Did I Mention I Need You? (The DIMILY Trilogy Book 2) (4 page)

“Aren’t you just the luckiest girl in the world? Getting to share an apartment with me. How much better can your life get?” Snake looks at me and cocks his head, an eyebrow raised. Tyler just rolls his eyes. “I mean, you’re living with the coolest guy you’ll ever meet.”

I pull a face. “Are you always so . . . ?”

“Charming? Yes.” He grins and reaches over to pat my head in a condescending manner—thankfully, not with the earlier, offending hand—and then turns for the couch. “TV’s mine.”

“Don’t worry,” Tyler murmurs quietly by my ear, “it’s just his humor.”

I’m not really paying attention to his words, though. I’m paying attention to the fact that I can feel his breath on my skin and I’m trying my best not to react to it. I bite my lip to stop myself from shivering and numbly reach over to touch my suitcase. “Um, where will I, uh, put my stuff?”

“My room,” he says. He grabs my suitcase out from beneath my grip and drags it across the carpet to the first of the doors on the right of the apartment. Kneeing the door open, he lets me in first again and then places my suitcase down by the king-sized bed. It isn’t as cluttered as his room back home used to be. The beige carpet continues into the room and his comforter is red, bedside drawers black. The walls are covered in NFL and MLB posters.

“Since when were you all that interested in baseball?” I ask.

“Since I moved to New York,” he says with a slight grin. He nods to the bed. “You can have my room. I’ll take the couch.”

“Why don’t we just bunk?” Oh my God. The words slip out of my mouth so fast I barely realize I’ve said them until I see Tyler’s smile fade. He rubs at the back of his neck and shrugs. Sharing a bed is totally not a sensible suggestion.

“I think I’ll just stick to the couch, Eden.” He tries to smile gently at me, but it looks a little forced, and suddenly the atmosphere feels so suffocating that it’s making me want to open up the window and climb out. I know the suggestion was stupid, but Tyler still rejected it, which means he totally is over me.

I force myself to act casual, to make it look like I am actually breathing. “Yeah, that was a dumb idea. Do you mind if I take a nap? I’m really tired.” I glance at my watch. It’s 6:30 by now, and although it’s only 3:30 back home, my body still feels exhausted all of a sudden. The early-morning flight was a bad move.

“Yeah, sure, go ahead,” he says, taking a step back toward the door, like he’s getting ready to make his escape from his insane stepsister who’s trying to drag him into bed with her. “Do you wanna cancel Times Square tonight? We could go tomorrow instead.”

“No, no,” I say quickly, a little too eagerly. “I still want to go to Times Square. Just give me an hour to sleep and then we can go.”

“Just an hour?” Tyler looks at me suspiciously. If there’s anything he’s learned about me over the two years that he’s known me, it’s the fact that I will sleep endlessly. I think he doubts that I’ll be able to wake up again once I doze off.

“An hour,” I confirm. “Wake me up if you have to.”

I hope Times Square can wait.

I flex my hands as I roll onto my side, grasping the sheets in search of my phone. The bed is too warm and I’m sticking to the sheets. I groan as I push back the comforter and sit up, not quite sure what time it is. Sunlight is still streaming into the room and the sound of the TV echoes faintly through Tyler’s bedroom door. I slide my body out of the bed and push open the door only to discover Tyler and Snake slumped on the couch, watching some football game.

I clear my throat to catch Tyler’s attention. He immediately cranes his neck to look at me, his face lighting up. Snake, however, doesn’t even bat an eyelid. He only curses at the TV and takes a swig of the beer in his hand.

“How long was I asleep for?” I ask, my voice quiet and slightly raspy.

Tyler gets to his feet and makes his way over to me, which only makes my heart race yet again. I’m hoping that by tomorrow I’ll be able to concentrate better and won’t have palpitations every time he looks at me, speaks to me, or comes anywhere near me. “Twenty minutes,” he tells me.

I squint at him. Twenty minutes? There’s no way. But when I glance at my watch, I realize he’s right. It’s not even 7PM yet. “Oh. Are we still going to Times Square?”

“Yeah. I’m taking you to dinner, so I hope you’re hungry.” His smile falls for a moment and he arches a brow, perhaps waiting for me to object.

“Yeah, I’m hungry,” I say. With the early flight and the traveling and the time difference, I have somehow managed to get to 7PM without having a single thing to eat all day. Unless my coffee this morning at the airport counts.

Back comes Tyler’s smile. “Say a half-hour?”

“Yeah, I’ll be ready.” Snake’s still not paying any attention to us, and my eyes drift past him and over to the bathroom door. I nod toward it. “Can I?”

“You don’t have to ask, Eden,” Tyler tells me with a laugh. “This place is all yours. Go ahead.”

At that exact moment, we both turn for his bedroom. His clothes are in his closet and my clothes are in my suitcase on the floor, so I smile sideways at him as we both enter the room.

“Since this is your room and all now, it looks like you gotta get used to me coming in to grab stuff,” he jokes while pulling open the door to his closet. “I’ll knock first; don’t worry.”

I roll my eyes and haul my suitcase up from the floor, struggling to lift it before finally throwing it onto the bed. I’m not particularly sure what to wear, so as I’m unzipping my case I watch Tyler out of the corner of my eye to see if the clothes he’s choosing are casual or smart. After a few minutes of shuffling clothes around in his closet and rummaging through his chest of drawers, he lays a pair of tan pants and a button-up dark-blue denim shirt onto the bed.

“You’re taking the bathroom, right?”

“Um.” I quickly drop my eyes back to my suitcase and swallow, feeling his eyes on me. “Yeah.” He’s standing by the window, waiting for me to leave so that he can change his outfit, so I sift through my pile of clothes as fast as I can so as not to keep him waiting. I grab some options and then make my way out of the room. “I’ll be quick. I’m gonna shower.”

“Towels are on the second shelf in the cabinet,” he calls.

When I close the door behind me and enter the living room, Snake’s no longer sprawled across the couch, though the football game is still playing. I make my way toward the kitchen and suddenly a head appears from behind the refrigerator. Snake holds up a bottle. “Do you want a beer?”

“A beer?” I repeat. His Boston accent isn’t the clearest.

“Yeah, a beer. Do you or don’t you?”

“Sure,” I say. I extend my hand and wait, but I’m half expecting him to retract his offer. However, he yanks a bottle of Corona out of the pack and slides it into my hand. It’s my first night in New York City, so a celebratory beer won’t do any harm.

“Wait, let me get that for you.” Grabbing the bottle opener from the counter, he spins back around and pops the cap off my drink. He fetches his own bottle from the counter and takes a sip. “I didn’t take you as a beer kinda girl.”

“And I didn’t take you as a guy with much hospitality,” I shoot back, but we’re just playing. “Thanks for the drink.”

He clinks his bottle against mine as though to say, “You’re welcome,” and then takes another swig as I make my way into the bathroom, my clothes in one hand and the beer in the other.

“Don’t you wanna leave the door open so that I can get a good view?”

I turn back around and narrow my eyes at him. I’m not sure we share a similar sense of humor, but I’m sure I’ll get used to him eventually. “Definitely not.” I knee the door shut and lock it.

It doesn’t take me long to get ready, mostly because I don’t wash my hair, and once I’ve freshened up and washed off my makeup, it’s really only a matter of pulling on my clothes. I leave my hair down and step into my pink skater skirt, slipping a denim jacket on top of a white tank top. I’ve consumed almost the entire bottle of beer in the time that it takes to get ready, so I take the remainder with me as I carry my belongings back through to Tyler’s room. He’s spraying cologne when I enter. The Bentley one.

“Did Snake give you that?” he asks, nodding to the bottle in my hand. For a second, I think he’s about to frown, but he keeps his expression neutral.

“Yeah.” I place the beer on top of the bedside table and throw my clothes into my suitcase, not bothering to fold them. I’ll sort it all out later, but right now, all I need is my makeup bag, which I pull out from beneath a pile of sandals. I glance around the room quickly in search of a mirror and spy a small one above the chest of drawers that Tyler is standing by. “Can I get in there for a sec?”

“Sure,” he says. Stepping to the side, he allows me to position myself in front of the mirror, watching me as I do so. “Did you do something different to your hair?” he asks after a moment.

“My hair?” I lift my head and look back at him in the mirror. “Just some highlights.” He only gives me a single nod back, so I drop my eyes back to my makeup bag as I rummage through it. I don’t want to keep Tyler waiting, so I only apply mascara to make my eyes pop a little more.

I don’t know what it is about the two of us, but suddenly it feels awkward. It wasn’t awkward at the airport and it wasn’t awkward on the ride to Manhattan, but now something feels different. I’m starting to worry that perhaps it was my inappropriate suggestion earlier that’s made Tyler feel uncomfortable. The suggestion about sleeping together. Or maybe it’s just awkward because he no longer cares about me in that way, the way that he shouldn’t.

“Ready,” I say quietly, forcing a smile on my face as I spin around. I didn’t notice it when I was looking at him in the mirror, but he’s wearing his brown boots, which only makes me sigh. I wonder if he knows how much I love it when he wears them.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing.” I bite my lip in an effort to stop me from blushing and quickly grab my Converse from the floor, slipping them on and standing upright. “Let’s go.”

I follow him back into the living room, and Snake is by the refrigerator again, fetching himself another beer, which I think could possibly be his third. He tells me to enjoy Times Square, despite the fact that the whole thing is just “overrated bullshit,” in his words, and then Tyler finally guides me out of the apartment building.

It’s still extremely hot when we get outside onto Seventy-fourth Street, and I can hear that buzz of noise again. There are still a lot of cars honking, but I quite like it. It’s almost relaxing, in a weird sort of way. Tyler doesn’t say anything as I follow him across the street, and then I linger by the passenger door of his car. The truck and the Honda haven’t moved.

“We’re not driving there,” Tyler informs me, laughing as though I should have known we wouldn’t be taking his car. He stares at me from a few feet away, smiling, which gives me some hope that the awkwardness in his room was only temporary. “We’re taking the subway.”

“The subway?” I vaguely remember Mom telling me not to go on it, yet I’ve only been in New York for three hours and it looks like I’ll be breaking that rule already. Besides, I’ve always secretly wanted to use it at least once in my life, just for the experience.

“Yeah, we’re catching the 6 train at Seventy-seventh Street,” he says. I don’t think he realizes that I have no idea what he’s talking about. “We’re heading downtown to Grand Central. You know what Grand Central Station is, right?”

“The really famous station?” I match my pace with his as I follow close by his side, though I’m paying more attention to my surroundings than I am to him.

“Yeah, that,” he says. “We’ll get you a MetroCard.”

“A what?”

He looks at me as he attempts to bite back another laugh. “God, you really are a tourist.”

We make a right onto Lexington Avenue, where the buildings seem dingier. They’re all a murky brown or red, and there’s the same amount of traffic as there is on Third Avenue, but it still manages to seem busier. We reach the station in five minutes, but I’m confused by which entrance to take, given there are eight of them: two on each corner. I turn to Tyler. “Why are there so many stairs?”

“These four are for uptown trains,” he explains, pointing to the four entrances on the east side of the street. He then nods at the entrances on the opposite side. “Those four are for downtown trains, which is where we’re going.”

When there’s a clearing in the traffic we almost jog across the street, and then Tyler nudges me toward the subway stairs. Looking down, it resembles nothing more than a crack den. I have a feeling that once we’re a couple flights down the daylight from outside won’t suffice, and the electric lighting seems minimal. I’ve watched enough horror movies to know that I’m more likely to die down there.

Pedestrians are nudging past us as they exit and enter the station, but I’m still apprehensive. Tyler’s arms are folded across his chest and he’s studying me.

“Do you do this a lot?” I ask.

“Pretty much every day,” he says. “Trust me, it’s safe.”

I still don’t move. I’d rather walk to Times Square, however many blocks away it is. I stare at Tyler’s jaw. “Aren’t there buses or something we can take instead?”

He rolls his eyes, turning up the sleeves of his denim shirt before he reaches for my hand. It’s so out of nowhere that I think my body stops functioning, even when Tyler starts yanking me down the stairs. “Little kids go on the subway, Eden, so I’m taking you on it. End of discussion,” he calls over his shoulder.

I don’t even reply. I can’t reply. It feels like I’m in middle school all over again and my eighth-grade crush has just held my hand for the first time. It’s such a simple gesture, but it feels so significant. His skin is warm and our fingers interlock and fit each other almost perfectly. It feels exactly like the way I remember it, and it also feels like I can’t breathe, and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s touching me or if it’s because I’m underground. I try to convince myself that it’s the latter.

“See, it’s not that bad, right?” Tyler’s voice echoes in my ear, and his hand quickly disappears from mine. My senses come rushing back and I glance around, wondering how many flights of stairs he’s pulled me down and also wondering why there’s lighting down here, until my eyes finally settle back on his.

“Right,” I say, but my voice is almost a whisper. I’m such a kid. All he did was guide me down to a subway station. I glance down at his hands, which are now stuffed inside the front pockets of his pants, and he’s looking at me with a curious glint in his eyes. “So what’s a MetroCard?”

“The thing that’s gonna let you get through those.” He nods behind me to a row of turnstiles and it only occurs to me right then how loud everything is. I can hear a train arriving in the distance and it almost feels as though the ground is shaking, but it’s not. I think I can also hear a busker out on the platforms somewhere. “Over here.”

There are some machines lining a wall and I follow Tyler over to them, close behind, partly because I don’t feel safe and partly because I’m hoping he’ll grab my hand again. He doesn’t.

“Are you still freaking out?” he asks. He steals a glance at me from the corner of his eye as he taps at the screen, selecting options so fast that I struggle to keep up with what he’s doing.

“It’s making me feel a little claustrophobic,” I admit. My eyes drift around the station. I’m not sure how far down we are, but it feels like we’re trapped in the middle of nowhere, yet nobody else seems to have a care in the world. They’re definitely not tourists.

“You’ll get used to it in a few days. You’ll get used to New York as a whole by the end of the week.” Taking out his wallet, he pulls out his credit card and slides it into the bottom of the machine, typing in his PIN and removing the card again. A yellow and black card shoots out from a slot higher up. “Unlimited for a month,” he says, handing the card to me. “You’re good to go.”

I squint at it for a moment as he slides his credit card back into his wallet and takes out his own MetroCard. “How much did you pay for this?”

“Why does it matter?” He looks at me hard. Almost like he’s offended that I’m asking.

“Because now I owe you.”

He lets out a laugh in the middle of the station and rolls his eyes at me, twice. “Get outta here. You don’t owe me anything. I’m under strict orders to look after you.” Throwing his arm over my shoulder, he pulls me against him and squeezes my body before pushing me away. It’s only playful, but his touch still exhilarates me for a few seconds.

And once the sensation fades away, I can focus on his words. “Under strict orders from who?”

“C’mon, there’s a train about to come in.” Completely ignoring my question, he places his hand on my shoulder blade and directs me over to the turnstiles, and I have to slide my MetroCard through the slot before forcing my body through the bars.

Tyler follows right behind me. The subway station, on a whole, isn’t as busy as I expected it to be. We’re two of around fifteen people standing on the platform, but it’s most likely due to the fact that by now it’s 7:45PM. Rush hour is long over.

“Here it comes,” Tyler says, and he has to raise his voice in order for me to hear him clearly over the sound of the train as it approaches. The ground is definitely shaking now. I can feel it vibrating beneath me as the noise drills in my ears, and when the battered train pulls to a stop by the edge of the platform I’m scrunching my nose up.