"Are you going to help me or not?" I said flatly.
He gathered himself eventually. "What does Mia hate most?"
"What does Mia have to do with anything?"
"Just answer."
"Loud noises. Why?"
A brief pause on his end. Then, "Organise a class party at your house. The night before your father comes back."
"Chris that would be an absolute disaster."
"That is the entire point," he said. "A disaster that your nanny failed to prevent. A nanny is supposed to manage the household, is she not? Your father comes home to chaos, he questions her competence and she is gone." He paused. "If you actually want her out, you have to be willing to risk it."
I sat with that for a moment.
"You have the most reckless ideas," I said.
"And yet they work," he said. "You are welcome."
"Take care."
"Bye."
I stared at my phone after the call ended. Then before I could think myself out of it I opened the school group chat and typed.
Who is ready for a party at the Harrington house this Saturday? Everyone is invited.
The replies came flooding in within seconds. The group lit up completely.
Then my bedroom door flew open.
Lily stood in the doorway with her phone in her hand and an expression that could have stripped paint off a wall.
"What is this?" she asked, holding the screen toward me.
I looked at her and said nothing.
"Do you understand that Mia hates loud noise?" she said, stepping further into the room. "Do you understand what a house full of screaming teenagers would do to her?"
I maintained my silence deliberately, giving her a measured taste of what the past few days had felt like from my end.
"Wade. Delete that text right now," she said.
"And if I say no?" I said.
She looked at me for a long moment. Then she let out a short scoff. "Fine. Go ahead then. Bring in those uncultured animals you call friends." She turned and walked out, pulling the door shut firmly behind her.
I looked back at my phone.
A message from Clara had appeared beneath the flood of replies.
"I did not get a special invite."
I blocked her number without responding and picked up my controller.
A few hours later there was a knock at the front door. The knock continued. I put down the controller, went downstairs and opened the door.
Clara was standing on the step dressed like a delivery person, a cap pulled low over her face and a smile that said she found herself enormously clever.
"What the hell," I said before I could stop myself.
"I kept calling," she said, stepping inside without being invited. "Seems like you blocked me."
I was still processing her presence in my doorway when Lily appeared from the direction of the kitchen and stopped.
The three of us stood in the hallway for one suspended second.
Clara, being Clara, moved immediately. She stepped smoothly toward me and pressed her lips against mine before I could step back and then turned to Lily with the performance of someone completely at ease.
"Just came to visit my baby," she said pleasantly.
I turned to Lily trying to find words. She looked at me for one moment, shook her head with an expression that conveyed everything she thought of me and walked away without a word.
I turned back to Clara. "You need to leave. Now."
"Why?" She settled onto the sofa like she had been invited specifically to do so. "Your father is not home. I am perfectly safe." She reached for my arm and pulled. "Come and sit."
I removed her hand from my arm. "What exactly is wrong with you?"
"Wrong with me?" Her voice sharpened. "I am the head cheerleader and you are the quarterback. We make sense together, Wade. I have sacrificed things for you that you do not even know about and you are throwing all of it away." She sat up straighter. "You should feel lucky that I, Clara Castellano, the most sought after girl in Diamond High, am sitting here begging you."
Before I could respond, light footsteps came from the stairs.
Mia appeared in the sitting room doorway, face bright, clearly on her way to ask me something. Then she saw Clara and the brightness simply switched off. Her expression closed completely and she walked to me and stood beside my leg.
"Hi Mia!" Clara's irritation rearranged itself instantly into warmth as she reached toward her.
Mia stepped smoothly out of reach and sat down on the far end of the sofa, picked up the remote and turned the television to her cartoon.
Clara's smile tightened. "Mia, how are you?" she tried again.
Mia stared at the television.
Mia pointed at her mouth indicating she wanted water so I went to the kitchen to get it.
Lily was standing near the counter.
"You are unbelievable," she said without turning around. "Bringing Clara here."
"I did not bring her. She came on her own."
"She came on her own," she mimicked, her voice dropping into something flat and cutting. "Pathetic liar." She walked past me and out of the kitchen.
I shook my head and filled the glass.
"Why did you hit her?"
Lily's voice came from the sitting room, sharp and alarmed.
I walked back in.
Mia was pressed into the corner of the sofa with tears streaming silently down her face. Clara was standing nearby with tears of her own that appeared suspiciously quickly.
"You are a serpent," Lily said to Clara with a quiet hatred I had never heard from her before.
"What happened?" I asked.
"Ask your cheerleader girlfriend what she did to your sister!" Lily said.
"Wade, Lily hit me and Mia," Clara said, her voice breaking convincingly. "Can you not see?"
I walked to Mia to ask what happened. She looked at me, then left my side entirely and went to Lily, tucking herself against Lily's leg and pointing at Clara with one small, certain finger.
"Mia, I did not hit you," Clara said quickly. "I only changed the television channel."
"Who gave you the right to do that?" Lily asked.
"This is my boyfriend's house—"
Lily burst out laughing. Not a polite laugh. A full, genuine, deeply amused laugh that filled the entire sitting room.
"This," Lily said when she recovered, "is Mr. Gambino Harrington's house. And I am his nanny. You can bully me at school where your boyfriend is the quarterback. In here I am in charge. Is that clear?"
"Wade!" Clara turned to me, eyes wide. "Are you going to say something?"
I looked at Lily standing there with Mia against her leg, completely composed, completely certain of her ground.
Honestly I was too amused to speak.
"Now," Lily said, "you need to leave."
"Wade!" Clara protested.
"Get the hell out!" Lily's voice filled the room.
Clara grabbed her bag and was gone through the front door before the echo faded.
Lily picked Mia up, settled her on her hip, shot me a look that conveyed precisely what she thought of the entire afternoon and walked out of the sitting room.
I collapsed onto the sofa.